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Title: Love and liberty
A thrilling narrative of the French Revolution of 1792
Author: Alexandre Dumas
Release date: June 4, 2024 [eBook #73772]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1869
Credits: Gísli Valgeirsson, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
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Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
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LOVE AND LIBERTY.
A THRILLING
NARRATIVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1792.
BY
ALEXANDER DUMAS.
AUTHOR OF “THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO,” “THE THREE GUARDSMEN,” “TWENTY
YEARS AFTER,” “BRAGELONNE; THE SON OF ATHOS,” “THE CHEVALIER,”
“THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN,” “ADVENTURES OF A MARQUIS,” “CAMILLE;
OR, THE FATE OF A COQUETTE,” “FORTY-FIVE GUARDSMEN,” “LOUISE
LA VALLIERE,” “COUNTESS OF CHARNY,” “QUEEN’S NECKLACE,”
“THE IRON HAND,” “THE IRON MASK,” “ANDRE DE TAVERNEY,”
“EDMOND DANTES,” “SIX YEARS LATER,” ETC., ETC., ETC.
“MARCH ON! MARCH ON! OH CHILDREN OF THE LAND,
THE DAY, THE HOUR OF GLORY, IS AT HAND!”
PHILADELPHIA:
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;
306 CHESTNUT STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States,
in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
ALEXANDER DUMAS’ GREAT WORKS.
_COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO_ $1 50
_THE IRON MASK_ 1 00
_LOUISE LA VALLIERE_ 1 00
_ADVENTURES OF MARQUIS_ 1 00
_DIANA OF MERIDOR_ 1 00
_THE THREE GUARDSMEN_ 75
_TWENTY YEARS AFTER_ 75
_BRAGELONNE, SON OF ATHOS_ 75
_CAMILLE, CAMELIA LADY_ 1 50
_MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN_ 1 00
_THE QUEEN’S NECKLACE_ 1 00
_SIX YEARS LATER_ 1 00
_COUNTESS DE CHARNY_ 1 00
_ANDREE DE TAVERNEY_ 1 00
_FORTY-FIVE GUARDSMEN_ 75
_THE IRON HAND_ 75
_THE CHEVALIER_ 1 00
_THE CONSCRIPT_ 1 50
_Above are in paper cover, or in cloth, at $1.75 each._
_EDMOND DANTES_ 75
_THE FALLEN ANGEL_ 75
_FELINA DE CHAMBURE_ 75
_THE HORRORS OF PARIS_ 75
_SKETCHES IN FRANCE_ 75
_ISABEL OF BAVARIA_ 75
_THE CORSICAN BROTHERS_ 50
_THE COUNT OF MORET_ 50
_MAN WITH FIVE WIVES_ 75
_THE TWIN LIEUTENANTS_ 75
_ANNETTE, LADY OF PEARLS_ 50
_MOHICANS OF PARIS_ 50
_GEORGE; OR THE PLANTER OF THE ISLE OF FRANCE_ 50
_THE MARRIAGE VERDICT_ 50
_BURIED ALIVE_ 25
Above books are for sale by all Booksellers. Copies of any or all
of the above books will be sent to any one, to any place, postage
pre-paid, on receipt of their price by the Publishers,
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
306 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA.
CONTENTS.
Prologue.
Chapter Page
I.—HOW M. DUMAS CAME TO WRITE THESE MEMOIRS 23
=A MAN OF THE PEOPLE=.
(RENE BESSON.)
I.—CONCERNING HIS PARENTAGE AND HIS EARLY YOUTH 27
II.—THE FIRST SEEDS OF A POLITICAL FAITH 32
III.—A STRANGER OF INFLUENCE TURNS UP 34
IV.—I EDUCATE MYSELF FOR CONTINGENCIES 39
V.—I BREAK WITH THE ARISTOCRACY 41
VI.—THE NATION AND THE BASTILLE.—VERDICT FOR THE FORMER 44
VII.—CONCERNING THE BASTILLE 48
VIII.—THE DUKE D’ENGHIEN’S LAST DAY’S SPORT 51
IX.—I GO TO MAKE CAPTIVES AND AM TAKEN CAPTIVE MYSELF 56
X.—TOUCHING MADEMOISELLE SOPHIE 66
XI.—WHAT “BROTHERHOOD” MEANT 70
XII.—WHAT PASSED IN THE FOREST 75
XIII.—THE PEOPLE IN COUNCIL 79
XIV.—MY NEW PARISIAN FRIENDS 83
XV.—I GO TO THE JACOBINS’ CLUB 88
XVI.—PARIS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 93
XVII.—I ATTEND A MEETING AT THE CORDELIERS 96
XVIII.—THE FEMALE ELEMENT IN POLITICS 102
XIX.—THE FIELD OF THE FEDERATION 106
XX.—I GO BACK AGAIN 110
XXI.—I EXCHANGE MY GUN FOR THE PLANE 115
XXII.—MY NEW LIFE UNDER SOPHIE’S FATHER 117
XXIII.—THE ARRIVAL OF THE DRAGOONS 122
XXIV.—THE NIGHT OF THE 21ST OF AUGUST, 1791 128
XXV.—THE TRAGEDY OF ROYALTY BEGINS 134
XXVI.—WHAT HAPPENED AT PARIS BEFORE THE DEPARTURE 145
XXVII.—HOW THEY SET OUT 148
XXVIII.—THE ROAD 155
XXIX.—STILL IN FLIGHT 166
XXX.—WHAT HAPPENED IN THE GROCER’S LITTLE SHOP 175
XXXI.—THE RETURN OF ROYALTY IN ARREST 180
XXXII.—WHAT M. DE BOUILLE DID IN THE MEANTIME 187
XXXIII.—AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE TURNS UP 189
XXXIV.—THE CRITICS CRITICISED 195
XXXV.—IS LOVE ETERNAL 196
XXXVI.—BARNAVE AND PETION 202
XXXVII.—PARIS 206
XXXVIII.—I RESUME MY ORIGINAL PROFESSION 212
XXXIX.—TOUCHING THE PRINCESS LAMBALLE 219
XL.—THE TIDE RISES 224
XLI.—CONCERNING THE BILL OF FORFEITURE 229
XLII.—WHAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE HAIRDRESSER AND THE
INVALID 234
XLIII.—THE RED FLAG 239
XLIV.—THE MASSACRE OF THE CHAMP DE MARS 245
XLV.—ROBESPIERRE PAYS A VISIT TO M. DUPLAY 249
XLVI.—INSTALLATION 254
XLVII.—A BREAK 259
XLVIII.—THE THREAT IS LOUDER 265
XLIX.—THE KING QUITS THE TUILERIES 274
L.—THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER 281
LI.—THE KING’S TRIAL PROCEEDED WITH 297
LII.—NEAR THE BLOCK 307
LIII.—THE SACRIFICE OF BLOOD 315
LIV.—EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI 323
LV.—WHAT FOLLOWS 327
LVI.—THE REIGN OF TERROR 330
LVII.—WHOLESALE MASSACRE 336
LVIII.—MARIE ANTOINETTE 346
LIX.—MARIE ANTOINETTE FINDS PEACE AT LAST 349
LX.—THE TWENTY-TWO 356
LXI.—THE RED FLAG 360
LXII.—THE BLOOD OF WOMEN 365
LXIII.—ROBESPIERRE FALLS 370
LOVE AND LIBERTY.
Prologue.
CHAPTER I.
HOW M. DUMAS CAME TO WRITE THESE MEMOIRS.
Of all the remarkably interesting events connected with the French
Revolution, perhaps the one most worthy of notice is the flight of
Louis XVI, and his capture at Varennes.
At the time when I determined to take the trip of which I will give
you some details, and which put me in possession of the memoirs I am
about to publish—that is to say, about the 19th of June, 1856—I had
read almost all that had been written concerning the above-mentioned
flight.
I wish to start from Châlons, because from the fact of the King being
recognized there, came the train of events which ended at Varennes on
the evening of his arrest.
The capture of Louis at Varennes was the culminating point of
royalty. For although it took seven hundred and four years to arrive
at Varennes, it took but nineteen months to descend from Varennes to
the Place de la Revolution.
It is not because the heads of three persons, who were in the
carriage that took royalty to the precipice, fell on the scaffold,
that we mark out the event as the greatest in the French Revolution,
and, indeed, in the whole history of France. No! It is because the
arrest of the King in the little town of Varennes, unknown on the
22nd of June, and on the morrow fatally immortalized, was the source
of the political convulsions which have since occurred.
My resolution to go to Varennes once taken, I started from Paris on
the 19th of June, 1856, and on the 20th of the same month, at one
o’clock next morning, I arrived at Châlons.
I was, as you know, in search of details actually seen by
eye-witnesses. I soon discovered two old men who could give me the
necessary information. One was a Monsieur Ricaise, at Châlons—one
of the postilions who drove the King; the other, Monsieur Mathieu,
notary, at St. Menehould, who had seen the horses changed at the
moment that Drouet recognized the King.
But it was especially necessary to discover some one at Varennes
who remembered some incidents connected with the affair; because at
Varennes occurred the most dramatic part of the whole catastrophe.
I first asked a keeper of the records whether he knew any one who had
seen the King, and assisted to arrest him?
He mentioned Colonel Réné Besson.
I asked him to give me his address.
“I will do better,” said he,—“I will take you to him.”
At the very moment that we entered by the Rue de l’Horloge, that
place where Louis XVI was arrested, which, singularly enough, has
the shape of the axe of the guillotine, my guide put his hand on my
shoulder.
“Eh!” said he; “here is the very man we want.”
And he showed me, at the corner of the Place Latry and the Rue de la
Basse, a fine old man, warming himself in the rays of the sun, and
sitting in a large arm-chair before his door.
It was Colonel Réné Besson.
We drew near to him.
Imagining that we had some business with him, he arranged himself
more comfortably in his chair, and waited an explanation.
“Ah, ah! is it you, Monsieur Leduc?” said he.
“Yes, Colonel, it is I; and in good company, too, as you may see,” my
companion replied.
“Colonel, I call on you in right of being the son of one of your old
companions in arms; for you took a part in the Egyptian campaign,
under General Desaix?”
“Yes, sir, I did,” answered he.
“The fact of being the son of an old companion in arms,” I continued,
“and of bearing the name of the conqueror of Murad Bey, induced me
to take the liberty of calling on you, and asking for information on
certain points. To commence. Were you at the battle of Valmy?”
“I was with my regiment six days before, on the 2nd of September; and
I just missed leaving my bones at La Force, in trying to rescue a
woman—a princess, I should say.”
“The Princess Lamballe?”
“Exactly so.”
“At this period, I was living then, in the Rue Saint Honoré with the
carpenter, Duplay.”
“You have seen Robespierre, then?”
“Just as I have you. It was I who made the table on which he wrote
the greater part of his speeches.”
“And Danton?”
“Danton? It was he who enrolled me on the 2nd of September. But I
knew Danton, as you say, and Camilles Desmoulins, Saint Just, and
afterwards, later on, the Duke D’Enghien, and even Marshal Ney.”
“You have seen the Duke D’Enghien?”
“I was secretary to the Minister of War who sentenced him.”
“And also Marshal Ney?”
“It was he who made me lieutenant-colonel in the retreat from Moscow.”
“I will never leave you, Colonel; I will be your secretary, and we
will write your memoirs.”
“You are too late,” said he, laughing; “my memoirs are already
three-fourths finished.”
“What? Do you mean to say you have written——”
“Oh, simply to amuse myself: and there is my secretary. Hush!”
At this moment the door opened, and a beautiful girl of seventeen or
eighteen came towards us.
“Is that your secretary?” I asked.
“Yes; Marie, my dear little granddaughter. Bow to Monsieur. You ought
to, after the sleepless nights you have passed through thinking of
him.”
“I?” said the girl, blushing. “I do not know the gentleman!”
“But you know ‘Monte Christo’ and the ‘Three Musketeers?’”
“Monsieur Dumas! Is it possible?” cried she.
“Yes, Monsieur Dumas. You see that you know him.”
“Oh, sir, I am so glad to see you!”
“You will be my accomplice, then, against the Colonel?”
“Against my grandfather?”
“Yes. He has written some memoirs.”
“I know that. It is I who write from his dictation.”
“Ah! they are worth reading.”
“Oh, grandpapa, Monsieur Dumas says that your memoirs are worth
reading!”
“If he wishes to read them, I shall not hinder him,” said the Colonel.
“Will you really permit me, sir?”
“If I refused you, I should be attaching too much importance to them.”
“Colonel, I am like the gamin of Paris of Monsieur Vanderburch—I
should like to embrace you.”
“Embrace my secretary; that will give more pleasure to both of you.”
I looked at Marie and she blushed as red as a cherry.
“Mademoiselle!” I said, imploringly.
She held up her cheeks to me.
I took her hands in mine, and looked at her intently.
“Has Mademoiselle,” I asked the Colonel, “a page in your memoirs?”
“The last—a white page. But Marie has something to tell me. What is
it, my child?”
“That supper is ready, grandpapa.”
“You hear. Have you an appetite?”
“Unfortunately, I have just dined.”
“I should have liked to clink glasses with you.”
“Will you allow me to breakfast with you to-morrow, instead? You see,
I am taking a liberty with you already. Mademoiselle can give me the
memoirs this evening. I will read them to-night, and return them
to-morrow.”
“What! read them to-night? How many pages are there, Marie?”
“Seven or eight hundred, grandfather,” replied the young girl.
“Seven or eight hundred pages! If you will permit me, I will copy
them.”
Well, the Colonel allowed me to copy from his manuscript all that had
reference to the arrest of the King at Varennes; and when he died,
left me sole possessor of his memoirs.
Colonel Réné Besson has been gathered to his fathers three months
since, at the good old age of eighty-seven. He died, on a beautiful
sunlit afternoon, when the mellow tints of autumn were melting into
the snowy wreaths of winter. Peace be with him.
Eight days after his death, I received the manuscript, with a letter
from Marie, who has become one of the most charming girls I ever met
with.
The manuscript I now publish, is that of Colonel Réné de Besson; and
I give it the title that was chosen by him.
(Signed) ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
A MAN OF THE PEOPLE.
(RENE BESSON.)
CHAPTER I.
CONCERNING HIS PARENTAGE AND EARLY YOUTH.
I was born in the village of Islettes, on the banks of a little river
called the Biesme, in the Forest of Argonne, situated between St.
Menehould and Clermont, on the 14th of July, in the year 1775.
I never had the happiness to experience a mother’s love; she survived
but a few days after my birth. My father, who was a poor carpenter,
out-stayed her loss but five years.
At five years of age, therefore, I was an orphan, without a friend in
the world.
I am wrong and ungrateful to say that. I had one—my uncle, my
mother’s brother, who had the post of keeper in the Forest of
Argonne. His wife, on my mother’s death, supplied her place; and he,
on the death of my father, found me bread.
My father died so poor, that all had to be sold to pay his little
debts, with the exception of his box of carpenter’s tools, which
had been taken to Father Descharmes (that was my uncle’s name), and
placed out of sight in a little room belonging to me.
The Forest of Argonne was Government property, and was preserved for
the pleasure of the nobles attendant on the Court; but that did not
hinder the young people of the environs from coming secretly with the
keepers, to enjoy a little sport with the deer and the hares.
There was one, who took part in these hunting parties, whom I knew
well—Jean Baptiste Drouet, son of a postmaster at St. Menehould; also
William, a friend of his; and one Billaut, who afterwards took the
name of his native place, and called himself Billaut Varennes.
All three were to acquire a certain celebrity in the middle of those
revolutionary movements, still hidden in the future.
Certain young noblemen, by very special favor received privileges of
game denied to the outer world.
Amongst the number of those young nobles, was M. de Dampierre, the
Count de Mannes, and the Viscount de Malmy.
The former was at this time a man of about forty-five years, the
latter not over twenty.
I select these out of the number, because they will play leading
parts in the events I am about to describe.
Even when I was quite a child, I learned the difference that
subsisted in their characters.
Every now and then, on hearing that a herd of wild boars had been
seen in the forest, or that the snowstorm had driven out the wolves,
a courier would arrive from Paris, and announce “The gentlemen of the
Court.”
Then it was that the fun took place.
If it were summer, a tent was pitched, in which the gentlemen took
their meals.
If it were winter, they stopped at St. Menehould, and put up at the
“Hotel de Metz,” making a rendezvous with the keepers at daybreak at
a likely spot for wild boars or wolves. When there, the dogs were
unleashed, and the sport commenced.
When they went, away, they would leave twenty or twenty-five louis to
be divided among the keepers.
In general, these nobles of the Court were exceedingly polite towards
the underlings. Twice the Prince de Condé and his son, the Duke
D’Enghien came.
On such occasions, being, as it were, high holiday, I would follow
the sportsmen. Once when the Duke D’Enghien lost his way, I put him
right, and he offered me a louis. I refused it. (I was only nine
years old.)
He looked at me with astonishment, and asked my name.
“Réné Besson. I am the nephew of Father Descharmes,” I replied.
“Good, my boy,” said he; “I won’t forget thee!”
Two years afterwards the Prince came back. I was then eleven, and
thought that he must have lost all remembrance of me.
But he had not; and he came to me.
“Ah, art thou not Réné Besson?” he said. “Nephew of Father
Descharmes?”
“Yes, Prince.”
“Then here is something for thee,” said he, giving me a gun. “And
this is for thy uncle,” he continued, handing me a folded paper.
This paper contained the appointment of my uncle to the vacant post
of chief huntsman.
As for the gun, it was a beautiful weapon, and I have carefully kept
it through my career, in memory of the unfortunate Prince who gave it.
In the meantime I was growing up. I had learned to read and write
indifferently well; and whilst my uncle was busy in his vocation, I
used to occupy myself with carpentry, a calling for which I evinced
much aptitude and taste.
I was now twelve years of age. I knew every inch of the Forest of
Argonne, and I was as good a shot as any of the keepers, and my sole
ambition was to take my uncle’s place when he resigned, which he
intended to do in four or five years.
There was a place, however, left vacant by the resignation of a
keeper, which I thought would just suit me for the time; and I
determined to solicit the patronage of the Duke D’Enghien.
Time passed on, and we arrived at the opening of the year 1788.
For five years we had not seen M. Drouet, for, after a quarrel with
his father, he had enlisted in the Queen’s Dragoons.
One fine morning, however, we heard from his friend William that
Father Drouet had become reconciled to him, and had resigned to him
his situation of postmaster.
One day, we saw a dragoon stop in front of our house, get off his
horse, fasten his bridle to a ring, and then come tramping up to the
door.
“Well, Father Descharmes,” said the soldier, “haven’t you a glass of
wine in the house for an old friend?”
My uncle looked at him amazed.
“Ah!” said I; “don’t you recognize him, uncle? It is Monsieur Jean
Baptiste.”
“Well, I never—so it is!” cried my uncle, coming forward with
outstretched hands.
But, stopping for a moment, he added, “I beg your pardon, Monsieur
Drouet.”
“Pardon for what?—for remembering a friend? The fault would have been
to forget him. Come, shake hands. Are not all Frenchmen brothers?”
“They are; but, at the same time, there are great and small.”
“Good! but, in two or three years, I will say to you, ‘There are
neither great nor small. All are children of one mother, and all will
have their rights before man, as before heaven.’”
“Ha! Is that the sort of schooling they give you in the Queen’s
Dragoons, Monsieur Jean Baptiste?”
“Not only in the Queen’s Dragoons, but in all other regiments, old
Nimrod.”
My uncle took three glasses from the cupboard, filled two, and
half-filled the other for me.
Drouet took up his glass.
“To the nation!” said he.
“What is that word?” inquired my uncle.
“It is a new one, which I hope will yet gain the rights of the
middle classes. That youngster there; what are you going to do with
him?”
“Make him my successor.”
Drouet shook his head.
“My good old Descharmes!” said he, “you belong to the past. Better
far an independent and honorable position for a man, than to wear a
livery which, no matter how gay it is, puts you at the mercy of the
first whippersnapper that comes. I thought Réné was a carpenter?”
“So I am, Monsieur Jean Baptiste; but I only play at joiner work.”
“Nay, look you here!” said my uncle, proud to be able to show some of
my handiwork. “Here is a wardrobe the youngster has made.”
Drouet went forward, and examined the construction in question with
more interest than it deserved.
“Good—very good!” he said. “Go on as you are doing, my boy; and,
believe me, it is far better to work for the public, than to be a
game-keeper dependent on a prince, liable to be turned away should
a wild boar make an unforeseen bolt, or a wolf force the line of
beaters.”
“But,” answered I, “you must know that I have a gun, Monsieur Jean
Baptiste; and a gun, too, given me by the Duke D’Enghien.”
And saying this, I showed him the cherished weapon, with as much
pride as my uncle had displayed in exhibiting my efforts at wardrobe
making.
“A pretty gun,” he said, looking at it attentively; “and I see that
it bears the royal mark. If you take my advice, you will not hesitate
between the plane which your father left you, and a gun which a
prince gave you. The carpenter’s plane is the bread-winner that the
philosopher of Geneva put into the hands of his favorite pupil;
and ever since the day that ‘Emile’ appeared, the plane has been
ennobled.”
“What is ‘Emile,’ Monsieur Jean Baptiste?” I asked.
“It is the work of one who teaches that all men are citizens
together, and that all citizens are brothers. Keep your gun, Réné,
to preserve your country; but also keep your plane to preserve your
independence. Be a carpenter to the people at large, my boy; but be
no one’s servant, not even if he be a prince. The first opportunity I
have, I will send you ‘Emile’ to read.”
So saying, and squeezing the hand of his old friend, M. Jean Baptiste
remounted his horse. As I held his stirrup he lifted me gently to his
saddle bow, and placed his hand on my head.
“Réné Besson,” he said, with dignity, “in the name of that grand
future of liberty, with which France is even now in travail, I
baptize thee citizen.”
Then relinquishing me, and striking his spurs into his horse, he
disappeared down the forest.
Next day a messenger came from M. Jean Baptiste Drouet, who, faithful
to his promise of the night before, sent me a little book, with these
words written on the first page—
“To the Citizen Réné Besson, carpenter.”
The little book in question was “Emile.”
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST SEEDS OF A POLITICAL FAITH.
When I came to examine the book which M. Jean Baptiste had sent me,
and the title of which was “Emile, or Education,” I sought out the
chapter which had direct reference to my own case.
In the course of my search I came across the following paragraph:—
“It is my positive desire that Emilie should learn a trade. An
honest one, at least, you will perhaps say. What means that? Every
calling useful to the public is an honest one, is it not? I don’t
wish particularly that he should be a carver and gilder, neither
do I particularly care that he should be an actor, or a musician.
Still, let him adopt any one of those professions, or others
resembling them, that he may fancy. I do not wish to fetter his will
in anything, only I would rather he was a shoemaker than a poet, and
would much prefer him to earn his livelihood by paving-stones than by
porcelain.”
I read over and over again, the paragraph which opened up this train
of thought; and at last, I understood it.
Let no one be astonished that my intelligence was so slow. Taken up
as I was until I had reached at this time, my fourteenth year, with
the usual jog-trot of rustic occupations, my mind had remained in a
sort of twilight.
I continued my reading.
“The needle and the sword can never be wielded by the same hand. If I
were a king, I would only permit the ell, the wand, and the shears,
to women, and to maimed men, equally feeble with the weaker sex. I
would forbid callings against health, but not those which are simply
laborious, or even dangerous, for those demand at once both strength
and courage. Everything considered, the trade which I should like a
pupil of mine to adopt of himself would be that of a carpenter.”
“Ah,” said I, “what a good fellow this Monsieur Rosseau is! How I do
like him!”
I tackled to my book again.
“Touching a carpenter’s trade, it is a tidy calling: it is useful;
you can follow it in the house; it requires both skill and industry;
whilst the exercise of taste is not excluded from the articles it
turns out.”
So, then, I was precisely in the state recommended by the author of
“Emile.”
Not only that, but I did not even require to learn the trade he
praised; I knew it already. I read on as follows:—
“Of all states and conditions of life, the most independent is that
of a mechanic. A mechanic is dependent upon his work only; he is
just so much free as an agricultural laborer is a slave; for the
latter can only prepare the field, and leave the product thereof to
fate. A foe—a powerful neighbor—a law-suit, can deprive him of his
field; in fact, that very field can be made to vex him in a thousand
different ways. But, if fate disturbs a mechanic, he gathers his
tools together, and, carrying his sturdy arms with him, away he goes.”
At this point, I looked at my own arms, already muscular and
well-developed, and I swung them in the air with pride. Evidently the
man was right who wrote those lines.
I uttered a cry of joy; and rushing into my little workshop, I hugged
severally to my bosom my hammers, my planes, and my chisels. Then,
strong with a new strength, I felt irresistibly impelled to rush
off at once, and thank M. Jean Baptiste Drouet for lending me the
precious book. St. Menehould was exactly three miles away, and it was
only eleven o’clock in the morning. I could easily be home again by
five or six, and my good uncle would not make himself uneasy at my
absence. Besides, I was quite sure that he would approve of my errand.
CHAPTER III.
A STRANGER OF INFLUENCE TURNS UP.
Out I set at once, taking my book with me, to read on the way; and so
interesting did I find the adventures of “Emile,” that I found myself
near my friend’s house actually without being aware of it.
In the distance I could see M. Jean Baptiste superintending some
postilions, who were putting fresh horses to a carriage. He was
standing on the threshold of his door.
Running up in a state of great excitement, I cried out, “Monsieur
Jean Baptiste, it’s I!”
“Well,” he said, laughing; “I am quite aware of the fact. What do you
want, my boy?”
“What do I want? Oh, I want to thank you, and to tell you that I will
never be a keeper. The only calling worth following is that of a
carpenter, and I mean to be one, Monsieur Drouet.”
The carriage went off.
“So you have been reading ‘Emile?’” he asked, taking me inside.
“Yes; up to here.” And I showed him page 160 of the work.
“Bravo!” said Monsieur Drouet. “But it is not enough to read; you
must also understand.”
“Of course, M. Jean Baptiste,” said I. “There are many things that I
cannot understand, but I always look to you for an explanation.”
“So you are come expressly for that?”
“No, M. Jean Baptiste. Not expressly for that, but to thank you for
your kindness. After my father, who gave me life—after my aunt and my
uncle, who have fed me, I owe more to you than to any other person in
the world; for has not Rousseau himself said that every man is born
twice—first, physically, then intellectually? And it is you who have
successfully brought me through this second birth.”
I must pass over that afternoon of familiar intercourse with my
mentor and my friend. Suffice it to say, that my new-born resolutions
were strengthened, my eyes still more widely opened to my own wants
and requirements; and when I set out on my return, I felt that,
indeed, a path had been tracked for me across the yet untrodden
wilderness of life.
There are few landscapes so pretty in the middle of France as that
which presents itself to the eye on arriving at the Forest of Argonne.
This struck me as it had never done before, and I paused
involuntarily to gaze at the scene.
At this moment two travellers came towards me, followed by a carriage
slowly toiling up the ascent.
One of these strangers particularly attracted my attention. He might
be about fifty years of age, of no great stature, but wiry and
strongly built. He had a noble head, and his weather-beaten face was
lit by the glance of an eagle. Had not the scar of a sabre wound
sufficiently indicated his profession, I could have told he was a
soldier from the unmistakable way in which he wore his civilian’s
suit.
His companion, younger and stouter, was likewise a soldier; but
evidently not of the same standing.
These two men halted a moment near me, less to look at the landscape
than to continue an animated conversation, in which the elder
sustained the principal part.
“Yes, my dear Thévenot,” he said; “I will never give in on this
point. If ever France is invaded by Montmedy and Verdun, it is here
that we must meet the enemy; with 20,000 soldiers I’ll engage to
stop a foe 80,000 strong. The Forest of Argonne is the Thermopylæ of
France.”
“That is to say. General,” replied the other, who looked like his
aide-de-camp, “if the two or three roads through the forest could
be defended as easily as this one; for it is quite evident that
a couple of batteries with six guns each would make this defile
impracticable.”
“There are only two roads,” returned the General; “the one we are now
pursuing, leading to Islettes; and the other, the Grand Prés road.
Both these routes conjoin at Verdun.”
“I thought there was a third—namely, the Chéne-Populeux road.”
“I don’t think that road leads through the forest at all; but I will
ask our driver.”
The General did so.
The bumpkin only shook his head.
“I only know,” he said, “the road I’m accustomed to travel, and
that’s not it. Beyond that, I can’t tell you anything; but,” he
added, nodding towards me, “if you want to know all about this
part of the country, why, there’s the nephew of Father Descharmes,
who knows it all blindfold. Hilloa, boy! come and speak to these
gentlemen!”
I approached, cap in hand, for the look of the elder traveller
inspired me with respect.
“Friend,” said the General, seeing that I waited till he spoke to me;
“we want to know where the Chéne-Populeux road leads from, and if it
takes you through the forest, or round by the outskirts?”
“It leads from Stenay, monsieur, takes round by the forest, and opens
upon Voneg, at the River Aisne.”
“Ah, now we have it, Thévenot; but as, so far as I can remember, the
Chéne-Populeux road is only a narrow defile, I still hold my original
opinion.”
“Will you get in now, gentlemen?” asked the postilion. “My horses are
well breathed by this time.”
“Thank you, my young friend,” said the General, waving his hand
towards me. But just as he had his foot on the step the distant sound
of an alarm-bell, violently rung, came through the stillness.
“What is that?” cried the General.
“A fire at the village of Islettes,” said I. “Look! you can see the
smoke above the trees!”
And, without any further speculation, off I ran towards the village.
The General called after me, but I did not stop to listen.
However, before I had gone a hundred yards, the carriage rattled past
me at a gallop. The General, evidently moved by a humane motive, was
hastening, like myself, towards the scene of the catastrophe, where I
soon arrived.
All the village was astir, and I found the General and his companion
had taken command of the rustics, just as they would of an army on
the field of battle.
The fire had broken out in the workshop of a cart-wright. The fiery
element had attacked an adjacent shed full of wood, and threatened to
reduce the neighboring house to ashes.
Now, at Islettes, fire-engines were unknown, and I need scarcely say
that handing along little buckets of water from the river was by no
means an effectual remedy.
“We must cut off the fire!” shouted the General.
“But how?” returned the peasants.
“I want somebody,” cried the General, “who will get up upon the roof
of that shed, and cut away the principal support. The post will fall,
and carry the roof with it.”
“Oh, yes!” said a voice; “and the somebody in question will go down
with the roof!”
“Very likely!” acquiesced the General, calmly; “but the fire will be
smothered, and the rest of the village saved.”
At that moment, a certain passage from “Emile” flashed across my mind.
“Give me an axe!” I cried. As I spoke, I saw one leaning against a
house near which I was standing.
I laid down my “Emile” and a dictionary which M. Jean Baptiste had
given me; seized the axe, and rushed into the house adjacent to
the shed. Already its inmates were carrying out all their little
property, expecting every instant that their cottage would be in
flames.
Up the little wooden stairs I rushed, and scrambled out on the roof
through a sort of trap-door.
It was my first experience upon roofs; but as I had been accustomed
to climbing trees up to any height, a promenade on the thatch was
only child’s play.
Below, all was hushed in anxiety. I could only hear the peculiar
billow-like sounds of the flames, and the fall of the burning
fragments as they gave way under the fire.
Presently I found myself in a dense atmosphere of smoke and sparks.
I was nearly stifled; but I knew that all eyes and hearts were fixed
upon me, and that gave me strength to succeed or to die, as it might
be.
Supporting myself by the chimney, I commenced to cut away a hole
round about the roof-tree.
I was strong of my age, and could wield with dexterity the axe—that
instrument of my adopted calling; but though at every blow the
upright beam trembled—on the other hand, the advancing flame seemed
to increase in volume.
There was, in a word, a battle between me and the flame, and I felt
proud to have an element for my foe. All at once, the gable-end
fell in with a terrible crash; the other supports of the roof being
weakened by my blows, gave way, and the roof itself fell, smothering,
beneath the raging flames. I flung the axe away from me, and held on
like grim death to my chimney. A whirlwind of smoke and fire blotted
me from the crowd below, and, half suffocated as I was, I could still
hear and understand their murmur of pain and anxiety.
The crisis was over. With one last effort I struggled to my
trap-door, and in another moment—I know not how—found myself safe and
sound in the open air.
Friendly arms embraced me, and looking up, I saw it was the General,
who held in one hand my precious books. “My boy,” he said, “you are
brave, and you read Rousseau: therefore I do not offer you a reward.
But you will be a true man, and I embrace you.”
And again he pressed me in his arms.
By this time, my uncle, and, indeed, all the village, were at my
side; and whilst I was receiving their congratulations, the General
and his friend had departed. No one knew who they were.
This was an important day in my life; for I had learnt to
understand what was conveyed in that most beautiful of all human
words—self-devotion.
CHAPTER IV.
I EDUCATE MYSELF FOR CONTINGENCIES.
Next day I laid up for myself a course of study—physical and
intellectual. In the morning I read and studied my books; during the
day I worked at my carpentry; towards evening I indulged in shooting,
in gymnastics, and sports of that nature; and at night I again
returned to my books. I improved every day.
About a week after the events of the last chapter, M. Drouet, and two
friends came to my uncle’s.
M. Drouet and his friends shook me by the hand. He asked me how I was
getting on, and I told him all, regretting at the same time that I
had no money to buy books, or get instruction in Latin.
“No money!” said Jean Baptiste. “Who hinders you from making it?”
“Making it?” I answered. “But how?”
“With your plane, of course.”
“But, Monsieur Drouet, I have no customers.”
“I will find them for you.”
“Where?”
“To begin with, the postmaster of St. Menehould, Jean Baptiste Drouet
by name. The fact is, I require a quantity of carpentry work done in
my house, and you must undertake it.”
“I am not good enough workman for that, Monsieur Drouet.”
“But if I find you good enough?”
“Then I would not like to take your money.”
“Nonsense! I must get somebody to do it, so that is settled. Now,
about the Latin. I will find you a teacher—Monsieur Fortin, the Curé
of Islettes.”
“How will I pay him?”
“I don’t think that he would take your money.”
“But I take yours, Monsieur Drouet.”
“Ah, that is different. Government does not pay me to make
wash-hand-stands, but it does pay Abbé Fortin to instruct his flock
morally and intellectually.”
“I should like to offer him something.”
“Exactly—not as a right, but as a graceful act of courtesy; and as I
know the Father Fortin does not despise the good things of this life,
you can shoot him a hare occasionally, or knock him up a cupboard, to
keep his preserves in.”
“A thousand thanks, Monsieur Jean!”
“Listen! I have it in my mind’s eye that you will be a soldier—at all
events, the education necessary for an officer will not be thrown
away. For six francs a month, Bertrand, of Islettes, the old soldier,
will teach you fencing; and, for a trifle more, Mathieu, the land
surveyor, at Clermont, will show you how to draw a plan. As for
horsemanship, I will give you the run of my stable; so, there you
are, with your life-time all mapped out. Now, let us to the forest.”
At dinner that day, the conversation turned upon politics, and
particularly on the unpopularity of Marie Antoinette, the Queen. All
this was Greek to me, till M. Jean Baptiste explained the situation
of affairs.
Marie Antoinette, it appeared, daughter of the Austrian, Marie
Therèse, and ancient enemy of France, had been accepted by the French
people as a harbinger of union and of peace. Very different, however,
had been her influence.
In a word, Marie Therèse hoped that Louis XVI would some day aid her
to get back the provinces wrested from her by Prussia.
Until 1778, Marie Antoinette did not meddle with affairs of state.
Up to that time, Turgot was the ruling spirit; but, at last, he had
to succumb to that famous De Calone, who used to reply thus to the
demands of the Queen: “Madame, if it is possible, it is already done;
if it is impossible, it will be done.”
Misrule went on. The King, despite his impoverished treasury, bought
St. Cloud; the Queen, whilst her people were starving, purchased
Rambouillet, and lavished millions of francs which were not her own
upon her immediate favorites. Scandal arose; and when scandal gets
into everybody’s mouth, it is worse than truth.
M. de Calone resigned. He could not make both ends meet.
The next Prime Minister was Brienne, a Queen’s favorite; and, when
he fell, Paris was illuminated from the Bastille to the Cour de la
Reine.
M. de Necker reigned in his stead. He was a Genevese banker, and a
financier of the first force; but even he failed to see a way out of
the royal bankruptcy; and it was whispered that he was going to ask
the nation what it thought of matters—France was to speak.
This was the great news at my uncle’s dinner-table that day, and our
three guests were very merry over it, and pledged fidelity to each
other however these events might turn out.
And they kept their word.
CHAPTER V.
I BREAK WITH THE ARISTOCRACY.
Next morning I set out for St. Menehould, to see about M. Drouet’s
job. He told me what he wanted, and that he should require the new
furniture I was to make him to be of good, well-seasoned oak. In
order that I might set about it the more easily, he paid me one
hundred francs in advance; and with this prodigious sum in my pocket,
I went off to select the necessary timber, when whom should I meet
but Bertrand. The old soldier informed me that M. Drouet had spoken
to him about giving me fencing lessons, and I arranged with him, on
the spot, when I was to take them. In fact, I began that very day.
I remember well how my hand trembled with pleasure, when I grasped
the foil for the first time. At the end of an hour, I knew the five
parades, and could disengage decently.
“That will do for to-day,” cried my master, more tired than I was
myself.
I recollected something.
“Monsieur Bertrand,” said I; “I shall perhaps not be able to pay you
till the end of the month.”
“Oh, that’s all settled. Monsieur Drouet has paid me a month in
advance. He said that he owed you money.”
I felt a glow of emotion at this new proof of my good friend’s
generosity.
As I was crossing a field on my way home, I met the surveyor, M.
Mathieu. My good genius had preceded me there, too: the surveyor was
quite ready to impart to me the mysteries of the chain and level.
Leaving him, I went home in great glee, took my gun, and sallied
forth to slaughter partridges for my Latin master. I was fortunate
enough to knock over a brace of birds and a hare, which I sent the
same night to the Abbé Fortin.
Next day, as I was planing away with great zeal, the Abbé himself
stood before me.
“Well, my boy, you have sent me some game, and you must now help me
to eat it. Dinner at two, and I shall be glad to see your uncle, if
he will come with you.”
“Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé, it is too much honor!”
“At two o’clock, mind. Marguerite, the housekeeper, does not like to
be kept waiting.”
So saying, the worthy Curé left me.
My uncle, I found, would not be at home till the evening, so, at the
hour appointed, I found myself alone, tapping at the Abbé’s door, and
dressed out in all my Sunday splendor.
The Curé opened it himself.
“Ah, monsieur, I am so sorry to trouble you!”
“Trouble? Nonsense! Only Marguerite cannot be at the door and at
her kitchen stove at the same time. Talking of which, she tells me
we will not have dinner till three. Now, what do you say to a first
Latin lesson, as my friend Drouet tells me that you wish to learn
that language.”
I was only too glad to acquiesce; and, before dinner was served, I
understood that there were five declensions in the Roman tongue.
During the simple repast which followed, I surveyed the Abbé’s
furniture with a critical eye, and a mental resolve to do it all up
for him again.
Then, after having arranged about my future hours with my kind
preceptor, I returned home, one step further up the ladder of
progress. That very evening, we were apprised of a visit of the Count
de Dampierre, the Viscount de Malmy, and some other young nobles.
Hitherto, I had been in the habit of accompanying them, dressed in
regular keeper’s costume; but now I stuck steadily to my carpentry
work.
“Holloa, Réné!” said M. de Dampierre; “don’t you go with us to-day?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte,” I replied; “I have a lesson in mathematics
to-day.”
“What?” he exclaimed, with surprise. “Do you study mathematics?”
“Yes, and history and Latin, also.”
“And is all this necessary in our days for a game-keeper?”
“I am not going to be one.”
“What then?”
“I mean to be a carpenter, like ‘Emile.’”
“I don’t know him.”
“No? It is the ‘Emile’ of Monsieur Jean Jacques Rousseau that I mean;
but if the nation wants me, I shall be a soldier.”
“What do you mean by nation?”
“I mean our country—France.”
“We call that the kingdom, do we not?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Comte; but some think it high time that we should
call it a nation.”
“Then the mathematics are to teach you military engineering?”
“Yes; every officer should know how to draw a plan.”
“Officer! But before you can be an officer, you must be an
aristocrat.”
“At present, yes; but by the time I am ready, there may be changes in
the system.”
“You heard that, Malmy,” said M. de Dampierre, turning to the
Viscount.
“Yes!” replied the other, shrugging his shoulders.
“And what do you think of it all?” asked M. de Dampierre.
“I think that the class to which he belongs are losing their heads
altogether.”
I planed away vigorously, and affected not to hear. By-and-bye they
strolled off to the forest, laughing, whilst I got ready to go to M.
Mathieu, for my first lesson in engineering.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NATION AND THE BASTILLE.—VERDICT FOR THE FORMER.
At the end of the fifteenth day the Abbé Fortin had his furniture
retouched, and when three months had expired I had finished the
carpentry work for M. Drouet.
The work was estimated at five hundred francs, the materials alone
costing a hundred and twenty; so that I received three hundred and
eighty, with the compliments of my two masters on the excellency of
my workmanship.
Whilst I was still engaged on the completion of the order, M. Drouet
advanced me five hundred francs, to enable me to buy the wood, and
at the same time, to take my lessons in the use of implements of
warfare, and purchase useful books.
The warrant expected from M. Necker, for the convocation of the
Etats Généraux, had appeared. For the first time, a great nation, or
a great kingdom, as M. Dampierre said, admitted all its members to
political rights.
No sooner had the warrant appeared (which can be translated in these
words:—“All will assemble to elect; all will write their grievances
in the books given to them for that purpose”) than all France
thrilled, as it were, with an electric shock, and the people leapt
from darkness into light.
That cry, treasured up for two centuries, becomes stronger and
stronger every day. They complain that the year 1788 was barren; that
the winter was bitterly cold; that the famine in the following spring
was terrible.
They went to the municipality of St. Menehould, to write in the
books; and my capital penmanship procured me the office of secretary.
Afterwards, they went to election. MM. Drouet, Guillaume, and Billaud
exercised enormous influence.
M. Dampierre was balloted with a poor parish priest. The priest
prevailed over him.
The event deceived all. The Etats, which ought to have opened on the
27th of April, were adjourned to the 4th of May.
The Court was frightened, and delayed the matter as long as it could.
All France had its eyes turned to Paris. Every hour brought forth
unexpected events.
On the 5th of May, the opening of the Etats, in the procession from
Versailles, the King was applauded, and the Queen hissed.
On the 8th of May, the three classes were changed into two—the one
formed of the third class, the other of the nobility and clergy.
On the 18th of June, the assembly hall was closed by order of the
King.
On the 22nd of June, the oath of Jeu-de-Pauvre was taken.
This oath was the declaration of war from the third Etat against the
nobility and clergy. It was the first menace direct from the people
against the throne.
All in a moment, these comparatively small events ceased, and a
portentous calm intervened, so to speak, as if the minor combatants
held their weapons to intently watch the issue of the combat between
their superiors.
On the 12th of July, M. Drouet started for Paris.
It was the day of the dismissal of Necker—it was the day when Camille
Desmoulins, jumping on a table in a _café_, drew his sword, and
crying, “To arms!” placed the leaf of a tree in his hat.
We had no news of M. Drouet up to the 15th.
On the morning of the 15th, MM. Dampierre and De Valmy went out
hunting, to which sport were invited two or three of their friends
from Clermont and Varennes; among others, a certain Chevalier de
Courtemont, whom we shall come across later on.
It was evident that the hunt was but a secondary affair, and that the
real object was to meet and hear the news from Paris.
M. Dampierre had heard, on the 13th, that Paris was on fire, and the
Court at Versailles guarded by German troops,—Benzenval commanding,
under the old Marshal de Broglie.
The theatres were shut. The dismissal of Necker had, to a certain
extent, paralyzed the public mind. Statues of him and of the Duke of
Orleans were covered with crape, and paraded through the streets of
Paris.
The procession, armed with sticks, swords, and pistols, after having
passed through the streets Saint Martin and Saint Honoré, arrived at
the Place Vendome.
There one division stopped, and having dispersed the people,
destroyed the bust of the Prince and the Duke of Orleans, and put to
death a French guard who disdained to fly.
That was not all.
M. de Bezenval had put a detachment of Swiss and four pieces of
cannon in battery on the Champs Elysées, the crowd retired to the
Tuileries, and the Prince de Lambese, a German, charged upon them
with his cavalry, inoffensive though they were, and was the first
to enter, on horseback, the gardens of the Tuileries. A barricade
stopped him. From the back of that barricade, stones and bottles were
thrown at him. He perceived that a group of men were shutting the
gate, to take him prisoner. He ordered a retreat, and, in flying,
crushed one man under his steed, and severely wounded another with a
blow from his sabre.
The crowd now entered the armorers’ shops, and ransacked them.
The cannons were mounted on the Bastille, which was reinforced by
another detachment of Swiss.
They knew nothing more on the night of the 13th, nor on the next day.
M. Dampierre ordered that if news came in the day, it was to be
delivered to my uncle.
At four o’clock the sport finished, and they returned to the house. A
dinner, prepared as usual, awaited them.
The companions remained at table, visibly preoccupied; the
conversation was nothing but conjectures. They spoke in strong terms
of the National Assembly. They wished to have been in the place of M.
Brézé, of M. de Bezenval, of M. de Lambese; they were sure that they
could have done better than they did.
The Queen was too good, not to have commanded the Swiss to
exterminate the wretches.
At six o’clock, M. Dampierre’s servant brought a despatch. It was
dated the morning of the 14th.
On the night of the 13th the people had forced the doors of the
Invalides, and had taken thirty thousand muskets. They had also
forced the doors of the Arsenal with sledge-hammers, and had taken
seven or eight tons of powder. That powder had been distributed under
the lamp-lights. Each man bearing a musket received fifty cartridges.
The Court had ordered all the foreign regiments, useful to royalty,
to be at hand, if wanted.
M. de Launay, the Governor of the Bastille, who knew his
unpopularity, and upon whom they could count, because of that
unpopularity, had pledged himself to blow the Bastille into the air,
along with half Paris, before he would surrender.
This news the companions thought good, as it promised a desperate
resistance.
On the other hand, who were the people who menaced royalty? Men
ignorant of the use of fire-arms, undisciplined, and without leaders,
who would retreat at the first cannon-shot, and fly at the first
charge.
How could that rabble hold out against practised soldiers, who feared
not death, but disgrace?
On mastering the despatch, M. Dampierre told each guest to fill his
glass; then, lifting his own, “To the victory of the King, and the
extermination of the rebels!” he cried. “Drink with me, gentlemen.”
“To the victory of the King, and the extermination of the rebels!”
cried all, with one voice.
But before they had time to put the glasses to their lips, a furious
gallop, coming from the direction of Paris, was heard; and, shouting
with joy, a horseman, with a tricolor in his hat, shot past like a
whirlwind, crying to M. Dampierre and his friends these words—not
less terrible than those that Belshazzar read, in letters of fire, on
the wall,—“The Bastille is taken! Long live the people!”
The horseman was Jean Baptiste Drouet, who was riding at full speed
to announce to his friends at Varennes the news of the victory that
the people had obtained over their King.
This news which he proclaimed in every city and in every village that
he passed, brightened his route with a flash vivid as lightning.
CHAPTER VII.
CONCERNING THE BASTILLE.
All France gave one cry of joy when the news arrived that the
Bastille was taken.
All the world knew the Bastille—that prison which has given its name
to others.
From one end of France to the other, all shook hands, congratulating
each other on the event.
And, strange to say, the Bastille was taken by those who had never
entered it—in fact, it was a place of imprisonment for nobles only.
One would have thought, from the fact of their attacking it, that it
was a place which they themselves had to dread.
Ah! it was a horrible den. You were not dead there; but what was
worse, you were forgotten.
Your father, wife, or brother dared not speak of you, for fear they
should be sent there likewise.
Once there, you no longer had a name, but a number. You died, and
they buried you under a false name.
No; the King did not deprive you of your head; he was too good for
that; he only forgot you.
Instead of dying in a moment, you suffered unutterable tortures for
perhaps thirty years.
In the reign of Louis XVI all the rigors of prisons were softened,
with the exception of the Bastille, the discipline of which was
harsher than ever. In former reigns they had barred the windows; but
now they also stopped the promenades in the gardens.
It is true that Louis XVI did not actually do this himself but he
suffered it to be done, which is all the same.
Louis XVI did not himself shut up the garden. No; it was De Launay,
who was as unpopular as he well could be.
At the Bastille all bought the places that they occupied, from the
Governor down to the gaolers. Every situation was worth having,
except that of the prisoners.
The Governor had sixty thousand livres salary. He made a hundred and
twenty thousand by his plunders.
We have already spoken of the garden of the Bastille open to the
prisoners. It was but a little plot of ground, planted, as it were,
upon a bastion.
A gardener offered a hundred francs a year for it; and this
scoundrel, who was wringing from the pitiful allowances of the
prisoners the sum of a hundred and twenty thousand francs per annum,
actually, for the sake of this paltry sum, deprived the poor wretches
under his rule of the breath of air that made life supportable, of
the sole gleam of life that intervened ’twixt them and the tomb.
He well knew that he would never survive the capture of the
Bastille—this man of iron, who had a Bastille in place of a heart.
The Governor’s hundred and thirty-five barrels of powder were placed
in a vault, situated in the centre of the fortress. The Bastille
blown into the air would astound Paris in its ascent, and utterly
destroy it in its stupendous fall. This he knew. When the prison was
entered by the people, he clapped a torch to the touch-string. An
Invalide seized his arms; two sous-officers crossed bayonets across
his breast. He snatched a knife from his belt; they took it out of
his hands.
Then he demanded to be allowed to march out with the honors of war.
This demand met with a positive refusal.
At last, he would be satisfied were he allowed to depart with life
alone.
Two of the conquerors of the Bastille—Hullin and Elie—promised this
in the name of all.
He begged them to conduct him to the Hotel de Ville, where he had
some shadow of authority.
In the meantime, whilst the people were dashing themselves against
the granite and the oak, and demolishing the two stone slaves that
supported the clock, and breaking open the dungeons, with the
intention of liberating the prisoners confined therein, Hullin and
Elie took away De Launay, hiding him as much as possible by placing
themselves in front of him.
But when he arrived at the gates, the Governor was recognised. He had
no hat; Hullin, fearless of consequences, gave him his own.
Turning into the Rue St. Antoine, one who had taken part in the
combat, recognised the prisoner.
Farther on, came some who had not yet been engaged in the siege,
and who, as a matter of course, were more bloodthirsty now that the
danger was over. They wished to massacre the prisoners. De Launay
remained alive through the protection of Hullin and Elie.
Elie, less powerful than Hullin, was carried away by the crowd,
amongst whom he was lost sight of.
At the Arcade St. Jean, Hullin himself lost sight of De Launay, but
by a superhuman effort he separated the crowd, and regained him. He
dragged him to some adjacent steps, but in the effort fell. Twice did
he again raise himself, only to fall again. At the third time, De
Launay had disappeared. He looked for him on all sides, and at last
recognised his head fixed on the extremity of a pike, and borne above
the crowd.
That head Hullin would have saved, had it been possible, at the risk
of his own.
During this time, the mob had released the prisoners in the Bastille.
There were nine.
Two or three, on seeing the door open, cried out that the people had
come to slay them, and prepared to defend themselves with chairs, but
the intruders cried out in a loud voice, “Free! Free!”
One could not understand it, and fell suffocating, pressing his heart
with his two hands.
Another stood speechless, with his eyes fixed on space; a venerable
man was he, with a white beard descending to his breast. They took
him for a spectre.
The conquerors told him that he was free.
He understood them not.
“How is Louis the Fifteenth?” asked he.
“He has been dead fifteen years.”
“How long had he been in the Bastille?” they asked him.
“I know nothing about it,” he replied.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Elder-born of Space.”
He was mad.
Under the staircase, in a sort of tomb, they found two skeletons. Who
were they? No one knew. The workmen took them away, and buried them
in the Cemetery of St. Paul.
All the world wished to see the Bastille. They showed Latude’s
ladder, that immense work of patience and of genius.
For a month the old place was not emptied.
They heard sighs. A report ran about that there were hidden dungeons
known only to the Government, in which the unhappy prisoners were
suffered to die of hunger.
The architect of the city, Citizen Palloy, was ordered to pull down
the old fortress. Of the best stones, he made eighty-six models of
the Bastille, which he sent to eighty-six different departments.
With the others, he built the Pont de la Revolution, on which the
head of Louis XVI was exposed after execution.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DUKE D’ENGHIEN’S LAST DAY’S SPORT.
For a long time, reports of hidden dungeons and forgotten prisoners
agitated Paris. Paris had had a mountain on its breast, and could not
accustom itself to the deliverance from it.
To pity succeeded fear. Had they really escaped from that calamity
with which De Launay had threatened them? They reported that there
were underground passages from the Bastille to Vincennes; and that in
those passages the powder was concealed just under the Faubourg St.
Antoine, which would one day blow up from one end to the other.
These fears had a good effect. They, for a time, dissipated the
feeling of famine which was gradually creeping over Paris.
Foulon said, “The French have no bread; why should they not eat hay?
My horses eat it.”
True or not, he expiated this sneer with his life, and they carried
his head about with a mouthful of hay stuffed between his teeth.
But, alas! it seemed that the French people had nothing to do but to
eat what Foulon recommended.
From Paris, the fear of famine was dispersed among the provinces.
“Foulon,” said all, “had predicted it.”
They must mow all France.
All said that his ghost appeared to execute the menace.
Then report went about that bands of robbers had been seen mowing the
green wheat.
The municipality of Soissons wrote to the Assembly a letter full of
fears. “The robbers had cut,” they said, “all the wheat for miles
around, and were now marching on the city.”
Soissons demanded help.
The Assembly sent a thousand men, who searched on all sides, twelve
miles a-day. They could not find the robbers.
No matter, ten, twenty, a hundred people had seen them.
In the midst of this disputed news, other transpired which was but
too true.
A certain lord having heard that De Launay had wished to blow up the
Bastille, resolved, if it were in his power, to complete that which
the Governor had been unable to do.
He announced that, in honor of the taking of the Bastille, he would
give a grand entertainment, to which all were invited—workmen,
artisans, tradesmen, countrymen, soldiers, women, old men, and
children.
In this time of famine, when all lived on an ounce or two of bread
per diem, a good dinner was a public service. Everybody—about 5,000
persons, that is to say—rushed to the fête. In the midst of it, an
explosion was heard, and the surrounding plain was covered with
dissevered limbs.
The gentleman, whose name was Mennay de Quincy, escaped to
Switzerland, and avoided punishment.
Later on, he returned; and, as he was a member of Parliament, he was
arraigned before it, and acquitted.
But the breach between the nobles and the people was now opened. The
poor Count de Haus, who was incapable of committing such a crime, was
accused of abetting M. de Quincy.
Some days afterwards, being at Neuville le Pont, he was insulted by
the people, who proceeded to extremities; and he had but just time to
spring on his horse, and gallop off to a place of safety.
Fear had now seized upon us, as well as every one else.
On the 18th of July, four days after the taking of the Bastille, the
Prince Condé, the Duke d’Enghien, M. Vaudrevil, and M. de Broglie
were announced.
Their arrival astonished my uncle, as it was not the hunting season;
the wood being very thick, the shooting was difficult.
The Prince de Condé replied that he only wished to hunt a stag, the
King having commanded him, in the possibility of a war, to examine
into the condition of the defences of Verdun.
The courier was ordered to procure horses from Clermont, and to
command the two carriages punctually at five o’clock.
So, taking this view of the matter, there was nothing extraordinary
in it at all.
The Princes, mindful of the sport they had had, were determined to
enjoy another day of it, although it was not the proper season; but
they could surely do as they liked.
The Duke d’Enghien commanded me to accompany them.
I said good-bye to my books for the day, took the gun which the Duke
had given me, and followed them.
The Prince was then eighteen years of age—not much older than I was.
It was probably on account of the similarity of our ages, that I was
favored by so much of his notice.
I remarked that, though courteous as usual, he was profoundly
sorrowful.
He asked me what progress I was making in my education.
I told him. When I mentioned M. Drouet, he asked if he were not the
postmaster at St. Menehould.
On my response in the affirmative, “A hot Republican, if I mistake
not?” he said.
I replied that, through him, this part of the country had been
apprized of the capture of the Bastille.
He asked me some questions about the general disposition of the
country—as much of the nobles as of the lower classes.
I told him that the love of the people for their King was great, and
that they equally hated the nobles, which was true.
He covered his face with his handkerchief, and sighed.
I looked at him with astonishment.
“Pardon me, Duke,” said I; “but I heard the Prince de Condé say that
he was going to inspect the fortifications of Verdun, in case of war.”
He looked at me to see what I was driving at.
“Excuse my question, Duke,” said I, “but do you think it probable
that we shall have war?”
“Very probable,” said he, looking at me in his turn. “But why that
question?”
“Because, in that event, your Grace, I shall not have lost my time.”
“What would you do if there were war?”
“If France be menaced, every one capable of bearing a musket should
fly to its defence.”
He looked at my gun. It was the one which he had given me.
“So you can not only carry a gun, but you know how to use it.”
“In fact, your Grace,” said I, laughing, “thanks to your noble gift,
I am such a capital shot, that if I had a Prussian or Austrian at the
end of it, I fancy they would pass an uncomfortable quarter of an
hour.”
“You think so?”
“I am certain of it. A Prussian or an Austrian would be bigger than
that pigeon you see there.”
And I pointed to one perched about three hundred paces off, on the
dry branch of a tree.
“You are mad,” said the Prince. “That bird is three times out of
range.”
“Certainly, your Grace, for shot; but not for ball?”
“Your gun is loaded, then, with ball?”
“Yes, your Grace; I seldom use anything else.”
“What are you doing, Henri?” the Prince de Condé said, as he appeared
in view.
“Nothing, father,” replied the Duke; “I am only saying a few words to
this boy here.”
He then bade me farewell, saying that he hoped I would always “think
of him kindly.” And waving his hand, he resumed his seat by his
father’s side, and disappeared.
I stood almost heart-broken on the spot where the Prince addressed
his last words to me.
One would have thought that I had a presentiment of the awful
circumstances under which I should meet him again.
All the towns had organized national guards, after the example of
Paris. Châlons had set the example; St. Menehould had followed it. M.
Drouet was captain. He came to ask Bertrand to be his lieutenant, and
to see how many men he could recruit at Islettes.
It was the report of bandits having been seen about which induced
them to organize the National Guard.
In eight days, all France was armed. Each day the National Assembly
gave audiences to ten couriers. It had at its disposal a million of
men.
Drouet and Bertrand took a stroll in the village of Islettes.
They enrolled twenty men.
The keepers of the Forest of Argonne enlisted themselves and formed
that part of the brigade of which Father Descharmes was chief.
I wished to be one of M. Bertrand’s detachment, consequently in M.
Drouet’s company.
He accompanied me as far as Father Descharmes’ cottage, and asked me
about the visit of the evening before.
He also asked if the Princes had not returned.
“No; because they have gone to Verdun,” said I.
“Why did they not send to hire their horses from my place?”
“Because they preferred to have them from Clermont.”
“Hum!” said M. Jean Baptiste. “Do you know who they were who
accompanied the Duke d’Enghien and the Prince de Condé?”
“I heard them mention M. Vandreul and M. Broglie.”
“Exactly,” said he. “Réné, they come not to inspect Verdun. They have
abandoned the King, and quitted France. They have gone to intrigue
with strangers.”
Then I remembered the sadness of the Duke d’Enghien; and I called
to mind his peculiar look, when I said that an Austrian or Prussian
were easier to shoot than a pigeon. I also remembered his last
words before leaving—“I hope that you will always think of me with
kindness.”
Poor Prince! He had left France, and that was the cause of his sorrow.
“Would that all would follow his example,” murmured M. Drouet, “from
the first to the last! But,” continued he, grinding his teeth, “I
fancy that if the King or Queen were to try that move, they would not
escape so easily.”
CHAPTER IX.
I GO TO MAKE CAPTIVES AND AM TAKEN CAPTIVE MYSELF.
Our National Guard was at first a curious sight.
The first rank were armed with guns; the second with scythes; the
third with clubs, and so on.
Later on, the armorers made some pikes for those who had no guns.
But however the guard was armed, there is no doubt but that it was
filled with enthusiasm.
Not a man, had he received the order, would have hesitated to march
on Paris.
What was most remarkable, with regard to this corps, was the manner
in which the battalions seemed, as it were, to spring from the earth.
Liberty was as yet quite young; and yet she had only to strike with
her foot on the ground, to raise this deadly harvest of men.
It was in the sainted year of 1789 that all France became soldiers.
After the 14th July, every Frenchman was born with teeth ready to
bite a cartridge.
Villages and towns joined in one compact; and that was, to mutually
help each other when necessary.
One day, we saw arrive, by way of Clermont, the people of Verdun;
and, by way of Paris, the people of St. Menehould.
They had heard that a band of robbers had issued from the Forest of
Argonne, set fire to Islettes, and plundered the village.
A hundred men from Clermont, under the command of M. Mathieu, and
two hundred from St. Menehould, under M. Drouet, had therefore set
out, to render what assistance they might in the extermination of the
brigands, of whom they had as yet not seen a trace.
They made merry, therefore, instead of fighting, and in the place of
the rattle of musketry, was heard the more peaceful song.
Eight days afterwards, a man passed on horseback, going from Clermont
to St. Menehould, and crying out, “The brigands are marching on
Varennes! Help! help!”
The man disappeared from view—none knew him. No matter, all leaped
up; the drum beat the rappel; fifty men put themselves under the
direction of Bertrand; and, without inquiring the number of the
enemy, marched to Varennes. Needless to say, I was one of them.
From the height of the hill of Veuvilly, we saw a great cloud of
dust, about half a league ahead of us.
They were the men of Clermont, who, having started about half an hour
before us, were about half a league ahead.
At that sight, all elevated their hats on the ends of their muskets
or pikes, and shouted “Vive la nation!”
That cry had almost completely taken the place of “Vive le Roi!”
We arrived at Varennes, which we expected to find in flames, with the
streets running blood. From the height of the hill, which descends to
the Rue des Réligieuses, we had a good view of the town.
All was quiet.
The people of Clermont, when they first arrived, were taken for the
brigands, whom they were expecting every moment.
When they recognised them, there was a general embracing, and crying
“Vive la nation!”
Then we arrived, in our turn; and two hours afterwards, the men of
Montfalcon, De Bousance, and De Vouziez. The latter had marched eight
leagues in five hours.
They bivouacked in the Place de Latry, and the Place de Grand
Monarque.
They then laid out tables for a public repast, where, after an
ancient custom, each one chose his companions, and found his own
dinner.
I had one visit to pay in Varennes—a place to which I seldom came,
and where I only knew two persons, M. Guillaume and M. Billaud.
I remembered me of one of the two master workmen who had priced my
carpentry work for M. Drouet; and who said that if I had no work to
do, and would accept it of him, he could always find me plenty.
His name was Father Gerbaut.
I asked his address. He lived in the Rue de la Basse Cour. The houses
were not numbered at that period. On the left, descending to the
Place Latry, next door to a large grocer’s, his house was situated.
I called. He was out; but expected home every moment.
I was received by his daughter, a charming girl, a little younger
than myself—that is to say, about sixteen or seventeen years of age.
She asked me to wait till her father returned, or to give her my name
if I feared becoming weary of staying with her.
Of course, I rejected with scorn the idea that any one could become
wearied in the presence of one so gracious and charming.
It was the first time in my life that I had ever addressed a
compliment to a female.
Indeed, it was the first time that I had been in conversation with a
girl at all.
Up to this time, I had scarcely given women a moment’s consideration.
Directly I told my name to the young girl, her face, which had before
been amiable, brightened into a look of friendship.
“I know you,” said she; “you worked for M. Drouet; my father has
mentioned you to his workmen, more than once, as an example to be
followed. Do stay; he will be glad to see you.”
On looking around me, I perceived a harpsichord.
“You are a musician, I perceive, mademoiselle.”
“Oh, Monsieur Réné, you must not call me that. The organist of St.
Gengoulf has given me a few lessons; and, as he says I have some
voice, I practise singing to amuse myself.”
“Mademoiselle,” said I, “can you believe that I have never heard the
sound of a harpsichord, or any song, but that of the washerwomen,
as they beat their linen? Will you sing something for me as well as
yourself, and I shall be completely happy?”
“With the greatest pleasure,” she replied.
And rising up, she crossed over to the harpsichord; and, after a
simple prelude, she sang—
“How sad to me the day
When thou art far away!”
Every one knows that pretty romance, the “Devin de Village.”
But it had never seemed so charming to me as when issuing from the
lips of my pretty songstress.
Mademoiselle Gerbaut had sang very simply, but with that coquetry
so natural to women. Her face was variable; and as she sang without
accompaniment, leaning slightly back in her chair, her half-closed
eyes gave a somewhat sentimental expression to the rest of her face.
Her mouth was beautifully formed, she spoke almost without any
perceptible movement of the lips, and you saw, at the first glance,
that what she said was neither artificial nor constrained.
I was delighted with her. I said nothing, but my looks spoke more
than words could have done.
“Mademoiselle,” said I, not being able, in my enthusiasm, to think of
anything else, “have you read ‘Emile?’”
“No, monsieur,” she replied; “but my mother has read it, and that is
why I am named Sophie.”
“You are named Sophie!” cried I, seizing her hand, and pressing it to
my heart; “now I am completely happy!”
She looked at me with an astonished smile.
“And why are you so happy because my name is Sophie?” said she.
“Because now I can look upon you as a sister more than a stranger.
Oh, Sophie—dear Sophie!”
Sophie regarded me with a more astonished expression of face than
ever; and I know not what she might have said, had not M. Gerbaut
made his appearance at that moment.
“Ah! is that you, Réné?” said he; “you are, indeed, welcome. I asked
the news from your friends on the Place there, and when they told me
that you were at Varennes, I knew you would not go without calling to
see me.”
“Yes, M. Gerbaut,” I answered, going up to him, and shaking his hand;
“but I did not expect to find what I have found.”
“And, pray, what have you found?”
“Mademoiselle Sophie, who has been kind enough to sing me an air from
the ‘Devin de Village de M. Rousseau.’”
“Ah, indeed! She did not require much persuasion, did she?”
“Only great men, or great fools, require to be asked twice,” said
Sophie, laughing; “and as I am not a genius or a ——-”
Here she paused, while a sweet smile played over her lips.
“Fool,” continued M. Gerbaut, “you sang to him.”
“Did I do wrong, father?”
“Certainly not. As long as you sing to your equals, and without
affectation, well and good. You know what I mean?”
Sophie bent her eyes, blushing.
“We must change our quarters, I think,” said Father Gerbaut, half
smiling, half serious.
“Wherefore?” said I, breaking into the conversation.
“Because we are just opposite to the ‘Hotel de Bras d’Or,’ where
many handsome young gentlemen put up, and who are fond of music as a
vehicle for making love.”
“Oh, father!” murmured Sophie; “say not so!”
“What would you have?” cried M. Gerbaut. “They are no friends of mine
who would bring trouble into peaceful families. When I understood
that the princes and great lords had left the country, I had hoped
that these gentlemen would have gone in their train. But no; they
stay to make love to our wives and daughters, and to conspire against
the nation. But this is not the time to speak of that. This is a
_fête_ day for Varennes. I must pay a visit to the cellar and larder.
After dinner we will have a dance. Will you be Sophie’s partner?”
said M. Gerbaut to me.
“I should be only too happy,” cried I; “but perhaps Mdlle. Sophie
does not think a young apprentice worthy of offering her his arm?”
“Oh, M. Réné!” said the young girl; “you listen to my father, and
then do me a grievous wrong, without any foundation for it.”
Sophie and myself bounded down the staircase, and in a moment found
ourselves under a bright sun in the street, as I could not help
thinking, like two butterflies emerged from a chrysalis state.
Whilst I had been waiting at M. Gerbaut’s, and whilst I had been
listening to Sophie’s song, the streets of Varennes had undergone a
great change.
The city was holding high holiday, with which, however, was mingled a
certain degree of solemnity.
All the houses were hung with tapestry; and outside the doors tables
were laid, covered with flowers, at which the inhabitants of the
houses were seated, eating, waited upon by their servants, if they
had any; if not, by themselves.
As if they wished that the dead should participate in the joy of the
living, garlands of green boughs, intermingled with flowers, were
suspended from the gates of the cemetery, which stretched from the
church to the side of the Rue de l’Horloge. In the middle of the
Place was erected a scaffolding, filled with amateur musicians, who
wished to promote a dance after dinner. On the front of this temple
of Terpsichore was written “Vive le Roi! Vive la nation!” Underneath
this, in large letters, was inscribed the word “Fraternité!”
It was, in fact a brotherly rejoicing. Those who there met for the
first time were members of one great family, which had existed for
centuries, only it ignored the tie which bound one to the other.
But common danger had caused to meet the two ends of the thread, and
in their union they found force.
After passing the houses leading to the Place Latry, we arrived at
the open space in front of the Rue de l’Horloge, and entered into the
midst of the crowd.
There seemed to be collected all the inhabitants of the High Town.
In each street the tables were arranged on the right and left side of
the houses; a space in the middle being left for the promenaders. The
Rue des Réligieuses, which runs down from the foot of the hill, made
a most perfect and picturesque view.
We got mixed up with a lot of other persons, when all of a sudden a
crowd of horsemen—young gentlemen, apparently—appeared on the crest
of the hill, and, putting their horses at full gallop, dashed into
the Rue des Réligieuses. There was a general cry of “Each one for
himself!” and we turned to fly; but as we had been in front before,
we now naturally found ourselves in the rear.
Thinking but of Sophie, I wished to put her under one of the tables,
to be out of the way of danger; but curious to relate, she did not
seem to know the peril she was in, and would not stir till it was too
late; and I had just time to clasp her in my arms, and throw myself
in front of her.
I had scarcely accomplished this, than, on turning round, I
discovered myself face to face with a horseman, whose steed was
perfectly unmanageable, and turned round and round, threatening us
with his hoofs as he did so.
I had but one hope, and that was to preserve Sophie. I caught hold of
the horse’s bridle, the cavalier raised his whip, the horse gave a
plunge, and, whether through accident or intention, the blow, instead
of falling on the horse, struck me on the shoulder.
The shame of being struck, more than the pain of the blow, caused the
blood to rise to my head. I seized the horseman by his waist, lifted
him from the saddle, the horse bolting away at the moment, upsetting
a woman and two or three children in its wild career, and fell
with him on the pavement; but, being the more vigorous, I was the
uppermost, and soon had him at my mercy, with my knee on his breast.
It was only when his hat fell from his head, that I recognised who my
adversary was.
“M. de Malmy!” cried I.
And taking my knee from his breast, and releasing his arms, I stood a
little on one side.
“Ah, wretch!” cried he regaining his whip. “Do you know what is the
penalty for laying hands on a gentleman?”
“M. le Viscount!” cried Sophie, pale with terror, placing herself, at
the same time, between us.
He smiled a grim smile, grinding his teeth as he did so.
“I am determined, mademoiselle. Had he been a gentleman, I would
chastise him with a sword; but as he is not, I shall punish him with
this whip.”
He raised it.
I looked for something with which to defend myself. At that moment, a
man sprang over one of the tables, seized the Marquis with one hand,
and possessed himself of the whip with the other.
“Monsieur,” said he, “whips were made for horses and dogs. Réné
Besson is a man.”
“A man?” repeated the Viscount, furiously.
“Yes, a man; and one whom you may not insult.”
“Who are you?” asked the Viscount.
“You know me very well, M. de Malmy; but as you ask, I will tell you.
I am Jean Baptiste Drouet, postmaster at St. Menehould. I am not of
noble birth, I know full well; but for six years have I served my
country as a soldier, and that is better than a gentleman who spends
his life in eating, drinking, and hunting. This I say for the benefit
of you and your friends, and if you want me, you know where to find
me.”
Saying these words, Drouet pushed De Malmy aside, and turned to
confront two or three other young gentlemen, who, having dismounted,
had come to join in the quarrel.
“When we change horses at your post-house, M. Drouet,” said one
of these young men, “we do not generally approach, but send our
domestics to bear our orders to you.”
“I would much rather deal with your servants than with you, M. de
Courtement. They, at least, have not sold their wives or daughters in
the Parc au Cerfs.”
The young noble took this as a sarcasm on his birth, with regard to
which infamous reports had been bruited about.
He had a hunting-knife in his belt, and suddenly drew it, maddened
with anger.
But before the knife could do any mischief, Drouet drew a pistol from
his pocket, and presented it full in the face of the Chevalier.
“Monsieur,” said he, “I could shoot you like I would a wild beast;
and two hundred people would bear witness that you offered the first
insult; but the time has not yet come when all shall have their dues.
So go your way in peace, and let the matter stand as it is.”
“Oh, without doubt, that proceeding would suit you wonderfully well,”
said M. de Malmy; “but, for the sake of an example, I must proceed
otherwise.”
Raising his whip, he advanced on M. Drouet, who, making a spring to
one side, jumped on a table, and cried out, in a powerful tone of
voice, “Help! To my assistance, men of St. Menehould!”
A hundred voices responded to the cry; a crowd rushed to where we
were; and in a moment, the five or six gentlemen were completely in
our power.
Each had seized the arms that came nearest to hand—one a pike,
another a musket; thus showing by their alacrity, their wish to be of
service to their commander. They were informed of the origin of the
dispute, and wished nothing better than to fan up the embers of the
old quarrel between the nobles and the people.
The young gentlemen saw that it was useless to attempt resistance.
“Murder us!” cried the Viscount; “even as your friends at Paris have
murdered De Launay, Foulon, and Berthier.”
“Our friends, as you call them, in Paris, disgraced themselves by
laying hands on men who were scarcely good enough to die by the
hands of the common executioner. But what would you have? The people
have cried for justice, and it has been denied them. Is it, then,
wonderful that they should take the law in their own hands when the
opportunity presented? But as for you, gentlemen, as you are not
gaolers, like De Launay, or extortioners, like Foulon and Berthier,
you have not merited death, but simply a little lesson, which I shall
have great pleasure in giving you.”
“Give a lesson to us?” cried the young men, mad with rage.
“Yes; but it shall not be harsh or spiteful. This is a day of
brotherly fraternity. Are you our brothers? Will you share in our
_fête_? Forget the hard words that have passed between us; or, if you
cannot, put them down to the account of that goddess who is aptly
called Discord. The tables await you. Sit down among us, and we will
give you the place of honor; and the first one who forgets to pay the
respect which is due to you, shall be chased from the midst of us, as
one unworthy of participating in our reunion. Do you agree with me?”
cried Drouet to all who were around.
“Yes! yes!” replied all, with one voice, with the exception of the
young nobles, who still continued silent.
“What if we refuse?” at last said one of them.
“If you refuse,” said Drouet, “go to the ‘Bras d’Or,’ or the ‘Grand
Monarque;’ eat and drink as you like—you are free; but disturb not
our enjoyment. Am I not right, my friends?” continued Drouet, for the
second time addressing the crowd.
The applause was as loud as before.
“And if we do not promise to leave you in quiet enjoyment of your
_fête_—what then?” asked another of the young nobles.
“As, by that act, you will prove that you are not good citizens, and
that you are desirous of breaking the public peace, we shall ask you
to leave the town quietly; and; if you refuse, we will expel you by
force.”
“Bravo! bravo!” cried all.
M. de Malmy interrogated his companions with his eyes; and as he
saw the same expression in all theirs, “Messieurs,” said he, “I
regret that, in the name of my friend and myself, I must refuse
the great honor that you offer us. I regret, also, that we cannot
pledge our word not to interrupt the _fête_, as we are not sufficient
philosophers to avoid breaking our promise; so—as we have no further
business to detain us in town—we ask your permission to make our most
respectful adieu, and to go and seek our pleasure elsewhere.”
“As you wish, M. le Viscount,” said M. Drouet. “You are free to go.”
Then, assuming the tone of command which sat so well on him, he said,
“Allow these gentlemen to pass, and preserve complete silence; the
one who passes a remark, will have to answer for it to me.”
Not a sound could be heard.
In the midst of this oppressive silence, the young nobles remounted
their horses, and returned by the way that they had arrived.
No word was spoken, no movement made; but the people followed the
little party with their eyes until they finally disappeared from view
on turning into the road leading to Clermont.
Then a voice was heard, calm, but commanding in its tones. It was
Drouet’s.
“Lieutenant Bertrand,” said he, “place sentinels at the gates and
see that the young nobles do not re-enter the town, during the
continuance of the _fête_.”
Then, turning to the crowd, “Am I not right, my friends?” said he.
“Vive M. Drouet! Vive la nation!” cried the people, with one voice.
A few cries of “Down with the nobles!” were heard, but they had no
response. In fact, Drouet turned to whence those cries proceeded, and
made a gesture of disapprobation.
The _fête_ then continued as happily as if nothing had happened.
CHAPTER X.
TOUCHING MADEMOISELLE SOPHIE.
I have said how much my encounter with De Malmy seemed to affect my
companion, but that might have been accounted for in three ways.
First, her fear for herself; second, her fear for me; and lastly,
perhaps, her fear for my adversary.
I had not forgotten what Father Gerbaut had said with regard to his
daughter’s looking higher than her position warranted, and to the
attention which she drew from the young gentlemen who put up at the
“Bras d’Or,” some of whom were, no doubt, those with whom we had been
in contest.
I had naturally followed, with my eyes, the little cavalcade, until
it finally disappeared.
On withdrawing my looks from it, I perceived that Sophie was half
fainting. I offered her my arm, which she took, trembling at the same
time all over.
“Oh, M. Réné,” said she, “I was so frightened! How glad I am that it
ended as it did!”
For whom was she frightened? and for whose sake was she so glad that
all was over?
Was it for our sakes, or for that of the young lords?
I did not like to ask her.
M. Drouet walked along the Place with us. We passed under the arch,
and entered the Rue de la Basse Cour. Billaud lived some distance
away, and Guillaume almost in the country; so those three young men
went to the “Hotel du Bras d’Or,” and although the brothers Leblanc
wished to give them a dinner for nothing, they insisted on paying for
everything that they had.
The table at which they dined was on the other side of the street,
just opposite to ours.
The clock of St. Gengoulf gave the signal for dinner.
The two first toasts proposed were “The King!” and “The nation!” They
then drank another “To the health of those who, believing them to be
in danger, had flown to their succor.”
Sophie ate but little, in spite of my remonstrances. Now and then,
her father broke out into violent abuse against the young nobles, and
I saw the tears trembling on her eyelashes every time that he did so.
We crossed the bridge thrown over the River Aire. Two streams of
promenaders were continually passing—the one set mounting up, the
other coming down. The Place du Grand Monarque was splendidly
illuminated. The tables were not in any one’s way, being, for the
most part, piled in front of the door of the church.
The Place du Grand Monarque being smoother and better paved than the
Place Latry and, besides, not having the dispiriting influence of a
cemetery, was chosen for the ball room.
The signal for the dance was given by a joyous peal from the church
bells, to which violins and clarionets replied, and a quadrille was
speedily formed.
My partner took my arm for the second dance, but suddenly complaining
of illness, she implored me to take her home.
I was not an experienced dancer, but under Sophie’s tuition I got on
so well, that I tried all I could to dissuade her from retiring; but
she said, with a sad smile, “Do not ask me to remain, Réné,” and so I
was obliged to comply with her request.
I gave her my arm, and we retraced our steps to the house.
M. Gerbaut had heard all about the fracas in the Rue des Réligieuses,
and was very well pleased that we had given the young gentlemen a
lesson.
Sophie, who had her arm in mine, heard all that he said to me, with
downcast eyes, and gave no sign of approbation or otherwise, but I
felt her shudder under her father’s words.
As I was leaving, “Mademoiselle,” said I, “I go back to-morrow, with
my friends, probably before you awake; so permit me to say good-bye
this evening, and to tell you before M. Gerbaut, what pleasure I feel
in having made your acquaintance.”
“And I, M. Réné,” said she, “like you as a friend, and am well
disposed to love you as a brother.”
“Very well, my children,” said Father Gerbaut, “embrace each other
and say good-bye.”
Sophie turned to me both cheeks, which I kissed with a feeling of
ineffable pleasure.
She then retired to her own room; I followed her with my eyes to the
door, when she turned, and gave me a parting glance, and a parting
smile.
“She is a good girl, after all,” said her father.
“A good girl, M. Gerbaut? Say, rather, an angel!”
“Angels are not so common as all that, my boy. But,” continued he,
leading me along the corridor, and opening a door, “here is your
room, not only for to-night, but for ever, if you will enter into my
service. You shall have board and lodging, and twenty-five crowns a
month. Do you hear me?”
I shook him by the hand, and thanked him for his kindness. He then
wished me to come down stairs again, to drink a glass to the health
of the nation. But I pleaded fatigue, and want of sleep, and entered
my chamber.
The real reason why I did not comply with his offer, was that I
wished to be alone.
I shut the door, for I was afraid that any one might come and look
for me. But there was no fear of that. Every one was so busy enjoying
himself, that they had no time to think of aught else.
I threw myself on the bed, and thought of Sophie.
M. Drouet had given me a sincere liking for intellectual existence,
but Sophie awakened in me another kind of existence, that of love;
and I felt, for the first time, that indescribable, but pleasurable
sensation, which predicts the dawning of that passion.
A new future opened before me. This was the scene. A happy, though,
perhaps, a humble home, with a careful and a beloved wife. I could
see myself, at set of sun, walking by the river’s side, her heart
beating against mine. I could fancy delaying under the tall trees,
to hear the blackbird’s song. In a word, this dream of the future
was that twofold life which, till then, had never engaged my boyish
thoughts. Now, I seemed to have taken one step into this fairyland;
and, although I trembled still, I would fain go on.
What, then, prevented me, I asked myself, from making this dream a
reality? Why did I not at once close with M. Gerbaut’s offer? It was
because my heart misgave me. I thought of Sophie’s evident leaning
towards men of a higher class; I reflected that, to her, I must be a
mere boy. And I groaned in spirit that I was not half a dozen years
older.
At daybreak, the reveillé was beaten. My comrade had passed the night
on the Place and in the streets, dancing and drinking. I jumped from
my couch, and, having hastily dressed myself, crept on tip-toe to the
door of Sophie’s chamber, wishing to say adieu, even if only through
the key-hole.
I had trodden as lightly as possible, scarcely hearing my own
footsteps; and how great was my astonishment on seeing the door open
a little way, and a hand put out.
It was easy to see, through the crevice from which the hand was
protruded, that Sophie had not retired to rest at all; or, if she
had, that she had not undressed herself.
I seized the hand, and pressed it to my lips.
She withdrew it, leaving, at the same time, a little billet in mine,
and quickly closed the door.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. I approached a window, and, by the
light of early dawn, read these words:—
“I have no friends, Réné. Be one to me. I am very unhappy!”
I pressed, with one hand, the billet to my heart, and, with the other
extended towards her chamber, I swore to accept and prove myself
worthy of the friendship so mysteriously offered.
Then, perceiving that all was quiet in her room, I went down stairs,
took my gun, and, throwing one parting glance at her window, passed
into the street.
The curtain drew back, giving me a glimpse of her face. She nodded,
throwing me a sad smile, and the curtain was replaced before the
window.
Small as the time was that I had for observation, I could not help
thinking that her eyes were reddened with weeping.
There was nothing wonderful in that. Had she not told me, in her
letter, that she was very unhappy?
There was a mystery, which, no doubt, thought I, time will clear up.
I walked rapidly down the street, in the direction of the Place,
knowing that, if I did not make a vigorous effort, I should never be
able to tear myself away from the vicinity of the house.
The men of Clermont, D’Islettes, and St. Menehould—in fact, all who
followed the same route—were collected in one group. They drank one
last toast, shook hands for the last time, and separated.
Father Gerbaut conducted us as far as the top of the Hill des
Réligieuses, and there renewed the offers that he had previously made
to me.
I reached Father Descharmes’ cottage, and, for the first time, found
it lonely, and my room wretched.
On the morrow, I re-commenced my usual routine of life; and though I
had the same wish to make progress in my studies, still there was a
dreary blank in my heart, which they could not fill.
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT “BROTHERHOOD” MEANT.
I have told you all that took place up to this time.
My life continued the same as ever, with the exception of a dreary
feeling about the heart.
The events that took place in Paris had no direct effect upon me. I
heard them as one might hear the echo of a distant thunder-clap.
In this way we heard of the abolition of titles, on the 1st of
August; of the suppression of tithes; of the recognition of
religious liberty; of the orgie of the gardes du corps; of the
insult offered to the national cockade; of the days of the 5th and
6th of October; of the return of the King and Queen to Paris; of the
plots and intrigues of the Court; of the prosecution of Bezenval and
Favras; and of the publication of the Red Book by the assembly.
The Red Book revealed all.
The King, who had, on the 12th of February, sworn friendship to the
Constitution, not only was in direct correspondence with the exiles,
but went to Trêves, a military post, where his stables were situated,
and which was in charge of Prince Lambese, the very man who had
charged on the people in the garden of the Tuileries, on the 12th of
July, and wounded an old man with his sabre, and trodden the helpless
under foot.
The same kind of thing went on at Versailles. The King had a Minister
of Foreign Affairs; uniforms were made for the gardes du corps, and
sent to Trêves; horses were bought in England for the accommodation
of the King’s household; and the only grumble that Louis XVI made,
when he paid the bills, was, that, at least, they might have bought
the horses in France.
The Comte D’Artois, the Prince Condé, and the other exiles, received
enormous pensions.
They had not then been able to find what became of the sixty millions.
But now the Red Book pointed out where they had gone.
If, up to this moment, there had been any hesitation on the minds of
the people, that hesitation now disappeared.
They knew where was their enemy.
The enemy was the exiles, and their ally, the King, who pensioned
them.
This was the reason why the Assembly struck a decisive blow, and put
up for sale, at one time, ecclesiastical benefices to the tune of
four hundred millions. Paris alone bought two hundred millions’ worth.
All the municipalities followed that example. They bought a great
number, and then sold them, one by one. In a word, they wished to
expropriate the clergy, and they did not hesitate to do it.
There is something miraculous in this, and which does not appear in
the history of any other country.
And that is, the spontaneous organization of France by itself. The
Assembly was only a secretary. France did the deed; the Assembly
registered it.
Before that, the division of old France into provinces was abolished;
the boundaries had been already changed; there were no longer
Provençals, Bretons, Alsaciens, Picards, or French.
The Champ de Mars was Mount Tabor, transfigured by the sun of June.
Valence gave, on the 29th of November, 1789, the example of the
first federation; and each strove to follow the example given by the
zealous Dauphin, our vanguard against the great enemy, the Savoyard
King.
From anterior ages, the eldest man has always presided, whether noble
or not. His age makes his right—his white locks his crown.
Rouen searched for an old Chevalier of Malta, eighty-five years of
age, to preside at its federation.
In St. Audeol, there were two old men, respectively ninety-three
and ninety-four years of age, the one a noble, and the other a
plebeian—the one a colonel, the other a laborer. These two embraced
at the altar, and the spectators embraced each other, crying, “There
is no longer an aristocracy, no longer a working-class—there are only
Frenchmen!”
At Lous le Lauheur, a citizen, whose name is forgotten, gave this
toast:—
“To all men, equally to our enemies: let us swear to love and protect
them.”
Open the book of royalty, and see if you can find a sentiment equal
to that inscribed on the first page of the book of the people.
From all places, provincial and isolated, one cry arose:— “To Paris!
To Paris! To Paris!”
As this cry burst from the throat of France, Royalists and Jacobins
trembled. The Jacobins said, “The King, with his smile, and the
Queen, with her white lips, will fascinate the credulous people
from the provinces, and will cause them to turn against us, and the
revolution will be at an end.”
The Royalists said, “To bring these provincials, already ripe for
tumult, to Paris, the centre of agitation, is but bringing oil to
feed the lamp of revolution. Who can say what will be the effect of
this immense concourse, and what fearful events may come to pass
through the incursions of two hundred and fifty thousand souls, from
all quarters of France, into Paris?”
But the impulse was given, and the movement could not be stayed.
France wished, with that powerful will which nothing could arrest, to
know itself.
The corporation of Paris demanded of the Assembly the general
federation.
The Assembly, pretending to accord to their wish, named the 14th of
July, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille.
The news was propagated among all the provinces of the kingdom; but
as they feared so great an assemblage in Paris, and wished to put all
possible obstacles in their way, all expenses were put down to the
charge of the localities.
All our department clubbed together. I was comparatively rich, having
in my possession three or four hundred crowns, gained by my own
labor, and saved by my own economy.
Father Descharmes had offered to give me what sum I wanted; but I
refused to accept anything.
For some time, the poor old man had been declining in health. He had
served princes all his life, and now missed them. One thing greatly
perplexed him, and that was, whether France had the right to act as
it was acting?
They had offered him a deputyship to the federation; but he shook his
head, saying, “I am too old; Réné will go in my place.”
Afterwards, he had a long conversation with M. Drouet, in the course
of which he gave him some papers, which he sorted with care, put in
his portfolio, and took to St. Menehould.
On the eve of departure, a carriage drove up to the door of my
uncle’s cottage; and, to my astonishment, I saw Sophie and her father
alight from it.
I rushed out with a cry of joy, but suddenly stopped myself.
What would Sophie—what would her father think?
Father Gerbaut smiled. Sophie made a step in advance, and gave me her
hand.
“Well, how is old Nimrod getting on?” said Father Gerbaut to my
uncle, who had just come out of his room.
“As well as can be expected at my age, M. Gerbaut. It is necessary
for the violet to blossom in spring, and the beech-tree to put forth
its buds in May. He is just sixteen and a half years old. When I was
at that age, I already had a sweetheart.”
I felt myself blushing to the very tips of my ears.
“Ah! I never had but one love. But where are you going to in this
fashion?” asked my uncle; “for I cannot think that you came all this
way on purpose to pay me a visit.”
“No, my old friend; though I am delighted to see you. I am on my way
to St. Menehould, to put a few little affairs of mine in order. I
have been appointed a member of the Federation, and I do not know how
long we may be compelled to stay in Paris.”
“What a pity that you have not got a third seat in your carriage. I
also have business at St. Menehould, and I would have asked you to
give me a lift.”
“Good!” said M. Gerbaut; “all can be arranged. Sophie does not much
care to go to St. Menehould. Do you, Sophie?”
“I only care to go, so as to be with you, father.”
“Well, then, stay here with Réné. You can stroll, in the wood, like
two lovers, and we, like two old fogies as we are, will go and look
after our affairs. If Réné were a young nobleman, I should not place
so much trust in him; but he is a good lad, a clever workman, and an
honest man, and as I would trust him with a purse, so will I trust
him with my child.”
I looked joyfully at Sophie, but she showed neither pleasure nor
sorrow; she seemed to be exactly of her father’s opinion, that we
might be trusted together.
M. Gerbaut and Father Descharmes got into the vehicle, and drove off
in the direction of the village of Islettes.
CHAPTER XII.
WHAT PASSED IN THE FOREST.
For some time I followed the carriage with my eyes, for I feared to
look at Sophie, as I could not help thinking that the expression of
her face would decide my future happiness or misery.
After a time I made up my mind; I turned round.
Sophie had a smile on her lips, but it seemed as if the rest of her
face was overshadowed with sadness.
I offered her my arm, which she took.
“What would you like to do?” I asked her. “Would you rather stay
here, or take a stroll in the wood?”
“Take me under the shadow of yon great trees, M. Réné. In my little
chamber at Varennes I stifle for want of air.”
“It is singular, Mdlle. Sophie, that I always believed that you
preferred the town to the country.”
“I prefer nothing. I live, that is all.”
She heaved a sigh.
The conversation fell.
I threw a side glance at Sophie. She appeared fatigued and in pain.
“You look pale,” said I; “and although you do not prefer the country
to the town, I fancy it does you more good.”
She shrugged her shoulders, by way of reply.
“Perhaps,” said she.
I turned towards my uncle’s cottage, all covered with ivy and
creepers, surrounded by flowers and shadowed by the branches of
chestnuts and beech-trees.
It was beautiful, seen half in light and half in shadow. A cat was
sleeping comfortably on the window-sill; two dogs were playing in
front of the door; and a black-headed linnet was singing in its cage.
It was a beautiful picture of contented country life.
“Look, Mdlle. Sophie,” said I drawing her attention to the scene.
“Would a little place like that, with a man who had the honor of
being beloved by you, suffice for your ambition?”
“Who told you that I had ambition, Réné?”
“I ask you, do you think that you could be happy under those
circumstances?”
She looked at me.
“You see, then, that I am now miserable?”
“You told me so in a letter, when I was staying at Varennes, eight
months ago.”
“And have you not forgotten what I wrote to you so long as eight
months ago?”
I drew a little portfolio from my pocket, and out of it I took a
little scrap of paper, on which was written, in her hand—
“I have no friend, Réné; will you be one? I am very unhappy.”
“If the paper is a little crumpled,” said I, “it is because a day has
never passed without my reading it.”
“Then how is it that I have never seen you since that morning, Réné?”
“For what purpose? Since you wrote to me you cannot have doubted me.”
“You have a good heart, Réné, and I did not wish to see you to get
that opinion from you.”
“That is well. If you had had need of me, you had but to write, and
I should have been with you in a moment. At first, day after day, I
hoped for a letter. Oh, if I had received one!—had it been only the
one word ‘Come!’—with what joy would I have flown to your side! But
such happiness was not for me. Days, weeks, months passed away, and
I remained alone with my sorrow, without ever being called away to
offer you a consolation.”
She looked at me with an expression of affectionate tenderness.
“Ah, Réné, I should have liked to have seen you; but not hearing from
you, I thought that you had forgotten me.”
“Oh, Mdlle. Sophie!” I cried; “I am not sufficiently happy or unhappy
for that.”
“In truth, my dear Réné,” said she, trying to smile, “you have quite
the air of a hero of romance.”
“As I have never read a romance, I scarcely know what that is.”
“A hero of romance, Réné,” said Sophie, smiling at the experimental
lesson in literature she was trying to give me, “is a man who loves
without hope.”
“That is good. Then am I a hero of romance. By the bye, what are
these heroes supposed to do?”
“Everything impossible, in order to touch the heart of the woman they
vainly love.”
“Then I am ready to do so; but, if commanded by you, I should know
not impossibility.”
“Do not put your life in danger, Réné,” said Sophie. “Sighing for
that would not benefit either of us.”
Now it was her turn to stop, and, having turned the corner of the
road, she pointed out to me my uncle’s house under a different
aspect, but still how beautiful!
“You just now asked me, Réné, if that house, in company with a man
whom I loved, would not satisfy my ambition? Well, Réné, in my turn,
I adjure you, in the name of that friendship that I have avowed
towards you, wish for nothing more than that calm and peaceful
existence that Providence has placed in your way. Follow the example
of your uncle, who, for eighty years, has lived in peace with himself
and with all mankind, without seeking to better his condition, and
without ever wishing for a larger house, or a greater extent of
land. In fact, this forest before us—is it not his? Do not its trees
give him shelter? Do not the birds which inhabit it sing for his
gratification, and do not the animals that make it their home serve
for his food? In name, it belongs to the King; but, in reality, it is
his. Réné, find a woman who loves you; that, I am sure, will not be
difficult. My father tells me that you are one of the best carpenters
that he knows. Ask the consent of your uncle—he will not refuse it;
and live, as he has done, on the little spot where the happiest years
of your life have passed away.”
In my turn, I shook my head.
“You will not?” said Sophie. “What, then, do you intend to do?”
“Mademoiselle Sophie,” said I, “I purpose being a man.”
“Has not your uncle been also a man, Réné?”
“Yes; but a man useless to his country. The times in which he lived,
and the times in which we live, are different. The tranquillity which
existed in his generation is not permitted in this.”
“You are ambitious, Réné?” asked Sophie.
“It is not ambition, mademoiselle; it is obedience to the designs of
heaven. There are times when every man, great or small, carries his
mission in himself. What, then? He must keep that mission till it is
fulfilled. Who knows but that even I, insignificant as I am, have
one? You have already drawn me from the crowd of my equals, because
you condescended to take my arm. It was not all that I could have
wished. Oh, Sophie, I ask you, here, under the shelter of these great
trees, the most sacred temple that I know of, will you promise to be
mine? Will you give me all the love that you can, and the happiest
day of my life will be that on which I can prove my devotion to you!
Oh, Sophie, give me hope!”
“I believe you, Réné; in fact, from the first moment I saw you, I
never doubted you. Ah! why were you not always with me, to support me
with your arm when I stumbled, and with your heart when I doubted? I
have called on you many times, Réné.”
“Can this be true, Mademoiselle Sophie?” cried I, filled with joy.
“Yes,” said she, “but do not misunderstand me. I do not love you. I
never shall love you, Réné,” continued she, looking me full in the
face. “I feel instinctively that I have need of your friendship. Why
I should implore it, how it can be useful to me, I know not; but
still I feel sure I shall have recourse to it some day; and if you
are away from me, Réné, on that day, whose help shall I implore? If
you are near to me, I can rely on you; can I not? Again I say to you,
as I wrote once before, I am truly unhappy.”
She took her arm from mine, hid her face in her hand, and I could see
by the heaving of her bosom that she was weeping.
“Mademoiselle Sophie!” said I.
“Leave me, my friend—leave me. I do not like to weep before you, and
I feel that I must weep.”
And, with one hand, she made me a sign to go.
I obeyed.
She sat down by the side of a little brook, which fell into the
Brésme, and taking off her hat, which she placed by her side, began
to pluck flowers, and throw them into the water.
Sixty years have passed since that day, and I fancy that I can still
see the poor child with her golden hair floating in the breeze, the
tears coursing down her cheeks, throwing the flowers into the current
of the Brésme, which would carry them to the Aisne, the Aisne to the
Oise, the Oise to the Seine, and the Seine to the sea.
After about an hour had passed, she got up silently, came towards me,
and smilingly took my arm.
We retraced our steps to my uncle’s house.
We had scarcely arrived, when we heard the sound of wheels. It was
Father Gerbaut’s carriage.
Sophie, who had not spoken one word all the way home, seized my hand.
“Réné,” she said, “do not forget that you have given me your word; I
trust you.”
“Mademoiselle Sophie,” said I, pressing her hand to my heart, “one
call alone can be stronger than yours—that of my country.”
M. Gerbaut stayed about an hour to rest his horse, and then, with
Sophie, mounted into his vehicle.
The poor girl waved her hand. Father Gerbaut cried “Farewell!” and
the carriage disappeared behind a clump of trees, which hid the road
to Meuvilly.
I returned to where Sophie had been sitting down; I picked up the
flowers she had let fall, and placed them in my little portfolio,
together with the letter which she had written to me at Varennes, and
in which she had poured forth all her soul.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PEOPLE IN COUNCIL.
On the morrow, the ninth of July, ’90, we were _en route_ at
daybreak, drums beating in front of us, to assist in the celebration
of the grand fête of the general federation.
Father Descharmes embraced me, with an expression of sorrow which
wounded me to the heart.
“Perhaps you youngsters are in the right,” said he, “and we old men
are in the wrong. But what will you, my child. One cannot give up in
two days the creed of sixty years.”
“I know not what may come of all this, but I hope that my eyes will
be closed in death before it does come.”
“But uncle,” said I, “although it would be a great treat to me to go
to Paris and see the fête, still, if you wish it, I will not go.”
“No, my boy, go; and heaven grant that I may live to see your return,
and that we may meet again in this world.”
I embraced him as I wept, for I loved him dearly.
Had he not fed and clothed me and brought me up, and watched the
infant become, under his roof a man?
“Bring my arm-chair to the door,” said he; “I do not wish to lose the
last glimpse of the setting sun.”
I obeyed. Leaning on my shoulder he reached the door, and sitting
down in the chair, took my hand, and kissed me, saying “Go!”
I departed, returning in time to see this good old servitor of
royalty die. With kingcraft he suffered, and with its death he died.
When I lost sight of him, it seemed as if I had left him for ever,
and I felt half inclined to return at once, never to leave him; but
the temptation of seeing Paris was too much for me, and in another
moment we were in sight of the houses of Islettes.
A surprise awaited me there.
The inhabitants, not wishing to be separated from their Curé, had put
him into a little carriage drawn by a horse, and the good priest, his
eyes overflowing with tears, was bidding farewell to Mademoiselle
Marguerite, who wept on the steps in front of the door of the
Presbytery.
In those days, a journey of forty leagues was no small matter, and
the poor girl believed that the good Abbé Fortin had departed for
ever.
We continued our route, the drums beating, and the carriage rolling
ahead of us. Some of our party pressed on in front, to form an escort
of honor for the worthy priest.
We found M. Drouet awaiting us at the head of the deputation, on the
Place of St. Menehould.
Amongst the deputation, was an old soldier of the Seven Years War,
who had served under Marshal Saxe, and who was present at the battle
of Fontenoy; and a sailor, who was in active service at the time of
the birth of the Bailli de Suffren. Both, living ruins of an ancient
regime, wished to witness the dawn of a new era.
M. Drouet had placed a carriage at their service, but they would not
use it. It therefore proceeded empty in the midst of the _cortêge_,
in the front rank of which the two veterans marched with heads
erect—a benediction, as it were, bestowed by the dead era on the age
which was just about to dawn.
All the high roads of France were filled with processions like ours,
all hastening to one great focus—Paris.
Never since the Crusade had so great a number, of their own will,
bent their steps in one direction.
All along the road, deputations came to greet the travellers.
They offered hospitality to the old men and priests. It was
impossible to provide for all, so the main body bivouacked in the
open air.
Great fires were lighted, at which every one prepared his simple
meal. There was no lack of wine in a country which particularly
cultivated grapes.
On the morrow, at daybreak, all started at beat of drum. When the
noise of the drum ceased, all joined in the chorus of the _Ça ira_ of
’90, which has nothing in common with the menacing and bloodthirsty
_Ça ira_ of ’93.
This song kept up the energies of those men on the march, who were
toiling along under a hot July sun, to the end of the journey. It
supported those laborers who were making the arena, so to speak,
where great deeds were to be done.
We have said that it was with an unwilling heart that the Assembly
decreed the federation—that it was with an unwilling heart that
the city had sent its workmen to the Champ de Mars, to prepare for
that great and solemn reunion. The time approached—the work did not
proceed. What happened?
All Paris rose, and proceeded to the Champ de Mars carrying various
implements of labor—one a pickaxe another a shovel, and so on.
And not only did the people—not only did the _bourgeoisie_ do this,
but old men and children, lords and laborers, ladies of rank and
women of shame, actors and actresses, priests and soldiers,—all
joined in the work, which did not even close when night fell like a
shroud over the city of Paris.
The invalids, who could not work on account of their being maimed,
held the torches, to lighten them at their labors.
Begun in the morning of the 9th of July, this stupendous work was
completed in the night of the 13th, two hours before sunrise.
We arrived on the 12th, in the evening.
Paris was crowded; but, strange to say, the hotel keepers and
letters of lodgings, instead of raising their prices, lowered them
considerably. This spoke well for the disposition of Paris towards us.
Truly this was not the federation of France, but the fraternal
greeting of the world.
A Prussian Baron—Jean Baptiste de Clootz, better known by the name
of Anacharsis—presented himself before the National Assembly with
twenty men of different nations—Russians, Poles, men of the north,
men of the west, men of the east, and men of the south,—all habited
in the costume of their country. He came to ask permission for them
to appear at the federation of the Champ de Mars, as they wished to
represent the federation of the world.
Later on, this same Anacharsis Clootz wished to give twelve thousand
francs, to make war against royalty.
One may imagine my astonishment on finding myself in Paris, on the
Boulevards, gazing at the ruins of the Bastille.
Drouet pointed it out to me, afterwards, the patriotic workmen on
the Champ de Mars. I rushed to join them; and, seizing a spade, was
speedily hard at work.
My fellow-workman appeared to be an artizan of about fifty years of
age. He gave orders to a boy about my age, who was close at hand.
On seeing the ardor with which I worked, he asked me who I was, and
whence I came.
I told him that my name was Réné Besson; that I came from the new
department of the Meuse; and that I was apprenticed to a carpenter,
by trade.
When he heard this, he held out his hand, a smile illuminating his
austere visage.
“Take that, boy,” said he. “If you are an apprentice, I am a master;
and here are two lads, about your age, who live with me, to learn
their trade. If you have nothing better to do, come and sup with me
to-night—you shall be made welcome.”
I shook hands with him, and accepted his kind offer. The French, at
the dawn of the Revolution, were a nation of brothers.
As the clock struck five, we threw down our tools, gave ourselves a
wash in the Seine; after which we crossed over to the other side of
the river, and entered the Rue St. Honoré.
The master and I had walked side by side all the way, the two
apprentices following behind.
He asked me some questions about our department, what political
opinions we had, and whether I knew any one in Paris.
I answered all his questions with becoming modesty.
My companion stopped at the commencement of the Rue St. Honoré, on
the left-hand side, opposite a church, which I discovered later on to
be the Church of Assumption.
“We have arrived,” said he; “I will go first, to show you the way.”
He passed down a passage, at the extremity of which I perceived a
light.
I involuntarily raised my head, and read on the façade of the house
these three words:
“DUPLAY, Master Carpenter.”
I entered—the apprentices followed me.
CHAPTER XIV.
MY NEW PARISIAN FRIENDS.
The carpenter, Duplay, in contact with whom fortune had brought me,
had, at that period—that is to say, on the 12th of July, 1790,—the
celebrity of having given shelter to a notorious revolutionist,
which celebrity afterwards was attached to his name, his family, and
his house.
He was a good patriot, and attended constantly at the Jacobin Club
which was held in the neighborhood, and where almost all his evenings
were passed, applauding the speeches of a little advocate of Arras,
who, though ridiculed in the National Assembly, was appreciated in
the Rue St. Honoré. The name of this little advocate was Robespierre.
When we arrived, we found the table laid for supper, through the
forethought of his two daughters, Estelle and Cornelie. Their old
grandmother was seated in an arm-chair, and Madame Duplay was in the
kitchen, devoting all her attention to the forthcoming meal.
I was introduced to the two young ladies, both very charming girls.
Estelle was a blonde, with beautiful blue eyes, and a figure
wonderfully symmetrical, and flexible as a reed.
Cornelie was a brunette, with eyes black as sloes, and a stately and
majestic contour.
Estelle dropped her eyes, as she curtseyed.
Cornelie smiled, and looked me full in the face.
Neither, however, paid much attention to me after the first
salutation. I was younger than the youngest of them—that is to say,
in their eyes, almost a child.
As to the apprentices, one appeared to be about eighteen, and the
other a month or two older than I.
The elder was called Jacques Dinant. I don’t know what has since
become of him. The other was Félicién Herda, afterwards a celebrity
in the Revolution.
This latter was a young man—fair, of a light complexion—a regular
child of Paris—irritable, and as nervous as a woman. The nickname
which his comrades gave him, as his irritability was always dragging
him into controversy, and as he used always to say “No” to every
theory, was “Citizen Veto.”
Need I say that the veto was the prerogative of the King, and that it
was through his wrong use of this privilege on two occasions that he
alienated his people.
Madame Duplay appeared from the kitchen, with the first course. I was
presented to her; but she paid even less attention to me than her two
daughters had done.
She was about thirty-eight or forty years of age, and must, at one
time, have been beautiful, but with those coarse and too matured
charms common to the lower orders of the people.
She shared all the patriotic opinions of her husband, and was, like
him, an ardent admirer of Robespierre.
There was a discussion during supper concerning the relative merits
of the Jacobin leaders, in which the apprentices took part as equals
of their master.
I fancied, somehow, that Félicién Herda regarded me with an evil
eye. As the stranger, I had the seat of honor next to Mademoiselle
Cornelie; and I think he must have looked upon it as an encroachment
on his privileges.
Although well read in antiquity, I was profoundly ignorant of modern
politics, and this gained me the pity of M. Duplay.
I knew the name of the famous Club of Jacobins, where Monsieur passed
his patriotic evenings, but of all else I was ignorant.
From that bed of aristocratic Jacobins of ’89, one could not foretell
the springing up of the terrible and popular Jacobins of ’93.
Robespierre alone appeared, but he began to assume that pale and
impassible visage which was never forgotten, if once seen.
Duplay promised to take me to the Jacobins, and to show me him who
was known among them by the title of an “honest man.”
Robespierre had, as yet, but on two occasions spoken; and he had
obtained the name of the “Timon of public affairs.”
I know not if it was the view of Robespierre, whom I saw that night
for the first time, that engraved the words on my mind, but I know
this—that, in sixty years, I have not forgotten one word of his
biography, or one lineament of his face.
I feel that I could draw his portrait now, as life-like as when he
appeared first to me, on the platform, preparing to address us; and,
from that time to the end, I was his most devoted admirer.
Robespierre was born in 1758, in that old, sombre, ecclesiastical and
judicial town of Arras, capital of Artois, a province of France only
150 years, and where may yet be seen the ruins of the immense palace
of its King-Bishop.
His father, an advocate of the council of the province, lived in Rue
de Rapporteur. The young Maximilian was born there, that name being
given him in honor of the last conqueror of the city.
Notwithstanding his hard work, the advocate was poor; but a wife,
older than himself, helped to alleviate their poverty. She died.
He thought the burden too heavy to bear alone, so, one morning, he
decamped, and was no more seen in Arras.
They spoke of suicide, but nothing was proved.
The house was shut up, the four children abandoned. The eldest,
Maximilian, was eleven; after him, came his brother, whom they called
“young Robespierre;” after him, two sisters, one of whom, called
Charlotte de Robespierre, has left some rare and curious memoirs. The
other sister died three or four years after the disappearance of her
father.
What with the death of his mother, and the absence of his father,
there was enough to render the boy serious and unhappy. The friends
who assisted the family asked the powerful Abbé of St. Vaast, who
possessed a third of the town, and who had the disposal of many
bursarships at the college of Louis-le-Grand, to give one to young
Maximilian. The charitable Abbé complied with their desire.
He started alone for Paris, with a letter of recommendation to a
prebendary, who died almost at the same time as the young bursar
entered the college.
It was in that ancient building that the young pupil grew pale,
sickly, and envenomed, like a flower deprived of the sun; away from
home, away from his friends, separated from all who loved him, and
from all who could have brought a glow to his cheeks, or imparted
happiness to his withered soul.
It was there that he met Camille Desmoulins, an ecclesiastical bursar
like himself, and Danton, a paying pupil.
The sole friendship of his boyhood was formed with these two. How
lightly that friendship weighed in the balance we know, when he
believed that the moment had come to sacrifice it on the shrine of
his country.
Two things militated against the firm continuance of this friendship;
the one, the gaiety of Camille Desmoulins; and the other, the
immorality of Danton, who paid no attention to the reproaches of his
fellow-student.
Robespierre paid for his bursarship with laurel crowns. He left with
the reputation of being a sound scholar—a reputation which gained him
few friends and little honor. He afterwards studied with a procureur,
entitled himself to practise, and returned to Arras a middling
lawyer, but a stern politician, and having learnt to smile with the
lips while the heart was filled with gall.
His younger brother took his place at college, while Maximilian,
through the kindness of the Abbé de St. Vaast, was nominated a member
of the criminal tribunal.
One of the first cases that he had to judge was that of an assassin.
The crime was not only patent, but avowed. It fell to Robespierre to
pronounce sentence of death.
The next day he sent in his resignation, not wishing to be put to a
like test again.
That is how it was that he became an advocate. His philanthropy made
him the defender, in place of the condemner of men. Duplay pretended
to know, from certain sources, that Robespierre had never undertaken
to defend a cause that was not just; but even were it just, he had
to uphold it against all. He examined the cause of the peasants who
brought a complaint against the Bishop of Arras, found it just,
pleaded against his benefactor, and gained the day.
This rectitude, although it had no material influence on his
fortunes, increased greatly his reputation. The province sent him to
the Etats Généraux, where he had for his adversaries all the nobility
and clergy of his native State.
For adversaries—we say too much. The priest and nobles thought too
little of him to regard him in such a light.
This contempt, which had followed Maximilian to college, pursued him
with greater violence now that he had attained a seat in the National
Assembly.
He was poor and they knew it. They ridiculed his poverty; he thought
it an honor. Having nothing, receiving nothing, but his salary as a
member of the Assembly, a third of which went to his sister, he still
lived. When the Assembly put on mourning for the death of Franklin,
Robespierre, too poor to purchase a suit of black, borrowed a coat
for four francs, which, being too long for him, excited, throughout
the time of mourning, the irrepressible mirth of the Assembly. The
only consolation left him among all this ridicule was, that no one
doubted his honesty.
“Had I not confidence,” said he, in one of his speeches, “I should be
one of the most wretched men in the world.”
Yet, notwithstanding this, the man was not popular. Some few, indeed,
through a species of instinct, saw that he was capable of great
things, and among these were Duplay, his wife, and his two daughters.
All these details were given me during supper with the persistence of
conviction. It was, therefore, with the liveliest satisfaction that I
hailed M. Duplay’s offer to take me to the Jacobins’ Club, and looked
forward with curiosity to see him whom they called _honest_, and
afterwards stamped _incorruptible_.
CHAPTER XV.
I GO TO THE JACOBINS’ CLUB.
At nine o’clock, we left the house, and walked up the Rue St. Honoré
towards the Palais Royal.
A current of people pointed the way, stopping at the little door of
the Jacobin convent, which exists to this day.
I knew not that this was the place where the aristocratic and
literary assembly held their meetings until told so by Duplay.
The entry was as difficult as that of a sanctuary. By special favor,
as chief carpenter to the Duke of Orleans, Duplay had a card of
admission.
At the door, Cornelie, Estelle, and the two apprentices left us,
plunging down a staircase veritably built in the thickness of the
wall.
I asked M. Duplay where they were going. He told me that there was,
under the church, a smaller hall—a sort of crypt—where the workmen
and their wives held a club—the workmen attending in the day, their
wives at night. They there explained to each other the constitution.
Two ushers kept guard on each side of the door.
One, small and fat, with a bass voice, was the famous singer, Lais,
whom the _habitués_ of the Opera applauded up to 1825.
The other, a handsome young man with wavy hair, undisfigured by
powder, and a generally aristocratic air, was a pupil of Madame de
Genlis, the son of the Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Chartres, the
conqueror of Jemappes, and the future King of France.
By his side was his young brother, the Duke of Montpensier, for whom,
with great trouble, he had obtained admittance, notwithstanding his
extreme youth.
On entering, at sight of the orator, who occupied the tribune, I
cried out, “Ah! there is M. Robespierre.”
In fact, after the portrait M. Duplay had given me, it was impossible
not to recognize him. The impression he produced upon me was profound.
Yes, it was he, although his face had not yet assumed the grim and
fantastic appearance that it did later on. There he was, with that
primly-brushed olive-colored coat, and that waistcoat of snowy
whiteness, with his hair powdered, and thrown back from his brow, the
skin of which, in its hideous wrinkles, reminded one of the parchment
on a death’s head.
It was that wrinkled face, sullen and acute; that eye, with its tawny
yellow pupil, which shot between its retracted lids a glance replete
with malice, that seemed to wound aught it fell upon; it was that
mouth, broad and stern, with its compressed lips; it was that voice,
harsh in all its notes, and resembling the laugh of a hyena, or the
scream of a jackal; it was the whole figure of the man, quivering
with a nervous spasm, which caused his fingers to be continually
drumming on the ledge of the rostrum, like a pianist on the keys
of a spinnet; it was, in short, the revolution incarnate with his
implacable good faith, his freshness of blood, his mind determined,
bloodthirsty, and cruel.
As we entered, he finished his speech, and descended amid shouts of
applause.
I followed him with my eyes, in spite of myself, into the midst of
the crowd, through which, small and thin as he was, he easily passed.
Not a hand but was stretched out to grasp his, not a voice that did
not address him. One man, dressed in black, stopped him, as he passed
the desk, and said one word to him. He started, his face expressed
hatred and disgust, and he passed on without replying.
“Who was that sombre-looking man who spoke to M. de Robespierre?”
said I, to M. Duplay.
He smiled.
“It is a customer of mine, to whose intervention with the Duke of
Orleans I owe the right of coming here. His name is M. de Laclos, and
he has written a very bad book.”
“What book?” asked I.
“‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses.’”
“Well, what then? Speak lower.”
“He is the man of the Duke of Orleans; he it was who, in the Cour
des Fontaines, under the shadow of the Palais Royal, published
_Le Journal des Amis de la Constitution_. Robespierre hates him
on account of his fame, but he is all-powerful here. It is he who
disposes of the purse of the Prince. Hush! M. de Sillery, the husband
of Madame de Genlis, is listening to us.”
All this was Hebrew to me. I asked who M. de Sillery and Madame de
Genlis were.
“Ah! of course,” said he; “I forgot that you had only just arrived
in Paris, from the depths of some impenetrable forest, and of course
know not the names of those who are around us.”
“I fancy that I know the name of M. de Sillery. If I do not deceive
myself, he has been sent by the nobility of Champagne.”
“Good, my boy, good!”
“But it is the man,” continued I, “that I do not know.”
“Well, I will tell you all about the man. We begin to know names, as
well as men. Charles Alexis Brulart is a marquis, like Lafayette, but
having, like him, renounced his title, on the night of the 4th of
August, he calls himself Sillery, as I call myself Duplay. As to his
courage, it cannot be doubted. At twenty years of age, he assisted in
the campaign of the Indies, and gained his rank at the point of the
sword.”
“What rank did he gain?” asked I.
“Captain in the navy.”
“But he wears the uniform of a colonel of grenadiers.”
“Yes. He has left the navy for the army; he is the accredited agent
of the Duke of Orleans. In his youth, he was called Comte de Genlis;
that, as I have told you, is the name of his wife. She has acquired
a double, and doubtful, celebrity, as the friend of the Duke of
Orleans, whose children she has educated, and as a writer, in which
occupation she is at present engaged.”
“But what does M. de Sillery say to all this?” asked I.
Duplay lifted his brows.
“No wonder M. Robespierre is not his friend!”
“One cannot be friendly with Robespierre and the Duke of Orleans at
the same time,” said Duplay, shaking his head. “But patience!” All
eyes are turned towards a man who enters. One felt, at first sight,
without knowing him, that he was some great personage.
An immense forest of hair; a head resembling, for size and marked
outline, a lion’s or a bull’s, indicated a ruler of the multitude. I
had not time to ask Duplay who he was, for every mouth murmured the
word “Mirabeau!—Mirabeau!”
“Ah!” cried Duplay; “there is the hurricane that brings us news. Draw
near to him, that you may say, when you return home, that you have
not only seen and heard Mirabeau, but that you have touched him.”
We approached; but, of a truth, it was necessary to approach in order
to hear.
All the audience collected round him.
I looked for M. de Robespierre, to see if he pressed round like the
others.
He was isolated, alone, leaning against the rostrum, with a
disdainful air, watching the men following the idol of popularity,
like a shower of leaves after an autumn storm.
He knew that the crowd never drew near him, incorruptible; but it
rushed after Mirabeau, the corrupted; and, at the same time, he both
envied and blamed him.
The debate of the National Assembly had been stormy. There were a few
nobles there, who witnessed, with profound grief, that union of all
the parties of France.
Mirabeau had been insulted in the rostrum. A gentleman, M. Dambly,
had threatened him with his walking-stick. Mirabeau stopped his
speech, drew his tablets from his pocket, and demanded M. Dambly’s
address.
He cried it out from one end of the hall to the other.
“Very good!” said Mirabeau; “you are the one hundred and fiftieth
person who has insulted me, and with whom I will fight when I have
the time. Until your turn has come, hold your peace. I ask the
President to make you pass your word to that effect.”
Mirabeau related the story with incredible irony. All laughed—all
said he was in the right.
“And Lameth?” asked several members.
“Which?—Alexander or Charles?”
“Charles.”
“Oh, that is another matter! After practising with the rapier for two
days, he could not decide upon anything; and, at the close of the
Assembly, M. de Castrie cried out that he was a coward. They went
out, and fought, and Lameth received a rapier thrust in his arm.”
“Is it true that the sword was poisoned?” asked one voice.
“I know not that; but I do know that they are preparing to raze M. de
Castrie’s house to the ground.”
This news was greeted with a shout of laughter.
At this moment, an eager voice was heard, urging the debate.
Robespierre was on the forum.
He began to speak in the midst of the noise. As far as I could judge,
he spoke for union; but the noise and excitement were so great, that
it was almost impossible to hear what he said.
But, accustomed to noise and interruptions, Robespierre continued,
with that indefatigable perseverance, and that indomitable
stubbornness which made his greatness, and, finally, his triumph.
Robespierre had spoken for ten minutes, and would, probably, have
eventually succeeded in gaining silence, had not all attention been
distracted from him by another arrival.
This was one of the heroes of the duel which Mirabeau had spoken
of—Charles Lameth. He carried his right arm in a sling; but, with
that exception, looked and walked wonderfully well.
All crowded round him, as they had done round Mirabeau, but with a
different sentiment.
Charles Lameth was the friend of all the intelligent young men who
composed the majority of the Jacobin Club.
Duplay pointed out to me, successively, Laharpe; the poet, Chénier;
the painter, David; the tragedian, Talma; Audrien, Ledaine, Larive,
Vernet, Chamfort—all men of intellect. Then I returned to the
rostrum. Completely abandoned, Robespierre had descended, after
throwing upon that gathering of life, hope, and activity, a glance
that seemed to presage evil to come.
No one knew that he had ascended the rostrum; all were equally
ignorant of his descent. Perhaps I was the only one who noticed the
look of malignant hatred with which he regarded that knot of literary
and scientific men, who had utterly disregarded—whether wilfully or
not—himself and his discourse.
Presently, Duplay took my arm, and led me out of the hall.
“Return in a year,” he said, “and your eyes will be opened. There
will be fewer plumes, fewer epaulets, less embroidery, but more men.”
CHAPTER XVI.
PARIS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.
I wished to go to the Rue Grange Batélière, where M. Drouet lived,
and where he had appointed a rendezvous at the “Hotel des Postes;”
but M. Duplay insisting that I should partake of the hospitality of a
bed, as I had already done of the table, I felt that I could not well
refuse.
It was arranged that I should share Félicién’s room, in which they
made me up a bed. On the morrow, at daybreak, I should be at liberty
to seek out M. Drouet, after my hair had been arranged according to
the new fashion.
As that was an operation which must be performed sooner or later, on
entering the house I seized upon a pair of scissors, handed them to
Mademoiselle Cornelie, and asked her to perform on me the same feat
that Delilah performed on Samson—viz., to cut off my flowing locks.
The sacrifice was consummated amid the laughter of the two girls.
One person alone did not join in the merriment thus provoked, and
that person was he whose room I was going to share for the night.
It was evident to me that he loved Cornelie, and was jealous of
me—absurd idea; but the first stage of jealousy is absurdity.
The operation was over; they led me to a mirror to see if I were
satisfied with the change worked in my personal appearance. At
the first glance I felt inclined to laugh myself; I was more than
clipped—I was almost shorn.
My ridiculous appearance restored Félicién to good humor with
Mademoiselle Cornelie; and, as the servant appeared to announce that
the room was prepared, he asked me to follow him, and he would show
the way.
The first things that I remarked on entering the room were a pair of
fencing foils, and a couple of masks to protect the face. I thought
these rather strange ornaments for the bed-chamber of an apprenticed
carpenter.
“Do you know what those are for?” asked he with a braggart air.
“Yes,” replied I.
“Can you use them?”
“Not particularly well at present; but another month or two in the
Salle d’Armes will improve me, I hope.”
“To-morrow,” said he, “if you like, we will have a bout.”
“I am not sure whether I shall be able to. I fear that M. Drouet will
be anxious about me.”
“Will you have a bout now?” said he.
“Certainly,” I replied, “if you wish it; but we have plenty of time
before us. I shall not leave Paris without returning to thank M.
Duplay, and then we shall have a better opportunity.”
These evasive answers made Félicién think that I was not particularly
anxious to cross foils with him; so he commenced a recital of his
prowess and so, kindly lulled me to sleep.
I awoke, as usual, at daybreak, and slipping quietly out of bed, I
dressed myself with as little noise as possible, so as not to awaken
Félicién, and when ready, I left the room, and descended into the
court.
All of M. Duplay’s household were asleep, but the door was left open,
so that I did not waste an instant.
The clock of the Church of Assumption sounded the half-after four
o’clock as I left the house. I was utterly incapable of finding my
way about Paris, in which I had arrived only the evening before; but
the solemnity to be observed on the morrow had early drawn crowds
abroad, so the streets were pretty full notwithstanding the untimely
hour.
I asked my nearest route; they pointed out to me the Boulevards.
Arrived there, I had only to follow that by no means despicable
portion of my body, my nose, and, in a very short time, I discovered
the Rue Grange Batélière. Ten minutes after, I entered the “Hotel des
Postes,” and discovered, to my great joy, that M. Drouet was within.
I rushed to his chamber, and opened the door gently. He was not only
awake, but on his feet.
“Ah! there you are!” said he, after having looked at me for an
instant without having recognised me, on account of the disappearance
of my hair. “Where have you been, you vagabond? I have been in a nice
state of mind, I can assure you. It appears that you have been taken
in a trap, like a fox, and been compelled to leave your tail behind
you.”
“But you also have acquiesced in the mode.”
“Yes; but not with the same enthusiasm as you. You have been foolish
enough to cross the Pont Neuf, my boy.”
Not knowing what happened on the Pont Neuf, I could not appreciate M.
Drouet’s pleasantry.
I told him all that had happened—from my meeting with the carpenter,
on the Champ de Mars, to my visit to the Jacobin Club.
“Very good,” said Drouet. “You passed last night among the
aristocracy—you shall pass this among the _canaille_.”
“Shall we spend the night together?” cried I, joyously.
“Yes; I will take you to the Cordeliers, where you will meet neither
dukes, nor princes, nor marquises, but three citizens, whom you tell
me you have often thought of—to wit, Marat, Danton, and Camille
Desmoulins; in the meantime, we will take a stroll round Paris.”
“What I wish most to see, M. Drouet, is the Bastille.”
“You mean to say, the place where it stood?”
“Yes.”
“Come along, then; we will breakfast at the first restaurant we find,
and then, hey! for the Place de la Bastille.”
M. Drouet knew Paris very well, having been there about twenty times.
We were not long before we arrived at a wall, on which was written,
in large letters:—
“Here was the Bastille.”
Why did the germs of the Revolution suffocate themselves under those
dismal arches? Why, in 1300, did they discourse the holy gospel? Why,
during the captivity of King John, did the Provost of Paris, Etienne
Marcel, making himself a dictator, establish a popular club there,
equal to that of the eighteenth century? Why were the Cordeliers,
especially, of all the minor orders of St. Francis, republican in
their tendencies—so much so, that, three centuries before Barbeuf and
Prudhomme, they had dreamt the abolition of the rights of property?
The 13th of July was Vesuvius, with its fire-ejecting crater,
threatening to destroy Naples, and overturn the world.
To-day, all has ended in smoke—with, perhaps, a few cinders as a
memorial.
CHAPTER XVII.
I ATTEND A MEETING AT THE CORDELIERS.
We were engulfed, so to speak, M. Drouet and I, in the cave of the
Cordeliers.
The hall was deep and broad, and lighted with smoky lamps; a cloud
formed by their smoke, and the breath of the audience, floated over
our heads, and seemed to weigh heavily upon our chests.
There were no cards of admission—any one might come who liked; the
consequence was that the hall was crowded to excess, and every one
ran a chance of suffocation. At the end of a minute, by means of
vigorous pressure, we managed to force a passage into the body of the
hall.
At first, we were obliged to keep our eyes shut, on account of the
smoky atmosphere; but when we got accustomed to it, we could see
objects, as it were, through a dense fog.
I raised myself up on tip-toe, to see the popular man, _par
excellence_. All cried out, “Vive Lafayette!”
We passed the Tuileries, and the door of the clock-tower, and gained
a bridge. A sort of sympathy drew us to the Champ de Mars.
There was the same amount of bustle as on the day before. A hundred
thousand workmen were throwing up the earth, and forming a valley
between two hills.
The work progressed as if under the wave of an enchanter’s rod. There
was no doubt but that all would be ready for the morrow, so that in
seven days the gigantic undertaking would have been completed. The
middle of the place was entirely clear. Here they erected the altar
of the country, and in front of the Ecole Militaire, built up seats
for the King and the Assembly.
At the end of a wooden bridge thrown over the river, near Chaillot,
they erected a triumphal arch.
It was impossible not to become maddened amid this confusion. We
could resist no longer, but seizing the nearest implements that lay
nearest at hand, we, with a shout of “Vive la nation!” set ourselves
to work with the rest.
At six o’clock we ceased, heated with our exertions. We were hungry.
It was useless to look for a restaurant.
At eight o’clock we left the Champ de Mars, and passing through the
Boulevards des Invalides, and the Rue Plumet, we shaped our course to
the Cordeliers.
An immense crowd of people—some fifty or sixty thousand,
perhaps—filled the place and the adjacent streets.
Those who had been unable to find lodgings had encamped there, or on
the Boulevards.
Being anxious to see historical localities, I asked M. Drouet to
take me to the Hotel de Ville. We went up to the Rue St. Antoine, M.
Drouet showing me the steps on which they had slain De Launay, the
lantern on which they had hung Foulon, and the corner of the quay
where they had killed Flesselles.
Everywhere—on the boulevards, in the places, in the churches, on the
bridges—all was gaiety; every one was shaking hands with everybody;
strangers in a moment became old friends. A shout of “Vive le
Roi!” surrounded you with friends—a shout of “Vive la nation!” with
brothers.
After dinner, we proceeded to the Jacobin Club. It was crowded, like
all the rest—if possible, more so.
“Look, look!” said M. Jean Baptiste, the moment it was possible to
see.
“Look! Where?” said I.
“There—on the President’s chair, between two candles! Do you see any
one?”
“Oh, M. Drouet!” said I, trembling.
“Well, what do you say?” asked he.
“I say that it is not a man whom you point out to me.”
“What is he, then?”
“A monster!”
“Good! Look at him for some length of time, and you will get
accustomed to his face, all hideous as it is.”
That man was M. Danton.
He rang the bell, and shook with a fury that seemed to animate all he
did.
In a moment all was silence.
His mouth, like the top of a cyclops, opened, and a voice, which
could have thundered down the noise had it continued, pronounced
these words, “It is Marat’s turn to speak!”
Let us say a word or two about Marat before we proceed any further.
Marat was born in 1744, at Neuchatêl. He was, at the period of which
I speak, forty-six years of age. His mother, nervous and romantic,
was ambitious enough to try and make her son a second Rousseau.
His father, a Protestant clergyman, well read and hard-working,
taught his son the elements of science, and all the other branches
of knowledge that he was acquainted with, so that the young man
resembled a dictionary full of errors, and without even method or
form.
His grandfather nicknamed him Mara—the “t” is an addition of his
father’s, or his own. He had been a teacher of languages in England,
and understood English pretty well. He also dabbled a little in
physiology and chemistry, but in a slight degree. In ’89 he became
veterinary surgeon to the Comte D’Artois.
On the 14th of July, the day of the taking the Bastille, he found
himself on the Pont Neuf, and escaping being crushed to death by a
detachment of hussars. Marat ordered them, in the name of the people,
to throw down their arms—so he said, at least, but no one believed it.
Marat was not brave. He hid himself all day for the flight. He said
that the satellites of Lafayette and De Bailly were looking for him,
whereas, in fact, they never thought of him. In the evening, he crept
out like a beast of prey; his eye, yellow as that of an owl, seemed
better adapted for seeing in the dark than in the daylight. He lived,
creeping from hiding-place to hiding-place, never seeing the light
of day, and writing continually, imparting to his compositions all
the bitterness and acerbity of his forced mode of life. From time to
time he would exalt and provoke himself to blood. They say that blood
was his ordinary drink—that he imbibed it when he was thirsty. His
physician shook his head, and said, “Marat writes red.” His friends
the journalists lifted him up to laugh at him. They called him the
divine Marat. The people took a leaf out of their book, and called
him a god. Let Marat do what he liked, the people applauded. Marat
did more than lead them—he gave them room for amusement.
Amid the murmur of applause which greeted him—applause which had
been, in conjunction with silence, denied to Robespierre the evening
before—Danton, opening the door of the rostrum, said, “It is Marat’s
turn to speak!”
Scarcely had the words been pronounced, when Marat was seen mounting
the steps leading to the rostrum, in which he appeared, with a lurid
smile on his coarse mouth, seeming to embody, at one, and the same
time, three distinct genera: the man, the frog, and the serpent.
That _Thing_, dressed in almost rags, with dishevelled hair,
squinting eyes, broad nose, and hideous appearance, was _the Friend
of the People_! They had concluded by giving Marat the name of his
journal.
At last, his hideous head appearing over the ledge of the rostrum,
radiant with pride, and held, as it were, defiantly back to hide a
neck covered with ulcers, all cried out, “Speak, Marat, speak!”
“Yes,” replied Marat, with a deep voice, “I am going to.”
All was hushed, as if by magic. Danton covered his face with his
hands, and listened with a smile of scorn, while a young man placed
himself in front of the rostrum, his arms crossed over his breast, in
the attitude of a gladiator, defying his enemy.
“Look—look!” said Drouet.
“At whom? Marat? I can see him.”
“No, no! that young man in front of the rostrum.”
“Who is he?”
“Camille Desmoulins, the man of the thirteenth of July; the man of
the Café de Foy; the man of the green cockade!”
“Silence! silence!” cried out several voices.
Marat, hearing a whisper, had turned his evil eyes on us.
We became as still as mice.
“Great treason!” cried Marat; “but that is not wonderful—they would
not follow my advice; and I tell you that until the heads of some of
the National Assembly ornament pikestaffs, things will go wrong. Do
as I tell you, and the Constitution will be perfect.”
“Why—why—why—don’t you send a mod-mod-model to the Assembly?” said
the young man, in front of the rostrum, with a terrible and painful
stutter in his speech.
“I am framing it,” said Marat, “while you make love, Camille, I
think.”
“Dream, you mean!” said the same satirical voice.
“Silence! silence!” cried the audience.
“Yes; I am preparing a scheme for our Constitution.”
“Tell—tell it us, great—great legislator!” said Camille, totally
disregarding the cries for silence.
“I say that the form of government should be monarchical,” continued
Marat; “that Monarchy is the guiding-star of France, and that the
person of the King should be sacred, only to be approached through
the medium of his ministers.”
“Ah, aristocrat!” cried Camille.
“M. Danton,” cried Marat, furiously, “it is my turn to speak, and I
demand silence!”
“Silence! silence!” again cried the crowd.
“Citizen Camille,” said Danton, in a voice as satirical as that of
the man whom he reproved, “I call you to order!”
“Then ask the speaker,” said the imperturbable Camille, “to give us
part of his plans for the legislation.”
“Firstly,” cried Marat, “I demand that the blasphemer’s tongue be cut
out!”
“Well, cut my to-to-to-tongue out! I blas-blas-blaspheme! I say Marat
is a fool!”
And, suiting the action to the words, he protruded his tongue at
Marat, and made a grimace.
Some of the audience could not avoid laughing.
Marat was mad with rage.
“I again say,” said he, “in my project for our Constitution, that the
city is burdened with two hundred thousand poor people. I argue the
right of the poor to share.”
“Good!” said Camille. “We are ready; let us plun-plun-plunder!”
“Yes, plunder!” cried Marat, rapidly becoming more and more excited.
“When one has nothing, he has a right to take the superfluities of
the rich—rather than starve, he has the right to take and devour
their palpitating flesh! Let man commit what outrage he likes on his
fellow-men—it is no worse than a wolf killing a sheep!”
“Marat has asked for me to be called to order: I ask that he may be
called to reason.”
“Why should I have pity on men?” yelled Marat. “Firstly, pity is only
a folly, acquired in society. In nature, neither man nor inferior
animals know pity. Does Bailly, who tracks me, or Lafayette, who
hunts me down, or the National Guards, who seek to slay me, know
pity?”
“Who prevents your eating them?” said Camille.
“No, no!” said Marat, sneering at Camille in his turn. “No, I will
not eat them; I will leave Lafayette to the women, and will cry unto
them, ‘Make him an Abelard!’ I will leave Bailly to the people, and
will cry unto them, ‘Hang him, as you have hanged Foulon, as you have
hanged Flesselles!’ I will ask for the heads of the National Guards—I
will ask for the heads of the aristocrats—I will ask, not for six
hundred heads as I did yesterday, but for nineteen thousand four
hundred!”
“Make it twen-twenty thousand, round numbers!”
The admirers of Marat chafed. Marat’s mouth shut, his eyes darted
fire, his head was drawn back; he looked as if he could have
swallowed his adversary at one mouthful.
The friends of Camille, Frérone, and Danton, the enemies of Marat,
took the part of Camille Desmoulins.
They would have come to blows, despite Danton’s continuously ringing
the bell for order, and his terrible voice sounding far above the
din, and crying, “Silence! silence!”
I passed with M. Drouet to the side of Camille Desmoulins, for whom
I felt a sympathy as strong as my hatred of Marat. The attention of
all, however, was now drawn to the entrance of a new personage, on
whom all eyes were fixed.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FEMALE ELEMENT IN POLITICS.
This new comer was a woman.
But a strange one, having a good deal of the masculine in her
composition—a perfect amazon—one might say a virago.
She was habited in a long dress of red stuff, surmounted by a cape;
she wore a plumed hat, and a large sword at her side.
I touched M. Drouet’s arm.
“Oh!” said I; “who is that?”
“I am no wiser at present than yourself,” said he; “unless it is—yes,
it is the famous Thèroigne de Méricourt.”
I had once or twice heard the name of the heroine of the 5th and 8th
of October—the impetuous Liègoise, beautiful, but terrible; who, at
Versailles, with a smile and soft voice, had ordered the regiments
of Flanders to lay down their arms. An unhappy affection—the treason
of an unfaithful one, had thrust her out from woman’s life. She had
embraced the cause of the Revolution with transport. It was her last
love. The unhappy woman was whipped by the Royalists in the Garden of
the Tuileries, became insane, and died in Bicetre, or Charenton, I
forget which, after twenty years of agony.
But at present she was young, pretty, proud, if not happy. Alas! her
misplaced love had seared her heart.
Her entrance was great.
“There is the Queen of Sheba!” cried Camille Desmoulins, stammering
more than ever.
Then, turning to Danton, “Rise up, Solomon,” said he; “and go and
receive her Majesty!”
She stood boldly in front of Danton, put her hands on the hilt of
her sabre, and said, “If thou art Solomon, build the temple. We have
space enough on the site of the Bastille, or better on the Field of
the Federation. I will head the subscription.”
She took a gold chain from off her neck, and threw it to Danton.
“I ask to speak,” said a tall, fair man, with a strong German accent;
“to support the proposition of the Citizen Thèroigne.”
“Citizen Anacharsis Clootz will address the meeting,” said Danton.
“Place to the orator of the human race.”
The Prussian Baron mounted the rostrum.
“Look!” said Drouet; “there is a republican who has a hundred
thousand crowns a year, and yet they say that only the bootless and
stockingless are revolutionists.”
“Yes,” said he, with a soft smile and quiet voice, which contrasted
with the harshness of the former speaker; “yes, I second the motion
of Citizen Thèroigne. The temple should be built in Paris. Why was
Paris built at an equal distance between the Pole and the Equator,
if not to be the centre of attraction for all men? At Paris will one
day assemble the Etats Généraux of all the world. You are laughing,
Camille, you eternal grinner. The day is not so distant as you
suppose. Oh, that the Tower of London may fall as did the Bastille!
Oh, that a second Cromwell may rise from insignificance into power,
and the tyrant of a day will be seen no more! When the tricolor of
liberty floats, not over England and France alone, but over all the
world, there will then no longer be provinces, soldiers, and vessels
of war; here will be a people, and better than that, a family. It
will then be as easy to go from Paris to Pekin as from Bordeaux to
Strasbourg; the shores of the ocean will be brought together by a
bridge of ships; and the East and the West will embrace on the Champ
de la Fédération. Rome was the queen of nations by force of arms;
Paris will be the same by dint of peace. Think not that this is mere
imagination, oh, my brothers! No, the more I think over the matter,
the more sure am I that I am right; and the more I believe in the
possibility of one great and united nation. Oh, listen to the voice
of reason; may patriotism warm your hearts to build up a temple
which will hold all the representatives of the human race. Then ten
thousand men will suffice to represent the universe!”
“Bravo! bravo!” cried all from all sides.
“There are plenty of heads to chop off here and there,” said Marat.
“Ye-ye-yes,” Stammered Camille Desmoulins; “six hundred
yes-yes-yesterday, nineteen thousand four hun-hundred to-day; and if
a to-morrow arrives, there will be fif-fif-fifty thousand.”
“Anacharsis,” cried Danton, “you err, but on the side of a good and
generous heart.”
The terrible man looked at him with a soft smile, and he continued:
“Men will be what they ought to be, when one can say, ‘The world
is my country, the world is mine;’ but till then, there are more
proscriptions, more banishments, more exiles. Nature is one; why is
not society one? They are divided forces, which strike one another
when nations are driven against each other by the breath of hatred,
and, like clouds, they strike and are scattered. Tyrants, we wish
not that, and the proof is that we demand not your death. Kill
yourselves, slay each other. Descend, O kings, from your thrones, and
we will give you your choice ’twixt misery and a scaffold. Usurpers
of sovereignty! Balthazars of modern times! is it possible that
you see not on your palace walls, amid the glare of your thousand
lamps, the shouts of your revelries, and the crash of your song,
the writing, not in fire, but in your people’s blood, _Mené, Mené!
Tekel Upharsin_? Lay down your sceptres and your crowns, and head
a revolution which delivers kings from the grasp of kings, and the
people from the rivalry of the people.”
“A-a-amen!” stammered Camille Desmoulins. “Ana-Anacharsis wishes to
carry me away by the hair of my head, as the angel did Habakkuk.”
“Long live Camille Desmoulins!” said Thèroigne, while the friends of
the true son of Voltaire tendered him their hands. “If ever I have
love, it shall be for you, I promise you. By the bye, you are fond of
Sieyes?”
“Yes, truly,” replied Thèroigne. “Between you and me, he is the only
one who gives me the idea of a man.”
“What am I, then?” said Danton.
“What are you?” said Thèroigne, scanning him from head to foot. “You
are only a bull.”
“Well re-re-replied,” said Camille; “that is what I call taking the
bull by the horns.”
“In the meantime,” cried Marat, “you are losing sight of the public
safety. I speak to you of a great treason, and you will not listen,
Lafayette!”
“Ah, good!” said Camille. “Go on, Marat!”
“Lafayette has caused to be made in the Faubourg St. Antoine
ten thousand snuff-boxes, all of which are embellished with his
portrait as General of the National Guard. Lafayette aspires to the
dictatorship.”
“Of tobacco merchants?” queried Camille Desmoulins.
Marat’s yellow skin assumed a green tinge, and perspired with rage.
“He has some scheme beneath that,” continued he; “so I pray all good
citizens in whose hands these snuff-boxes may fall, to destroy them.”
“In order to discover the names of his accomplices?” asked Camille.
“There are many of them. I told you that twenty thousand pieces of
cord would suffice, but bring thirty or forty thousand, and you will
not have enough.”
The applause drowned the voice of Marat, but eventually their breath
failed them, and they could hear Camille Desmoulins, who, like a
swimmer who had dived, again remounted to the surface.
“Always tragic, friend Ma-Marat—always tragic! hypertragic, in fact.”
“And these cords,” continued Marat—“take care, Camille Desmoulins,
that one of them is not first tried on you.”
“In that case,” replied the incorrigible railer, “I have a chance, if
they take me, of growing ugly. You haven’t.”
Here the laughter broke out irresistibly, and as it arose from
Camille’s side, he may be fairly said to have gained the victory.
Marat descended, furiously shaking his fist.
“Return to thy cave, night-bird! Go back to thy hole, hyena! Sneak
into thy nest, viper!” murmured Danton, with a look of ineffable
disdain. But Danton’s murmurs were like thunder; every one heard them.
When Marat left, all joined in brotherly communion, his presence
having alone restrained them hitherto.
M. Jean Baptiste knew Danton, and went to shake hands with him, and
to compliment Camille Desmoulins.
I could not turn my eyes from the face of the ex-advocate, that
terrible blind man whom Providence had given to guide the revolution.
I shall have occasion to speak again of him, and to show what
sensibility of heart was hidden beneath that rough exterior.
We left the club at midnight, and returned to the “Hotel des Postes,”
Rue Grange Batélière.
At daybreak on the morrow we had to be under arms.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FIELD OF THE FEDERATION.
I could not sleep all night.
I had seen so much since my arrival, and had been in company with so
many great men—Mirabeau, Robespierre, Lameth, Laclos, Chemier, Talma,
David, Laharpe, Danton, Marat, Desmoulins, Anacharsis Clootz, and
Herbert—that their names continued to ring in my soul like an alarm
bell.
And through them all passed the beautiful amazon in her red robe; and
that seemed so strange to me, coming as I had for the first time from
the Forest of Argonne, and feeling, as it were, in another world, or
else in a state of furious delirium.
I arose at daybreak. Alas! the morning was dark and rainy-looking;
thick black clouds were chasing each other over the sky once so
pure and brilliant, but now changing its opinions, and becoming
aristocratic.
I awoke M. Drouet. I was astonished that any one could sleep on the
night heralding in such a day. He jumped up and dressed himself. We
took our guns, and descended.
We soon joined our friends of St. Menehould and Islettes, formed
rank, and marched to the Champ de Mars.
At the door of Sainte Honoré, we met the orator of the human race,
who had passed the night at the Cordeliers.
He had with him a body of men, Poles, Russians, Turks, Persians, all
in their national costumes. He took them to the federation of France
before he took them to the federation of the world.
We marched by the river’s side, and soon arrived at the Champ de Mars.
A hundred and sixty thousand people were seated on the slopes, a
hundred and fifty thousand on the plain itself, and yet there was
sufficient space left to accommodate fifty thousand of the National
Guard.
A second amphitheatre in a semi-circle formed in the space between
Chaillot and Passy accommodated more than a hundred thousand people.
Anacharsis Clootz was right. This looked well for a federation of the
world.
We crossed the river by the wooden bridge thrown over it at Chaillot,
and passing under the Arc de Triomphe, entered the Champ de Mars, and
arranged ourselves in front of the altar of the country. The honors
were for the provincial National Guard.
We were removed only a hundred paces from the raised seats destined
for the King, the Queen, and the National Assembly.
All in a moment it began to rain. It was now eight o’clock, and as
the King and Queen were not expected till ten, there was plenty of
time to get both wet and cold. Some of the National Guards began
to dance a farandole to keep the warmth in them; the example was
contagious, the muskets were stacked, and each man choosing a partner
from among the female spectators, the extraordinary spectacle of two
thousand people dancing at one time commenced.
At half-past ten the cannon announced the arrival of the King, and
the drum recalled each man to his post. The female dancers were
re-conducted to their friends, and the guard presented arms.
The carriages of the King, Queen, and other dignitaries of the realm
came at a foot pace. They stopped at the raised benches; the King,
descending first, gave his hand to the Queen, and they took their
respective places, accompanied by the Assembly.
Now, not only had the day, but the moment arrived.
Stationed close to the benches, of which we had an excellent view, I
had been awaiting with impatience the arrival of the King and Queen,
of whose personal appearance I had formed my own ideas, which I am
bound to say were very far from the truth.
The King was not sufficiently kingly. The Queen was too much a queen.
While the King was bowing to the people, and seating himself in the
midst of the cries of “Vive le Roi!” M. de Talleyrand, the lame
bishop, the Mephistopheles to another Faust, whose name was Napoleon,
proceeded, attended by two hundred priests, to the altar of the
country. All wore tri-colored sashes.
The regimental bands strike up, but are scarcely heard. But forty
pieces of cannon, discharged at the same time, command silence.
The taking of the oath followed.
Three hundred thousand hands are uplifted at one and the same time on
the Champ de Mars. The rest of France was joined in spirit to those
who swore in the name of all.
They had hoped that the King would descend from his seat, mount the
altar, and there, holding up his hand, swear in the sight of all his
people.
They were mistaken. The King swore from his seat, placed in the
shadow—in fact, almost hidden. The idea that struck the hearts of
all, was that the King swore with regret, and without intending to
keep the oath that he had taken.
This was the oath that all knew beforehand, but which few could hear,
thanks to the fashion in which the King spoke:—
“I, King of the French, swear to the nation to employ all the power
which has been delegated to me by constitutional law, in maintaining
the constitution and executing the laws.”
Ah, King, King! it is with greater heart and better faith that your
people have sworn.
The Queen did not swear; she sat in a reserved seat, with the
Dauphin and the princesses. On hearing the King’s voice trembling
and hesitating she smiled, a singular light gleaming in her eyes the
while.
M. Drouet, as well as myself, remarked that smile, and he frowned.
“Ah, M. Drouet,” said I, “I like not that smile! And I never could
have believed that that beautiful Queen could have smiled in such a
fashion.”
“The Queen’s smile matters little,” replied M. Drouet. “The King has
sworn—that is the great point. The oath is registered at this moment
in the hearts of twenty-five millions of Frenchmen. It will be worse
for him if the oath be not kept.”
* * * * *
Every time that I have been to Paris since that day, I have paid a
visit to the Champ de Mars, the only monument left of the Revolution.
The last time I made the pilgrimage was in 1853. I had come to buy
the History of the French Revolution, by Michelet.
I seated myself on a hillock, and much in the same way as M.
Chateaubriand on the ruins of Sparta, cried out in a loud voice,
three times, “Leonidas! Leonidas! Leonidas!” I read aloud the
following lines of the eloquent historian, which chimed in so well
with my own thoughts:—
“The Champ de Mars is the sole monument left of the Revolution.
The Empire has the Arc de Triomphe. Royalty has its Louvre and its
Invalides. The feudal Church of 1,200 has its throne in Notre Dame.
“But the Revolution has alone for its monument an empty space.
“This monument is sand, and desert as the plains of Arabia. A mound
to the right, a mound to the left, like those which the Gauls erected
in memory of their fallen heroes.
“Though the plain be dry, and the grass be withered, still a day will
come when it shall be again clothed in green.
“For mingled with this earth is the sweat of the brow of those who
on a sacred day raised these hills—on a day when, awakened by the
cannon of the Bastille, France poured in from the north and south—on
a day when three millions as one man swore eternal peace.
“Ah! poor Revolution, so confiding in the first blush of thy youth,
thou hast invited the world to love and peace.
“Oh, my enemies! said’st thou, there are no longer enemies.
“Thou heldest out thine hand to all—thou hast offered the cup to
drink to the peace of nations, but they would not.”
CHAPTER XX.
I GO BACK AGAIN.
We arranged to leave Paris on the following morning.
It was three hours after noontide when the ceremony was over. I
made a rendezvous with M. Drouet for five o’clock at the “Hotel des
Postes,” and left him to give my thanks and bid adieu to Maître
Duplay and his family.
All the household had been to the fête of the federation.
I met the group, consisting of M. and Madame Duplay, the two
daughters, and the two apprentices, at the top of the Rue St. Honoré.
I went up to and saluted them.
They, too, had remarked the hesitation with which the King took the
oath, and were, in consequence, sorrowful.
We entered the house; the dinner awaited us; Duplay invited me to
join them; I assented.
During the meal, Félicién, sure of his superiority over me as a
fencer, spoke of the promise I had made to try a bout with him; and
asked me, if, after dinner, I was prepared to stand by our agreement,
and give M. Duplay and his daughters, the pleasure of witnessing our
prowess. I replied that if it would please my worthy hosts, I should
only be too happy to make such a slight return for their kindness and
hospitality towards me.
Dinner finished, we passed into the workshop, Félicién evidently
expecting an easy victory over me, and speaking much as a master
would to a pupil.
M. Duplay and the young ladies being seated, we each took our mask
and foil.
“Be easy,” said Félicién, in a whisper intended to be heard; “I will
not hurt you.”
“Thanks!” replied I; “for I shall probably be at your mercy.”
“Would you like to begin?” asked Félicién.
“As you please,” said I.
We placed ourselves on guard.
At the first pass, I saw that Félicién tried to touch me; which,
between strangers, lacks courtesy.
However, I appeared not to notice it, and contented myself by
parrying his thrust.
Now came my turn.
I made four or five passes only; but they were sufficient to show me
that, though Félicién was a tolerable fencer, he had no chance with
me.
I had paid great attention to the instructions given me, as I wished
to make rapid progress; while Bertrand being an able master, and I
his sole scholar, he was enabled to devote all his attention to me.
Félicién, also, after the first few passes, perceived my superiority
over him.
I allowed him to make five or six thrusts at me, simply contenting
myself with parrying them.
Once he grazed the wristband of my shirt, but he did not dare say
“Touched!”
I saw the blood mount to his face.
“My dear Félicién,” said I, “I have been three hours under arms, and
am fatigued. If you will allow me, I should like to put an end to our
combat. The ladies, I am sure, will accept my excuse.”
“They may, but I will not,” said he. “I know full well, by the
strength of your parries, that your arm is not fatigued. Say that you
believe yourself to be a better fencer than I am, and that you are
generous enough not to pursue your advantage.”
“Then you wish to continue?”
“Certainly. If you are the better man, I will take the lesson, as an
obedient scholar should.”
“You hear the promise that M. Félicién makes,” said I, turning to
M. Duplay; “and you are witness that I continue solely on that
agreement?”
“Yes, yes!” cried all the spectators, especially the two girls, who
seemed to me to wish the pride of the apprentice lowered.
I saluted Félicién with my foil.
“I await you,” said I; “take care of my ripostas, which are very
rapidly delivered.”
“We will see,” said Félicién, dealing me a thrust which I had only
just time to parry.
But, at last, I touched, almost imperceptibly, his breast with the
button of my foil.
He bounded backwards; and while neither of us cried “_Touched?_” yet
all the spectators saw that it was so.
He again rushed on me, his teeth set, his lips pale.
He crossed my foil, and passed _one, two_. But in retreat, his foil
caught my guard, and snapped off, about two inches from the button.
But he continued to fight, as if he knew not that his weapon was
broken. So I took the first opportunity that offered; and, twisting
his blade out of his hand, sent it flying across the room.
“Pardon me,” said I, “for disarming you; I know that it is not
etiquette; but neither is it etiquette to fence with a buttonless
foil. You might have dangerously wounded me, and been unhappy
yourself ever afterwards.”
Then, taking off my mask, I hung it on the wall, and placed my foil
by the side of it.
Félicién saw plainly that I did not wish to continue the combat; and,
without taking off his mask, he stalked out of the room.
“Ah!” cried M. Duplay; “you have read him a good lesson, and I must
say that he deserved it. Now then, say good-bye to the ladies, and
let us be off to the Rue Grange Batélière, where you will introduce
me to M. Drouet. I need not tell you that if I hear of your coming
to Paris without paying me a visit, I shall be your bitter enemy for
life.”
I bade the two girls good-bye, and we set out.
As I expected, Félicién was awaiting us in the court.
The moment he saw me come out with M. Duplay, who evidently only came
with me to prevent a quarrel, Félicién began to divest himself of
his upper garments; but M. Duplay cried out, “Come here, you young
vagabond!—I tell you, come here!”
Félicién approached unwillingly.
“Give your hand to my young friend here—he has a right to it.”
“Has what?” asked Félicién.
“Nothing,” I hastened to reply. “M. Duplay believes that you knew
your foil to be unbuttoned, but I have told him ‘no!’ Come; shake
hands, and be friends.”
I held out my hand.
Félicién took it with rather a bad grace.
“There,” said M. Duplay; “you have said adieu! We go our way—you can
go yours.”
And he dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
We went our way.
“You see, I was right in coming out with you,” said M. Duplay. “The
little scoundrel was waiting there to pick a quarrel with you. He
would not be a bad carpenter if he would work, but he thinks the
trade beneath him. He loves, and is jealous of Cornelie. One can
easily see that, but he is eighteen months younger than she. I don’t
think that Cornelie is very fond of him; but you have given a lesson
to M. Veto, and you have done well.”
I did not reply, as I agreed in every respect with M. Duplay.
As the clock struck five, we arrived at the Rue Grange Batélière. We
found M. Drouet punctual. I introduced M. Duplay, whom he already
knew through my speaking of him.
We spent the evening fraternising with the Parisians.
We each of us received a medal in commemoration of the occasion.
At five o’clock in the morning, the drum beat the recall. We formed
ranks, and set out for the Barrier Pantin. Meaux was fixed upon as
our first halting-place.
Four days after our departure from Paris, we arrived at Menehould
about three hours after mid-day. We had, on an average, marched about
twelve leagues a day.
M. Drouet wished me to dine with him, but I knew that my uncle would
be uneasy if I returned not with the others; and, somehow or other, I
had a presentiment that I must hasten, if I wished to see him alive.
I was a quick walker. I ran down the slope of the mountain, and
traversed the village at a quick trot.
On passing the priest’s house, I saw Mademoiselle Marguerite in the
doorway. When she saw me, she came forward.
I feared what she was going to ask; so I at once said, “M. le Curé
is in capital health, and will be here in an hour. What news of my
uncle?”
“Good, my dear Réné—good; but you have mentioned to him your arrival?”
“No, I have not. Why should I?”
“Well, he told me that you would arrive at half-past seven this
evening; and he said, ‘Thank heaven, I shall be able to see and bless
him before I die!’”
“He said that? Well, I must hurry on, for I have no time to lose.”
On leaving the village, and turning the first angle of the forest,
one could see the cottage of Father Descharmes.
I turned the corner in a moment.
Father Descharmes was at the door, seated in his arm-chair, in the
same place I had left him, enjoying the rays of the setting sun.
I waved my hat on the end of my musket. I thought that he feebly
waved his hand in return.
I ran quicker than ever; and the nearer I came the more his face
brightened up.
When I was not more than ten paces distant, he lifted himself from
the chair, and, raising his eyes to heaven, he said “I knew well that
I should see my child again. ‘Now let Thy servant depart in peace,
according to Thy word.’”
I heard these words, and threw myself on my knees.
“Bless me, oh, my uncle!” I cried.
My voice was choked with sobs, for I saw that I had arrived just in
time to receive his last breath.
I felt the old man’s hands placed upon my forehead, and I fancied
that I heard his voice murmuring feebly a prayer.
When the prayer was finished, he cried, “Oh, heaven, receive my
spirit!”
I felt his hand slowly slipping from my brow.
I stayed a moment immovable, and then, taking his hands in mine, I
raised myself gently, and looked at him.
He had fallen backwards, his head resting on his breast, and his eyes
and mouth open.
But the mouth no longer had breath, and the light had departed from
the eyes.
He was dead!
CHAPTER XXI.
I EXCHANGE MY GUN FOR THE PLANE.
I will not exaggerate my grief; I will simply say that I loved my
uncle as a father, and my sorrow for his loss was full and sincere.
In my absence, the two keepers—the one named Flobert, and the other,
Lafeuille—had taken it in turns to minister to his little wants.
When he died, Flobert was in the house. I called, and he came to me.
The name of Drouet filled my heart, and rested on my lips.
At that moment a post-chaise passed, going in the direction of St.
Menehould. I ran after the postilion, my eyes filled with tears.
“Tell M. Jean Baptiste,” cried I to him, “that my uncle died at the
moment of my arrival.”
“Is it possible? Poor Descharmes! I spoke to him yesterday! He was
seated in his easy-chair, in the doorway, and he told me that he
expected you this evening.”
He then drove on.
“You will not forget to tell M. Drouet, will you?” I repeated.
“Certainly not. Do not be afraid, M. Réné; I shall not forget it.”
I had such confidence in M. Drouet, that I did not think it necessary
to ask him to come. I had only to tell him my sorrow, and I knew that
he would come.
As I expected, two hours after, I heard the gallop of a horse. I
rushed to the door, and M. Drouet was there.
He had met M. Fortin as he was coming in the same carriage which had
taken him to the Federation. He had pressed on his steed; he had seen
Marguerite in passing; and in all probability the good priest would
be there in an hour, with his housekeeper, to say the prayers for the
dead by the bedside of Father Descharmes.
M. Drouet wished to lead me away; but, smiling, in the midst of my
tears, “What would my poor uncle say of me on high,” I said, “if any
other hand than mine performed the last sad offices for the dead?”
“Do you feel yourself strong enough for it?” asked M. Drouet.
“Is it not my duty?”
“Without doubt. But one cannot always do one’s duty.”
“I hope that heaven will always give me strength enough to perform
mine.”
“Breathe that prayer night and morning, and it will be of more
benefit than all the prayers printed in the Church Service.”
The burial was to take place at four o’clock in the Cemetery of
Islettes. After it was over, he proposed that I should go with him to
St. Menehould, to pass the night, and in the following morning with a
notary, who would arrange the deceased man’s papers &c., &c.
In the afternoon, at four o’clock, my uncle’s corpse, accompanied by
the whole village of Islettes, followed by me, his sole relative,
and by Drouet, Billard, Guillaume, Mathieu, and Bertrand, his
friends, was placed in its last resting-place, accompanied by the
blessings of the Abbé Fortin, and all those who knew his upright and
irreproachable life.
The funeral over, M. Drouet put the key of the cottage in his own
pocket. Then we mounted into M. Drouet’s cabriolet, and drove off to
St. Menehould.
In the evening, M. Drouet went to seek the notary, who promised to
run over the following day, after breakfast, to open the will, and
make an inventory. On the morrow, at mid-day, in the presence of MM.
Fortin, Drouet, Bertrand, and Mathieu, the will was opened.
It appointed me his sole heir, and at the same time indicated a
cupboard in which would be found, in a bag, two hundred and sixty
louis d’or, which comprised his whole fortune.
It also charged me to give all the little things he had collected,
and which were of no use to me, to the poor of the village of
Islettes; also to give all the implements of the chase, with the
exception of those which pleased me, to his old friends, Flobert and
Lafeuille.
On no account was anything to be sold.
As I was under age, M. Drouet, by my uncle’s wish, became my guardian.
As a matter of course, I immediately handed over to him the two
hundred and sixty louis which my uncle had left me, telling him to
keep them till I came of age.
All being thus arranged, I placed on a wheelbarrow, which Bertrand
lent me, all my carpentry tools, my compasses, my plane, and so on.
Two hours after, I arrived at M. Gerbaut’s. On my entrance, I found
the whole family at supper.
“M. Gerbaut,” said I, “you offered me, if at any time I desired to
work under a master, an apprenticeship—are you inclined to stand by
your agreement?”
“Thanks, my boy, for having thought first of me. But sit down and
eat; it will be time enough to think of work to-morrow.”
“Sit down by my side, my friend,” said Sophie, with a sweet smile,
holding out her hand.
She drew her chair a little nearer to her father’s, and I accepted
the place thus offered.
CHAPTER XXII.
MY NEW LIFE UNDER SOPHIE’S FATHER.
The changes made by death excepted, there is this strange and
touching peculiarity of country life, that, whilst kingdoms are rent,
hedgerows, and fields, and rustics, apparently remain ever the same.
Nearly a year had passed since I last set foot in Father Gerbaut’s
house, and on entering I found everything the same as when I had last
left it; the covers laid in the same places, on the same table, and
for the same number of persons. Not only were material affairs the
same, but the affections remained unaltered. Sophie had said, “Come,
my brother,” and I came. She gave me her hand, and said, “Brother,
you are welcome!”
And yet a great agitation prevailed over the whole surface of France;
all the ancient names of the provinces had been changed. France was
divided into eighty-three departments. One part of Champagne had
taken the names of the Department of the Meuse; the part neighboring
was now the Department of the Marne. The little River Biesme, which
served as a line of demarcation between Germany and France, and,
likewise, between Champagne and Clermontois, fixed the limit of the
two departments. Les Islettes, Clermont, and Varennes were in the
Department of the Meuse.
Municipalities were constituted under the name of corporations; M.
Gerbaut was nominated municipal councillor, and our neighbor, M.
Sauce, grocer, procureur of the corporation.
I say our neighbor, because the two houses were separated only by a
lane.
The two families frequently visited each other. M. Gerbaut and M.
Sauce, with their blushing honors thick upon them, were patriots.
Madame Sauce was a fine woman, but coarse and vulgar, a veritable
dealer in candles, butter, and sugar; rather given to serving short
measure, but otherwise incapable of committing a fraud. The mother
of M. Sauce, an old lady of sixty-three or sixty-four years, was a
Royalist. The children, the eldest of whom was only twelve, were
incapable of having an opinion.
We shall see presently what Sophie’s opinions were.
Opposite us was the tavern of the “Bras d’Or,” belonging to the
brothers Leblanc. Interest made them play a little comedy. As they
had the patronage both of the patriotic young men in the town, and
the Royalist young nobles from the vicinity, the one brother was a
patriot, and the other a Royalist. The elder cried “Vive la nation”
with the young tradesmen, while the younger shouted “Vive le Roi”
with the noblesse.
In the midst of all this, a national decree was propagated, which
caused some uneasiness in the province.
It was the civil constitution of the clergy.
It created an episcopal chair in each department.
It ordered the election of bishops and priests to be conducted after
the fashion of the primitive church: that is to say, that they were
to be elected by a majority of votes; all the salaries of the clergy
were to be paid from the King’s treasury; perquisites were abolished.
The clergy were desired to take an oath to maintain that
constitution; those who would not, were compelled to resign their
benefices in favor of those who would.
If, after being dismissed, they attempted to renew their functions,
they were prosecuted as disturbers of the public peace.
From this arose the troubles in the Church, and the division between
the constitutional priests and those who refused to take the oath.
If one looks back on that great epoch, and on the two remarkable
years of ’89 and ’90, one cannot fail to be astonished. Can any one
explain the precautions taken by nature, that the men and the events
should arrive at the same time for that awful result which followed?
In 1762, M. de Choiseul suppressed the order of the Jesuits; that
is to say, deprived the Church of its wisest and most powerful
supporters.
Afterwards, in the years ’68, ’69, and ’70, the Revolution produced
Chateaubriand, Bonaparte, Hoch, Marceau, Joubert, Cuvier, Saint
Martin, Saint Simon, Lesneur, Les Cheniers, Geoffrey Saint Hilaire,
Bichat, Lainancourt, all of whom, in 1792, were in the bloom of life
and genius.
Whence came those births sublime and terrible, produced in the space
of three or four years? Whence came that burst of genius prepared
twenty-four or twenty-five years before to second political eruption?
Whence came that body of superior men who closed the eighteenth and
opened the nineteenth century? Whence came that phalanx more than
human, and who raised the hand to swear to the constitution before
the altar of their country?
Let us forget the death of Mirabeau, the last upholder of the
monarchy, whom heaven struck in an unexpected manner, at the moment
he forsook the cause of the people; and who, in dying, counselled
the flight of the king—a flight which, had it succeeded, would have
saved the life of his Majesty; but successful or unsuccessful, must
inevitably have brought the monarchy to the ground.
All knew not the cause of that reason or corruption on the part of
Mirabeau; whether it was that his aristocratic instincts, kept under
for a time by his father’s severity, had sprung into light on contact
with royalty, or not, seemed to be doubtful.
The Queen was a great enchantress. She was a Circe, fatal to those
who stopped not their ears, to avoid listening to the blandishments
of her sweet voice. She had the fatal gift, which Mary Stuart
possessed, of leading all her friends to death.
The end of Mirabeau was announced in the provinces almost at the same
time as his illness.
It was on the 20th of March that the news of his illness was bruited
about in Paris. It appeared that on the 27th, two days previous,
being at his house at Argenteuil, he was seized with a violent
cholic, accompanied with almost unendurable agony. He sent for his
friend and physician, the famous Cabanis, and distinctly refused
to see any other. This was wrong, perhaps; a hospital surgeon or a
practised physician might have saved him.
As soon as the news was received, the crowd pressed to the door of
the sick man’s house.
Barnave, his enemy, almost his rival, who would have died, slain by
the Queen, for an interview like that which Mirabeau had had with
her, came to see him conducting a deputation of Jacobins.
The priest came, and would not be denied. This was exactly what
Mirabeau feared—the influence of priests upon his dying volition.
They refused admission to the sick man’s chamber, saying that
Mirabeau wished only to see his friend M. Talleyrand, to whom,
he said, he could confess, without any great fear of virtuous
indignation.
For some months he had been suffering, he believed, from the effects
of poison. Administered by whom? He would have been puzzled to tell
that himself. All the world, except the parties interested, knew
about his interview with the Queen at St. Cloud, in the month of May,
1790. Whether his malady was natural, or the effects of a crime, he
took no measures whatever to arrest its progress.
Vigorous of body, perhaps more vigorous in imagination, he had passed
the night of the 15th of March in an orgie, the component parts of
which were women and flowers, perhaps the sole two things that he
loved. He used money simply to gratify his tastes in those respects.
On the morning of the 2nd of April, after a night of agony, which
inspired the famous prophecy, “I carry with me the mourning of
monarchy; its remains will be the prey of factions,”—awakened from
the bosom of grief, if one can use the term, by a cannon-shot, he
cried.
He summoned his valet, was shaved, washed, and perfumed all over his
body. After his last toilette was completed, opening his window to
admit the young April sun, which was brightening the first blossoms
on the trees, he murmured, smiling, “Oh, sun, if thou art not God
himself, thou art his cousin german!”
Afterwards, his last insupportable suffering seized him. He could
not speak, but snatched a pen, and wrote plainly the one word
_Dormir_—“Sleep.”
Did he ask for death, like Hamlet, or only for opium to soothe his
passage from one world into the other?
At about half-past eight, he moved, lifted his eyes to heaven, and
heaved a sigh. It was his last!
In the evening, the theatres were closed, as if some great national
calamity had occurred.
The mask was taken from that immobile face; from that powerful head
which Camille Desmoulins called a magazine of ideas exploded by
death. His placid brow expressed the serenity of his soul, and his
face bore no trace of either grief or remorse.
There is no doubt but that Mirabeau, when he promised the Queen all
his support, fully intended to keep that promise, not only as a
gentleman but as a citizen.
The funeral ceremony took place on the 4th of April; four hundred
thousand persons followed in the procession. Two instruments were
heard for the first time on that occasion, filling the breasts of the
spectators with their vibrating notes: they were the trombone, and
the tom-tom.
At eight in the evening, he was placed in the temporary tomb provided
for him in the Pantheon.
We say temporary, because his body remained there only three years.
It was removed at the time when the Convention, having slain the
Jacobins, and slain itself, having no more living to slay, determined
to dishonor the dead.
It was ordered that the corpse of Honoré Riquette de Mirabeau,
traitor to the people, traitor to his country, and sold to royalty,
should be removed from the Pantheon.
The order was executed, and the corpse of Mirabeau was thrown into
the criminals’ cemetery, at Clamart.
It is there that he now sleeps the sleep of hope, waiting the day
when France, an indulgent—nay, let us rather say an impartial mother,
will give him, not a Pantheon, but a tomb; not a temple, but a
_mausoleum_.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE DRAGOONS.
During the ten months that I stayed with M. Gerbaut, my life was
monotonous in the extreme.
As I was an excellent workman, he gave me, as well as board and
lodging, a salary of thirty francs a month, and often gave me to
understand that he wished that I were a few years older, that he
might give me his daughter in marriage, and surrender to me his
business. But the fact was, I was a year younger than Sophie.
But it was not that only which rendered a union impossible between
us; it was that invincible sorrow, denoting a passion hidden in the
depths of her heart.
My opinion was, that the young man for whom she entertained this
hidden feeling was the Viscount de Malmy.
Sophie gave me all that she had promised—sisterly love.
It was impossible to be kinder or more affectionate to me than she
was. On Sunday, I invariably took her out for a walk, and she never
would accept any other arm than mine; but this friendship did not
induce her to confide to me the cause of the sorrow which I could
plainly see was preying upon her constitution.
Sometimes the young nobles came, and, as I have told you, put up at
the Brothers Leblanc.
On those days, Sophie always found a pretext for not going out with
me, taking care that the pretext was plausible.
She shut herself up in her chamber, the window of which was exactly
opposite the window of the “Bras d’Or,” and stayed there the whole
time that the young nobles were at Varennes.
More than once, under these circumstances, I had half a mind to get
up in the night, and see if the darkness hid any mystery with regard
to Sophie and the Viscount, but I always had strength enough to
resist the temptation. I thought to myself I had no right to surprise
any of her secrets, which, notwithstanding our friendship, she had
not thought fit to confide in me.
One night, whilst passing along the corridor, I fancied I heard two
voices in Sophie’s room; but instead of stopping to listen, I felt
ashamed of the action which jealousy prompted me to commit, and I
determined, notwithstanding the pangs I suffered, that Sophie should
have no reason to suppose that I suspected anything.
My grief, undoubtedly, was great; but my pity for her was greater,
and I felt that strong as my anguish was, she was preparing for
herself an after day of sorrow and remorse.
From the 1st to the 15th of June, the visits of M. Malmy and M.
Dampierre were more frequent than usual.
An instinctive hatred made me keep aloof from M. de Malmy; but the
Count, in memory of Father Descharmes, never met me without speaking.
But, for the most part, they did not come as far as the Rue de
la Basse Cour. M. de Malmy alone, and his friend the Viscount de
Courtemont, went to the “Bras d’Or;” the Count de Haus stayed on
the top of the Hill des Réligieuses with one of his friends, an old
Chevalier of St. Louis, named the Baron de Préfontaine.
On the 20th of June, about three o’clock in the afternoon, M. Jean
Baptiste arrived.
In the course of the ten months since I had last been at Varennes, he
had paid two or three visits to his friends Billaud and Guillaume,
and had never failed to come and see me, and to invite me to take
breakfast with him, as the case might be.
This time he had a more mysterious air than usual; he engaged a
private room at the Brothers Leblanc, ordered dinner for four, and
asked his two friends to come and join us immediately at the “Bras
d’Or.”
For some time the horizon had been lowering.
It was evident that there was some counterplot hatching.
On the 1st of March we had heard of the affair of the Gentlemen of
the Dagger.
On the 20th of April, we had heard that the King, intending to go to
St. Cloud, had been stopped by the people, and was afraid to leave
the Tuileries.
We knew, vaguely, what was going on in Italy. The Count D’Artois was
at Mantua with the Emperor Leopold, asking for an invasion of France.
The King did not ask that invasion; but D’Artois knew well that he
would be glad of it. A year before, everybody saw, from the letter
from the Count de Provence to M. de Favras, how little place the King
held in the calculations of his brothers.
The young King of Sweden, Gustavus, after having been the enemy of
Catharine, conquered by her, became her friend, and at the same time
her agent, and was at Aix, in Savoy, publicly offering his sword to
the King; while the Count de Fersen, an intimate of the Queen’s, was
carrying on a correspondence with M. de Bouillé.
People said that for the last three months the Queen had caused to be
made a trousseau for herself and children.
They said, likewise, that she had caused to be made a magnificent
travelling outfit, sufficient for at least an absence of six months.
Her friend, M. de Fersen, they said, was superintending the
construction of an English chaise, capable of holding from ten to
twelve persons.
All these rumors tended to one end, and caused the two last
appearances of M. Drouet at Varennes.
His post-house was situated on one of the short cuts to the frontier;
and by the road many nobles had emigrated, as if to point out the
proper route for the King.
A new event had taken place, which had appeared to M. Drouet of
sufficient importance to warrant a consultation with his friends.
This was the event I speak of.
On the 20th of June, in the morning, a detachment of hussars, with
brown dolmans (some said that they were a part of De Lauzun’s
regiment, others that they were a part of Esterhazy’s), had entered
St. Menehould by the Clermont road.
At that time, when the troops were billeted on the tradespeople, the
authorities were generally informed of their arrival two or three
days in advance.
In this case, the authorities had received no advice.
M. Drouet had spoken to the officer commanding the detachment. This
officer, whom he remembered to have seen two months before passing
between St. Menehould, Châlons, and Varennes, was called M. Goguelot.
Recognised by M. Drouet, this officer had no hesitation in chatting
with him. He said he had been sent with his forty men to form an
escort for a treasure.
While M. Jean Baptiste was talking with him, a messenger arrived from
the municipality, asking the reason of his coming unannounced and
unexpected.
“Don’t trouble yourself about nothing,” replied the officer;
“myself and my men will sleep here; but as we set off in a hurry
on a particular service, we are utterly without rations. We will
pay all our expenses, so as not to be a burden on the tradespeople.
To-morrow, at daybreak, we start for Pont-de-Somme-Vesles.”
The messenger took this response to the authorities; but they,
not being satisfied with it, sent him back with a request that M.
Goguelot would step up to the Mayor’s house.
He accordingly went there, M. Drouet following.
When asked the reason of his march, the officer exhibited an order
from M. de Bouillé, commanding him to be at Pont-de-Somme-Vesles on
the 21st of June, to take charge of, and escort some treasure which
was there, to St. Menehould, where he was to surrender his trust to
Colonel Dandoin, of the First Regiment of Dragoons.
They then asked where were M. Dandoin’s dragoons.
“He follows me,” he replied; “and will arrive here to-morrow morning.”
The interrogatory was not pushed any farther; but M. Drouet was not
satisfied, so he had run over to Varennes, to inform his companions
of the event, and to hold a consultation with them.
Just as he had finished his tale, the younger brother Leblanc entered.
He had come from Stenay.
“Do you wish to see some beautiful horses, M. Jean Baptiste?” asked
he.
“I should like nothing better,” replied Drouet, “especially if they
are for sale, as I want a remount.”
“I don’t think that they are for sale; but what is astonishing is
that they are harnessed in relays.”
“Where are they?”
“At the ‘Grand Monarque,’ with Father Gautier.”
M. Jean Baptiste looked at us.
“It is well, Victor,” he said; “I will go there after dinner. Have
you any other news?”
“No; there is a movement going on among the troops at Stenay, but
there is nothing astonishing in that. I should not be surprised if we
received an announcement of their arrival here to-morrow.”
“Nor I,” said Drouet.
We finished dinner, and entered into the Rue de la Basse Cour,
crossed the bridge, and arrived at the “Grand Monarque,” where we
found six horses being carefully attended to by the two grooms.
“Those are fine horses. Whose are they, my friend?”
“My master’s!” insolently replied one of the grooms.
“The name of your master is a secret, I suppose?” queried M. Drouet.
“That depends upon who asks me.”
M. Guillaume frowned.
“This is an insolent scoundrel,” said he, “who merits being taught
how lackeys should speak to men!”
“Will you teach me?” asked the groom.
“Why not?” asked Guillaume, going a step nearer to him.
M. Jean Baptiste stopped him by taking hold of his arm.
“My dear Guillaume,” said he, “don’t put yourself out; perhaps this
good man is forbidden to speak, and has come like M. Goguelot, for
the treasure.”
“Do you know M. Goguelot, and why we are here?”
“You are here for the treasure which the hussars are bringing from
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, to hand over to the dragoons who were awaiting
them at St. Menehould.”
“If you are one of us, monsieur,” said the groom, touching his hat,
“I have no reason to refuse telling you to whom the horses belong.
They are the property of the Duke of Choiseul.”
“You have said well,” said Drouet, laughing; “and we were going to
quarrel with one of our friends.”
“If you are a friend, monsieur, you might tell me whom you are, as I
have told you about the horses?”
“You are right. I have no motive for concealing my name. I am Jean
Baptiste Drouet, postmaster at St. Menehould.”
“As you have said, you are _probably_ one of us.”
At this moment, Father Gautier stepped out from the kitchen door.
M. Drouet thought he had better say no more to the groom, for fear of
exciting suspicion.
“Ah, ha! Father Gautier,” said he; “your kitchen appears to be in
full blow.”
The fires in fact, were at their highest.
“It is so, M. Drouet; but the astonishing part of it is, that I do
not know for whom the cooking is going on.”
“You don’t know for whom?”
“No. I received on the 14th, an order from the military commandant
to prepare a dinner for five o’clock, and it is now the 24th, and no
one has arrived to eat it; but as it is a written command, I am not
afraid, for eaten or not, the dinners are always paid for.”
M. Drouet again looked at us.
“Perhaps they are some great lords about to emigrate,” said M. Jean
Baptiste.
“And who take away our money,” replied Father Gautier.
“In any case, they will leave you a little of theirs. Six or eight
dinners, at how much a head?”
“Three crowns, not including the wine.”
“And for how many people?”
“Eight or ten; the number was not definitely arranged.”
“Father Gautier,” said M. Drouet, “you will yet die rich.”
He then shook hands with him, smiling.
We left the house, and soon found ourselves in the street.
“My friend,” said M. Drouet, “without doubt, something extraordinary
is about to take place. I shall return to Saint Menehould without
losing a moment. Guillaume will go with me. When you get home, watch
day and night. Sleep with one eye open, and hold yourselves in
readiness for whatever may happen.”
We returned quickly to the “Bras d’Or;” M. Drouet saddled his horse
with his own hands. M. Guillaume borrowed one of the elder of the
Leblancs, and they both set off for St. Menehould at a sharp trot,
recommending us both to keep our eyes and ears well open.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE NIGHT OF THE 21ST OF AUGUST, 1791.
One can easily understand that it was late when we sought our
respective couches, and that we rose early the next morning, having
kept one eye open all the time that we slept.
When I say we, of course I speak of M. Billaud and the elder Leblanc,
whom M. Drouet had taken into his confidence.
About eleven in the morning we heard that a detachment of hussars had
been seen on the road from Stenay.
I left my work, giving a few words of explanation to M. Gerbaut and
Mdlle. Sophie. They partook of the general agitation which pervaded
the town, or rather the air which seemed tremendous with coming
events.
Mdlle. Sophie was very much excited, especially when I announced
the approach of the hussars. Two days previously, MM. Malmy and
Courtemont had arrived at Varennes.
I crossed the bridge and entered the Grand Place on one side, at the
same moment as the hussars entered it at the other.
They stopped a moment on the Place, spoke to the groom, who had
arrived the evening before with the relays, which, by superior
orders, they had stabled in the old Convent of the Cordeliers.
They were commanded by a tall officer of effeminate appearance, and
blonde complexion. He spoke French with a very strong German accent.
His name was M. de Rokrey.
He put up in the Place, not at an hotel, but with a tradesman of the
town, to whom he bore a letter of recommendation.
Behind me a great number of the inhabitants of the High Town were
descending and forming themselves in groups with those of the Low
Town.
About one o’clock, two young officers arrived by the same route, and
stopped to speak with him who commanded the detachment.
One of them approached me, and asked if I knew the whereabouts of
Neuvilly.
I told him it was half-way between Clermont and Varennes, and pointed
out the direction to take.
“Can you tell me, sir,” said he, “the cause of the agitation of the
people?”
“The movements of the troops about the city for the last two days. It
is reported that they are to form a convoy for a treasure, and the
inhabitants are curious.”
The two officers looked at each other.
“Can one get to Neuvilly,” asked one of the two, “without passing
through the town?”
“Impossible!” replied I. “A canal of great width intersects the road;
and even if your horses could swim across they would not be able to
mount the opposite bank.”
The officer turned round to his friend.
“What will you do? It appears that the relays must pass through the
town.”
“We have plenty of time,” replied his friend; “the courier will
precede the carriage two hours.”
The two officers thanked me for my information, and proceeded to the
“Hotel du Grand Monarque,” in the court of which they dismounted,
having thrown the bridles of their horses to the stable boys in
attendance.
It was evident that the persons expected would arrive from the
opposite side of the city—that is to say, the side on which Paris
lies.
It was, therefore, but lost time to stay in the Low Town.
I walked up to the High Town, crossed the bridge, and returned to M.
Gerbaut’s just as they were sitting down to dinner. Notwithstanding
the stifling heat, the Place de Latry was crowded.
During dinner, Father Gerbaut lost himself in vain conjectures as to
what was going on. Sophie, on the contrary, said not a word, scarcely
lifted her eyes from her plate, and ate little or nothing.
Not being authorized by M. Drouet to tell what I knew, I also held my
peace.
In the meantime, in order that the reader may fully understand what
was about to take place, it is necessary for me to describe the scene
of action.
Varennes, as I before told you, is divided into two parts, the High
Town and the Low Town. The High Town was called the Château.
On coming from Clermont, you enter Varennes by a straight road,
which, for more than two leagues, has not a single curve in it, with
the exception of where it enters Neuvilly.
All of a sudden as you approach those scattered houses which
always foretell a city, the road takes a sudden turn to the right,
and falls, as it were, into the midst of the city by the Rue des
Réligieuses.
This descent ends at the Place de Latry.
That Place is, or rather was at the time of which I am writing,
entirely blocked for two-thirds of its length by the Church of St.
Gengoulf, the side of which touched the right side of the Place (I
speak of the right side with reference to Paris), and the façades of
which overlooked a cemetery, which, stretching from the side of the
Rue de l’Horloge, left a passage of about thirty yards open to the
sky.
Another passage, intended for carriages, was formed, but on account
of an arch stretching over it, it was impossible for vehicles loaded
too high to pass underneath.
Emerging from under that arch, one stood facing, five or six paces
off, the Rue de la Basse Cour. On entering, you could see on the
right of him the “Hotel du Bras d’Or.”
A little further on to the left stood the house of M. Sauce,
Procureur de la Commune.
I have already said that his house was only separated from M.
Gerbaut’s by a passage.
The Rue de la Basse Cour descends rapidly to a little Place, where it
joins the Rue Neuve and the Rue St. John.
A little running stream of rather deep but clear water, over a pebbly
bottom, intersects the Place. A bridge, narrower than the one you
would find there to-day, joins the two parts of the town—that is to
say, the High and Low Town. The bridge crossed, and the corner of the
“Grand Monarque” rounded, you find yourself in the Grand Place.
It was on that Place that the hussars were stationed before they took
up their lodgings in the old Convent of the Cordeliers, and it was at
the “Grand Monarque,” which bore the effigy of Louis XVI, that the
relays stopped; also the two officers, whom I have since discovered
were M. de Bouillé, the younger, and M. de Raigecourt; and where, for
eight days, they had prepared dinner for an imaginary traveller who
was always expected, and who never came.
This being all explained, the reader will be able the better to
understand the various scenes of the drama, which will, in due time,
be laid before him.
Tired of seeing nothing fresh, though the day had been passed in
excitement, at the moment the clock struck eight I quitted the house
of M. Gerbaut. My intention was to walk along the road leading to
Neuvilly, and if I saw nothing, to return home, go to bed, and
patiently await the morrow.
Many houses had their windows open, and were lighted up.
The “Hotel du Bras d’Or” was one of these.
Some young townsmen were playing at billiards on the first floor.
They were MM. Coquilard, Justin, Georges, and Soucin. Two travellers
staying at the hotel by chance were playing with them. These were M.
Thevenin, of Islettes, and M. Delion, of Montfaucon.
I passed under the arch, and entered the Place; two or three houses
alone were lighted up.
The crowd had dispersed; not a light was burning in the Rue des
Réligieuses, with the exception of two lanterns, which only made the
darkness in the street visible.
I walked up the street, and stopped on the summit, whence I could see
the whole town.
All seemed to sleep. The Low Town betrayed, especially on the Place,
no more life.
I saw torches waving in the direction of the “Grand Monarque.”
I was occupied in watching them, when I fancied that I heard the
gallop of a horse.
I laid myself down with my ear to the ground.
The noise was now more distinct, on account, no doubt, of the horse
having passed from the earth on to the stones.
I jumped up, convinced that a horseman was approaching.
And not only that, I fancied that I heard in the distance the rumble
of the wheels of a carriage.
The event expected all day, and watched for by night, was about to
happen.
I hid myself in the angle of the wall.
The gallop approached rapidly.
Presently I distinguished, in the midst of the road, a horseman.
When the straggling houses came in view, the horseman stopped
indecisively.
It was evident that he knew not whether to stop or continue his route.
For the moment, I thought of showing myself, and offering to guide
them; but, on second thoughts, I considered it the least likely mode
by which to gain information.
I therefore stayed where I was, doubly hidden by the night and the
wall.
The horseman dismounted, passed the bridle of his horse over his arm,
and walked on a few paces, knocking at the doors of the different
houses to see if they would open.
At last he knocked at No. 4. That opened.
It was the property of a small householder, called Jourdan.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” asked a voice.
“Pardon, monsieur,” returned the courier: “but is this Varennes?”
“Did you wake me up to ask me such a question as that? You are
laughing at me!”
“Excuse me, monsieur, but I am a stranger here, and wish to know if I
have really arrived at Varennes.”
“You have, monsieur. If you have come for beds, find them, and leave
me to my sleep. Good night!”
“Your pardon, monsieur,” said the courier; “I came not here to sleep,
but am in advance of a carriage which expects relays at Varennes.”
“I am sorry for you; but it is no use expecting relays at Varennes,
for we do not possess a post-house.”
“I know that, monsieur.”
“Why did you ask me, then?”
A woman’s voice was heard.
“Come to bed, Martin,” said she. “You ought to see that he is only
making fun of you.”
“You hear—my wife calls me!”
He tried to close the door, but the unknown stopped him by placing
his arm in the aperture.
“Ha, monsieur!” said the tradesman; “what does this mean? Do you wish
to do me an injury?”
“Do not be frightened; I only wish to ask you a question.”
“You have asked me ten already.”
“I know that I am at Varennes, thanks to you; I know that there is no
post-house, but I knew that before. Having been so kind as to answer
those questions, perhaps you will not object to one more?”
“How? Did not you tell me that you were preceding a carriage to
Varennes?”
“No doubt; but you have not allowed me to continue. A relay ought to
be ready opposite the first houses of Neuvilly; I wished to ask—have
you seen that relay?”
“Oh, that is another thing; you should have begun to speak in that
manner!”
“Have you seen them?”
“The relay?”
“Yes, the relay.”
“No, monsieur, I have not.”
“You must tell me all that you know, at once,” cried the impatient
courier.
“I have told you about the relay, but you did not ask me till just
now.”
The same woman’s voice was again heard, crying out afresh. “Make him
go, husband,” she said; “he is only making a fool of you—he is doing
it for a wager.”
“You hear, sir,” said the man; “my wife says you are doing it for a
wager.”
“Nothing of the kind, I assure you, monsieur. Thank you for your
information; you can now shut your door, and reseek your wife.”
The tradesman slammed his door in a rage.
“Shall I wait here?” soliloquised the unknown.
He was not long kept waiting. During the dialogue on the door-step,
the carriage was rapidly drawing nigh; not only did he hear the
wheels, but the neighing of the horses.
The courier, placing himself in the midst of the road, awaited its
arrival.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE TRAGEDY OF ROYALTY BEGINS.
Scarcely five minutes had passed, when I began to distinguish a
black phantom; and soon after I saw the sparks flying from under the
horses’ hoofs.
As the mass approached, I saw that it was composed of two carriages.
The first was an ordinary cabriolet; the second, an immense
travelling carriage.
On seeing the road blocked by one man, on foot, holding a horse by
the bridle, the postilion cracked his whip, and shouted to the horses
to go on.
But the unknown, in an imperative voice, cried out “Stop!” lifting
his hand at the same time. “I wish to speak to the travellers in the
second carriage!”
“Oh, Valory!” cried a voice from the first; “is anything wrong?”
“No, madame; only a slight mistake.”
Then approaching the second carriage, “Pardon,” said he; “we have
arrived at Varennes, and there is no relay.”
“How!—no relay? What is the reason of it?” replied a female voice.
“I know not; but I am very nervous about it.”
“Wake up, monsieur,” said the same voice, with an impatient gesture.
“Do you not hear what M. Valory says?”
“What does he say?” replied a masculine voice.
“He says that we are at Varennes, and that there are no relays.”
“Has he asked?”
“For a quarter of an hour I knocked; for another quarter, I talked, I
asked, and commanded fruitlessly.”
“Let us get out,” said the masculine voice, “and take a look about
for ourselves.”
The door opened.
“No,” said the female voice; “let me get down; I will manage it,”—and
she leaped nimbly to the earth.
“Madame—madame!” said the voice of a child; “let me get out with you.”
“No, Louis,” said the lady; “stay in the carriage with your papa; I
shall come back in a moment. Give me your arm, M. de Valory.”
The courier approached, respectfully, his hat in his hand, and
offered his arm to the lady who asked it.
“Here,” said she; “just here is a door opening.”
But as she spoke the words, though in the slightest degree open, it
was shut again.
M. de Valory jumped forward, and, at the risk of cutting his hand,
seized the door on his side, and pulled it violently backward.
The door yielded to the force used, and showed a man of fifty or
fifty-five years, holding a candle in his hand. He was attired in a
dressing-gown, and had his naked feet thrust into slippers.
This was the same M. Préfontaine whom I have already spoken of, and
with whom M. Dampierre stayed when he came to Varennes.
“What do you want, Monsieur?” asked the astonished old Chevalier;
“and why do you break open my door?”
“Monsieur,” replied the courier, “we do not know Varennes; we are _en
route_ for Stenay. Will you be kind enough to point out the road we
ought to follow?”
“If I render you this service, perhaps I shall be compromised!”
“You, I am sure, will never refuse to render a service to a lady who
is in danger.”
“Monsieur,” said the old gentleman, “the lady who is behind you is
not simply a woman.” Then lowering his voice, he said, “It is the
Queen!”
M. de Valory tried to deny it; but the Queen, taking him by the arm,
“Lose no time in discussion,” she said; “tell the King alone that we
are discovered.”
At this moment, two other young gentlemen, dressed as couriers,
jumped down from the box of the chaise.
“Sire,” said M. Valory, “the Queen desires me to tell you that she is
recognised.”
“By whom?” asked the King.
“By an old man, of courteous manners, who, though a little timid, has
the air of a gentleman.”
“Ask him to come and speak to me,” said the King.
M. Valory transmitted the invitation to the gentleman.
He went to the carriage, showing signs of great apprehension.
The Queen followed him; her face, made visible by the light of the
candle which he held, expressed supreme disdain.
“Your name, sir?” asked the King.
“De Préfontaine,” replied the interrogated, hesitatingly.
“Who are you?”
“Major of cavalry, sire, and Chevalier of the Military Order of St.
Louis.”
“In your double capacity as major of cavalry, and Chevalier of the
Order of St. Louis, you have twice sworn fealty to your King. It is,
therefore, your duty to aid me in the difficulty in which I find
myself.”
The Major murmured some words; the Queen stamped her foot with
impatience.
“Ah, sire!” said she; “see you not that the Major is afraid.”
The King looked as if he had not heard her remark.
“Monsieur,” continued he, “have you heard that a detachment of
hussars, and relays of horses, await a treasure which must pass
through Varennes?”
“Yes, sire,” replied M. de Préfontaine.
“Where are the hussars? Where are the horses?”
“In the Low Town, sire.”
“And the officers?”
“At the ‘Hotel du Grand Monarque.’”
“Monsieur, I thank you,” said the King. “You can return to your
house; no one has seen you—no one has heard you; therefore, no harm
can happen to you.”
The Major took the hint, and retired, after having made a profound
obeisance.
“Messieurs,” said the King, addressing the two young gentlemen who
had dismounted from the box-seat, “take your places. You, M. de
Valory, jump on your horse, and gallop on to the ‘Grand Monarque.’
You hear that our escort is there.”
The two young gentlemen took their places, and M. de Valory vaulted
into his saddle.
The King and Queen re-entered the carriage, the door of which was
shut by one of the postilions.
“Postilions!” cried all three gentlemen, with one voice, “to the
‘Hotel du Grand Monarque.’”
The men whipped up their horses; but at the same instant, a man,
covered with dust, on a horse flecked with foam, seemed to spring
from the ground, and rushing diagonally across the road, cried out,
in a voice of thunder, “Stop, postilions! You drive the King!”
I uttered a cry of astonishment, for I recognized the voice of M.
Drouet.
The postilions who had hitherto been lashing their horses, stopped,
as if stricken by a cannon-shot.
The Queen felt, without doubt, that it was a moment for decisive
action.
“Order them! Command them!” she cried, to the King.
The King put his head out of the carriage window.
“Who are you, sir,” said he, “that you dare to give orders here?”
“A simple citizen, sire,” replied M. Drouet; “but,” continued he,
raising himself in his stirrups, and stretching out his arm, “I speak
in the name of the nation and of the law. Postilions! not a step
farther, on your lives!”
“Postilions!” cried the King, “to the ‘Grand Monarque!’ It is I who
command you!”
“To the ‘Grand Monarque!’” cried the three gentlemen.
“Postilions!” cried M. Drouet, “you know me well, and are accustomed
to obey me. I am Jean Baptiste Drouet, postmaster at St. Menehould.”
M. de Valory saw the indecision of the postilions—ten men stopped by
one. He saw that it was necessary to slay that one, and, drawing his
_couteau de chasse_, he went at him.
In a moment, I jumped out of my hiding-place, and seized the bridle
of his horse.
The horse, being frightened, reared, and threw its rider.
M. Drouet recognised me.
“Ah! is it you Réné?” he exclaimed. “Follow me!”
Sticking his spurs into his horse, he seemed to sink into the ground,
so quickly did he disappear down the declivity of the Rue des
Réligieuses.
“Here I am! Here I am, M. Drouet!” cried I, following quickly behind
him.
M. Drouet dashed down the Rue des Réligieuses, crossed, like a flash
of lightning the Place Latry, plunged under the arch, and reappeared
in a moment on the other side, in front of the “Hotel Bras d’Or,”
running up against another cavalier as he did so.
“Is it thou, Drouet?” said the cavalier.
“Is it thou, Guillaume?” cried Drouet.
“Yes!” “Yes!” each replied simultaneously.
Both dismounted, that they might pass under the entrance of the inn.
In the meantime, the billiard-players, hearing a noise, rushed to the
window, to see what it meant.
“Be on your guard!” cried M. Drouet. “The King, with his family, are
trying to escape! They are travelling in two carriages. Wake up M.
Sauce!—cry ‘Fire! fire!’ Guillaume and I will guard the bridge.”
At this moment, I arrived, and dashed against the door of the
Procureur de la Commune, crying as loud as I could, “Fire! fire!” as
M. Drouet had recommended.
In the meantime, he and Guillaume had disappeared down the Rue Neuve.
At the end of the bridge, they encountered a cart filled with
furniture.
“Whose cart is that?” cried M. Drouet.
“Mine,” replied the driver.
“Ah, is it yours, Regnier?” said Guillaume. “You, I know, are a good
patriot. Turn your cart across the bridge; it will stop the passage
of the king.”
“The King?”
“Yes; the King. He wishes to get to the Place of the ‘Grand
Monarque,’ where the hussars await him.”
“I have seen them,” said Guillaume.
“And I also,” said Regnier.
“Now to work,” said the two young men.
“Yes; to work!” replied the proprietor of the furniture.
And all three with their united efforts, managed to upset the cart
across the bridge.
When the operation was finished, they listened.
They heard the rumble of the carriages, which descended the Rue des
Réligieuses at full speed, at the same time the cry of “Fire! fire!”
burst upon their ears.
I will now tell you what occurred on the high road, after M. Drouet
and I left the two carriages, as well as I can from the description
given me afterwards by M. de Préfontaine, who, though he had closed
his door, took good care to open his window, and, therefore, saw and
heard all that passed.
M. de Valory, when he fell, did not abandon his hold on the bridle of
his horse, and as he tumbled on soft ground, he escaped with a few
bruises.
He was, therefore, soon again mounted, and, threatening the
postilions with his raised whip, he cried, “Well, wretches, have you
understood?”
“Certainly; and have you?”
“What?”
“That which M. Drouet said. He told us not to go any farther.”
“You dare to quote M. Drouet, when the King commands!”
“Get rid of the three scoundrels!” said one of the young gentlemen on
the box, “and let us drive the carriage ourselves.”
“Gentlemen!” cried the Queen, who saw that there was going to be
bloodshed.
Then to the postilions—“Gentlemen,” she said, in her softest voice,
“I do not order, I entreat. Fifty louis to each one of you, if you
drive us safely to the ‘Grand Monarque.’”
Frightened of the swords of the gentlemen, and melted by the entreaty
of the Queen, the postilions set off at a gallop.
But they had lost ten minutes, and these ten minutes M. Drouet had
turned to profit.
They dashed on, but were obliged to avoid the arch, for fear of
breaking their heads, so they turned round the church, and began to
descend the Rue Basse Cour.
But before they could execute that manœuvre, their course was
suddenly arrested.
The cabriolet, as we have said, preceded the chaise; but scarcely
had it turned out of the Place, when the bridles of the horses were
seized by two men. These were the elder Leblanc, and M. Thevenin, of
Islettes.
That first carriage contained but two maids of honor to the
Queen—Mesdames Brunier and De Neuville.
“Messieurs! messieurs!” cried they; “what is your will?”
At this moment, a man advanced towards the cabriolet. He was the
Procureur de la Commune, M. Sauce, who, awakened from his sleep had
sallied out, determined to do his duty.
“Excuse me, ladies,” said he, “but, without doubt, you have
passports?”
“They are with the people in the other carriage,” replied Madame de
Neuville.
The cabriolet having stopped, the chaise was forced to do likewise;
thus it was completely blockaded. MM. Drouet, Guillaume, and Regnier,
having finished barricading the bridge, rushed to the spot. There
were four persons, armed with guns—namely, our four billiard-players,
Coquillard, Justin, Soucin, and Delion; a fifth had arrived—namely,
Billaud, who had heard the noise; and a sixth, M. Bellay, opened his
door, and seemed not less ardent than the others.
All at once, I felt my arm grasped by a trembling hand, and the voice
of Sophie whispered in my ear “For the love of me, Réné, do not
meddle in this matter!”
If M. Drouet had required my assistance, I am afraid that he would
have triumphed over Sophie; but he did not, as he was incurring no
present danger; so I stood silent, motionless at the corner of the
street, with Sophie on my arm.
M. Gerbaut’s window opened, and we heard him ask what was the matter.
All the windows and doors in the street opened one after the other,
the cries of “Fire! fire!” having alarmed all, and made them anxious
to see what was the matter.
During this time, M. Sauce had been approaching the chaise; and as if
he knew not who the travellers were—“Who are you?”
“I am the Baroness de Korff,” replied Madame de Tourzel, governess of
the Dauphin.
“Where are you going?”
“To Frankfort, with my two children, my two sisters, my steward, and
my two female attendants. The latter are in the first carriage.”
“Madame,” said Sauce, “you are going the wrong way to Frankfort—but
that is not the question. Have you a passport?”
Madame de Tourzel drew the passport from her pocket, and presented it
to the Procureur de la Commune.
The passport was correct. It was, in fact, that of Madame de Korff,
which M. de Fersen had given to the Queen.
M. Sauce took the passport, which the false Baroness handed him; and,
by the light of a lantern which an officious bystander offered him,
began to reconnoitre the King.
The king, no doubt, wounded by the mark of disrespect, tried to make
some resistance.
“Who are you, sir?” asked he of the magistrate. “What is your rank?
Are you only a National Guard?”
“I am Procureur de la Commune,” replied M. Sauce.
The King, whether dumbfounded by the force of these words, or
conceiving that the response was sufficient, made no further
objections.
The procureur threw his eyes over the passport, and addressing, not
the King, but the false Baroness de Korff,—“Madame,” said he, “it is
too late to _viser_ a passport to-night; and, on the other hand, it
is my duty to detain you!”
The Queen interposed.
“Why so, sir?” she demanded in an imperative manner.
“Because, did I permit you to continue your route, I should be
running a risk, on account of the reports that are flying about.”
“Pray, sir, to what reports do you allude?”
“The report of the flight of the King and his family,” replied Sauce,
fixedly regarding the King.
The travellers were aghast. The Queen drew back into the shadow of
the carriage.
All this time, the passport was being examined, in a public room in
the “Grand Monarque,” by the light of two candles. A member of the
council remarked that the passport was correct, since it had been
signed by the King and the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
“Yes,” remarked Drouet, who had arrived with Guillaume and Regnier
during the discussion, “but it is not signed by the President of the
National Assembly!”
“How?” said a voice. “Why should it be signed by him?”
“Certainly, it should be,” said Drouet, “considering that France is
a nation—considering that it has appointed deputies to maintain its
rights. The true King of France is he who sat on a seat as lofty as
the King’s at the Champ de Mars—not only the veritable, but the more
than King!”
All were silent. No one could oppose such logic as that. That great
social question, which had disturbed France for seven hundred
years,—“Is there in France an authority superior to the King’s?” was
settled in the public room of an inn in a little town on the borders
of the Forest of Argonne.
Drouet walked straight to the carriage. In all popular movements he
took the lead, and, therefore, the responsibility.
“Madame,” said he, addressing the Queen, and not Madame Tourzel,
“if you are really Madame de Korff—that is to say, a Swiss, and
consequently a stranger—how is it that you have sufficient influence
to command a military escort consisting of a detachment of dragoons
at St. Menehould, and another at Clermont; also a first detachment of
hussars at Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, and a second at Varennes?”
To end a fatiguing discussion, and one in which M. Drouet feared
that the Procureur, an honest man enough, but not equal to any great
situation, would eventually yield, he put his hand into the carriage
as a support for the Queen, and said, “Will you be so kind, madame,
as to descend?”
To tell the truth, the Procureur was most dreadfully embarrassed.
Encouraged by M. Drouet’s invitation to the Queen, and hearing the
tocsin begin to ring, he, however, approached the door—from which he
had been turned to make place for M. Drouet—with great humility, his
hat in his hand.
“The Municipal Council is deliberating,” said he, “whether it would
be advisable to allow you to continue your route; but a report,
wrong or otherwise, has been spread about that it is the King and
his august family whom we have the honor of receiving in our walls.
I beg you, therefore, to accept the shelter of my house, in all
amity, until such time as the council shall have finished their
deliberation. Against our will the tocsin has been sounded. The
concourse of the inhabitants of the city is increased by the entry of
the country people; and, perhaps, the King—if, in truth, I have the
honor of addressing a King—may be exposed to insults which we should
be unable to prevent, and which would fill us with unmitigated grief!”
It was no use his resisting. The Low Town was evidently ignorant of
what was passing in the High Town. No succor arrived, or, indeed,
appeared likely to arrive. The three young gentlemen dressed as
couriers had no other arms than their _couteaux de chasse_, and could
not undertake to fight with thirty men armed with guns. The tocsin
still vibrated in the air, and found an echo in every heart.
The King set the example, and alighted.
I then had a good view of him, and my astonishment at seeing a king
in such a costume was great.
He wore a drab gray coat, a satin waistcoat, and a pair of gray
trousers, gray stockings, shoes with buckles, and a three-cornered
hat.
In descending, he knocked his head against the top of the door, and
his hat fell off. His hair was in tresses on the top of his head, and
was fixed there with an ivory comb.
In a word, his costume corresponded with the title of a steward,
which he bore in the passport of Madame Korff.
I picked up the hat, and handed it to him.
The Queen descended next, and after her, Madame Royale and the
Dauphin, who was disguised as a little girl; then came Madame
Elizabeth, and, last, Madame de Tourzel.
Sauce had opened wide the door of his shop, and passed all sorts of
compliments on the King whom he persisted in calling “your Majesty,”
though the King equally persisted that his name was M. Durand.
The Queen had not the courage to support this humiliating assumption.
“Well, then,” said she, “if monsieur is your King, and I your Queen,
treat us with the respect that our rank demands.”
At these words, the King was ashamed, and said, “Very well, I am your
King; there is your Queen, and there are our children.”
Though vulgar enough in his royal dress, the King lost altogether
what little dignity he had under the costume of a steward.
Besides, always unfortunate, a grocer’s shop, with its surroundings,
was not the most romantic spot in which to utter those royal words:—
“Placed in the capital, in the midst of swords and bayonets, I came
to seek in the country, in the midst of my faithful subjects, the
liberty and peace that were denied me in Paris.”
Then, opening his arms, he pressed poor M. Sauce, paralyzed with the
honor, to his breast.
At the moment that the King embraced M. Sauce, a thunder of horses’
hoofs was heard coming in an unexpected direction—that is to say,
from the Place Latry.
The King believed that it was assistance, but the patriots smelt
danger; and M. Drouet cried out, “Take the King up to the first
floor!”
Sauce asked the King to follow him, and he did so, without making any
difficulty.
Scarcely was the door of the chamber on the ground floor shut, when
they heard a tumult at the head of the Rue de la Basse Cour, by the
side of the Place Latry.
Many voices cried out “The King! the King!”
One voice alone replied, “If it is the King you want, you will have
him dead!”
Recognizing Drouet’s voice, and thinking perhaps he might want me, I
crept to his side.
At the moment that I opened a passage to him they were parleying; but
M. Drouet and his friends parleyed with muskets in their hands, and
the officers of hussars with their sabres on their wrists.
Between the two officers of hussars I recognised M. de Malmy on
horseback, and covered with dust, like them.
It appeared as if he had guided them.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WHAT HAPPENED AT PARIS BEFORE THE DEPARTURE.
My story would be incomplete did I not follow the royal family in
their flight from the moment that they left the Palace of Tuileries,
till their appearance at the top of the Rue des Réligieuses; and did
I not tell you through what circumstances M. Drouet was led to make
his appearance in time to change the face of events, and to give that
terrible blow to the throne of the Bourbons which occasioned Louis
XVI not only the loss of his crown, but of his head.
I have already told you that Mirabeau, on his death-bed, asserted
that the King’s only hope rested in flight now that he was deprived
of his assistance.
From that moment, Louis XVI had but one idea—to leave Paris—to leave
France—to fly to a foreign land.
We have mentioned the date of April, 1791.
This is what happened on that date.
The King had wished to go to St. Cloud; that was on the Easter Monday.
The King, the Queen, the bishops, the servants, filled the carriages
in which they were to make the short travel of two leagues; but the
people prevented the King from leaving the Tuileries.
The King insisted; the tocsin of Saint Roch began to sound an alarm.
He leaned back in his carriage; thousands of voices cried, “No, no!
He is going to fly!”
“I love you too well to leave you!” said the King.
“We, also, love you!” replied the spectators, with one voice; “but
you alone!”
The Queen, shut out from the love of France, wept and stamped; but,
for all that, was obliged to re-enter the Tuileries.
The King was a prisoner, there was no doubt about it; but it is
permitted to a prisoner to escape.
From this moment the King prepared for flight.
Two other parties were as desirous as the King that he should leave
France.
The one, the Royalist party, because the King, once free, would
be able to re-enter France with a foreign army; the other, the
Republican party, because they could not form a republic, without
cutting his head off.
Therefore, one will perceive that they who arrested the King belonged
to a third party—the Constitution.
His decision taken, the King began to put it into execution.
The Queen was the mainspring of the plot; the princesses of the
house of Austria have been invariably evil genii to the Kings of
France—Marie de Medicis, Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and Marie
Louise.
The King might have fled alone, and that was the idea that first
occurred to him; in which case he would have travelled on horseback.
But, during the terrible night of the 5th of October, the Queen
became so frightened, that she made the King swear never to leave
France without her and their children.
It was then resolved that they should all, King, Queen, and children,
fly together.
That doubled, trebled, and quadrupled the difficulty, and made escape
almost an impossibility.
The Queen undertook the deception.
The Queen had more interest than the King in leaving France. Hear you
that cry of the 18th of April, 1791, which interpreted the feelings
of a nation, and which said, “We, also, sire! We love you, _but you
alone_!”
In January, 1791, the flight was resolved upon.
In February, the King wrote to M. de Bouillé:—
“I have overtures to make to you on the part of M. Mirabeau. The
Count de Lamark will be our intermediate.”
He added:—
“Although these people are not very estimable, still I have paid M.
Mirabeau a good sum of money. I think that he will be useful.”
M. de Bouillé replied:—
“Cover with gold the defection of Mirabeau. He is an accomplished
scoundrel, who will repair, through cupidity, the evil that he
has worked through vengeance; but defy Lafayette, enthusiastic,
chimerical, capable, perhaps, of being the chief of a party, but
incapable of supporting a monarchy.”
Remark that De Bouillé was the cousin of Lafayette. He was not, as
one can see, blinded by the relationship.
About the end of April, the King wrote again to M. de Bouillé.
“I go out almost incessantly in my carriage with all my family—a
carriage made expressly to hold all.”
M. de Bouillé replied:—
“In the place of that berlin expressly made, and which will
naturally draw attention, it will be more prudent for your Majesty
to use two English coaches.”
The coaches mentioned were the post-chaises in common use at that
period.
The counsel was good, but the Queen combated the idea. She did not
wish to be separated from the King, and did not wish the children to
be separated from herself.
M. de Bouillé continued:—
“Have with you in your perilous journey a man with the head of a
Solon, and the arm of a Hercules—one who can plan and execute. I
can point such a man out to you. He is the Marquis d’Agout, Major
of the French Guards.”
The King adopted this counsel. We will see, later on, how it was that
M. d’Agout did not arrive at Varennes.
The King, in a third letter, asked M. de Bouillé to establish relays
from Châlons to Montmedy, his intention being to avoid Rheims, where
he had been consecrated, and might be recognized, and pass through
Varennes.
M. de Bouillé replied, that in passing through Rheims, the carriage
blinds could be drawn down; but that he was sorry that the King
persisted in using that noticeable berlin; that at two points on the
road to Varennes there were no post-horses, so it would be necessary
to send some; and, lastly, that as there were no soldiers on that
route, it would be necessary to order up some detachments, which
might excite suspicion.
The King persisted in going the Varennes route.
He sent a million in assignats to M. de Bouillé, to defray whatever
expenses there might be with regard to troops, &c., &c., and asked
him to send an experienced officer to reconnoitre the road to
Varennes.
M. de Bouillé could not but obey so positive a command.
He sent, on the 10th of June, M. Goguelot to reconnoitre—a mission
fitted only for a courageous and intelligent officer.
M. Goguelot was both.
On the appointed day the detachment set out.
One might have seen a train of artillery of six pieces setting out
for Montmedy, the Royal Germans taking the Stenay route, a squadron
of hussars going towards Dun, and another towards Varennes; and
at the same time, fifty detached men under the command of M. de
Choiseul, pushed on for Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, where the King would
meet them as first post.
Afterwards, at St. Menehould, he would have found a detachment of
dragoons, under the command of M. Dandouins.
At Clermont he would have found another detachment, under the command
of M. de Damas.
He would have found the relays and a detachment of hussars, under the
command of MM. Bouillé, _fils_, and De Raigecourt, at Varennes, and
at Stenay he would have found M. Stenay in person.
All being arranged, the King wrote to De Bouillé, fixing the day for
the 19th of the June following.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HOW THEY SET OUT.
This was the third or fourth time that the date of departure had been
altered.
They had determined to depart on the 11th, but having refused to take
Madame de Rochereul, _femme-de-chambre_ to the Dauphin, and mistress
of M. de Gouvion, aide-de-camp to Lafayette, and who was now on duty
till the 12th, they thought that it was imprudent to depart on that
day.
On the 13th of June, the Austrians began to advance on the French
frontier, and to occupy posts two leagues from Montmedy.
The departure was postponed until the 15th following.
On the evening of the 15th, the King set out with the royal family,
in a plain carriage, the berlin awaiting them at Bondy.
If the King did not arrive at Bondy at two o’clock, it was arranged
that it should be taken for granted that he had been stopped at the
Tuileries or at the barrier.
In that case, it was arranged that the person in charge of the
berlin should set out alone, and not stop till he arrived at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles; and when there, that he should inform M. de
Choiseul that the project had failed.
M. de Choiseul would then tell M. Dandouins, M. de Damas, M. de
Bouillé, and each would provide for their own safety.
M. de Bouillé received these new instructions, and arranged
accordingly.
M. de Choiseul set out at the same time for Paris.
At Paris, M. de Choiseul awaited the orders of the King, and started
twelve hours in advance.
The men and horses belonging to M. de Choiseul would stay at Varennes
from the 18th.
On the 19th, fresh and renovated, they would pass through Varennes,
and put up at a farm, half-way between Varennes and Neuvilly. One
must call to mind that there was no post at Varennes.
On the arrival of the King, they would take the place of the
post-horses from Clermont, and conduct the royal family to Dun.
On his return, M. de Choiseul, who, as we said, preceded the
King by twelve hours, would take command of the forty hussars at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles. At Pont-de-Somme-Vesles he would await the
King, and would escort him to St. Menehould. At St. Menehould the
hussars would give place to the dragoons, and be left to block the
road.
After the King, no one would be allowed to pass.
After twenty-four hours the road would be left clear, for by that
time the King would be beyond the frontier.
M. de Choiseul had orders signed by the King, authorizing him to
demand the needful number of men. Six hundred louis d’or were
distributed by him to the soldiers.
On the 14th of June, M. de Bouillé, who was in Hungary, received a
letter from the King.
The departure is postponed for twenty-four hours. Whence came this
new delay?
We will tell you: the reason was a serious one.
The King did not receive his quarterly income until the 20th; and
being economical, he did not wish to lose it.
This reason, good as it was, made M. de Bouillé despair.
In fact it made it necessary to give fresh orders all along the line.
Instead of two days, the relays would have to wait three; the same
with the troops.
On the 20th of June, M. de Bouillé advanced to Stenay, where he found
the Royal Germans.
We have already seen that, on the same day, the hussars arrived at
St. Menehould, announcing the arrival of the dragoons.
We know, through M. Drouet, what a sensation their unexpected
appearance created.
We have seen another hussar detachment arrive at Varennes, causing
little less sensation than their brothers-in-arms did at St.
Menehould.
* * * * *
Let us now turn our attention to Paris, and see what was going on
these last few days.
We have already said that the Queen managed the diplomacy. She
diplomatised wonderfully.
Firstly, she had used the white horses which drew the funeral car of
M. Voltaire.
Secondly, on the 19th, she took a stroll with the Dauphin on the
outer boulevards.
Thirdly, on the 20th, she said to M. Montmorin, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, “Have you seen Madame Elizabeth? She causes me pain. I
wished her to accompany me in the procession of the Fête Dieu, and
she refuses me.”
On the same day, meeting a commander of the National Guard, “Well,
monsieur,” said she, laughing, “do they still speak of the flight of
the King from Paris?”
“No, Madame,” replied the commander; “they are too well convinced of
the King’s love for the Constitution and for his people.”
“They are right,” replied the Queen.
On the 17th, M. Moustier, ex-garde du corps, had been accosted by an
unknown whilst he was walking in the Tuileries.
The unknown had invited him to follow him in the name of the King.
M. Moustier had obeyed. Ten minutes afterwards he was in the presence
of the King.
Louis XVI saluted him by name.
The garde du corps, astonished, bowed.
“I know you, monsieur,” said the King, “and feel assured that I can
count upon you; that is why I am now addressing you.”
“Whatever your wishes may be, I hope I shall prove myself worthy of
your confidence, sire.”
“Think you that I can count equally well on your two friends, De
Valory and De Malden?”
“I am assured of it, sire.”
“Well, tell them to have made vests of chamois leather, trousers of
hide, jack-boots, and velvet caps.”
The choice of chamois leather was most imprudent, as it was the color
of the Prince de Condé, when he emigrated.
M. de Moustier was then asked to walk every evening on the Pont
Royal. There, a confidential servant, who knew him by sight, would
bring him the last orders of the King.
On the evening of the 19th, M. Moustier received the following order:—
“M. de Moustier and his companions are desired to be in the court of
the Château to-morrow, at nine o’clock in the evening; they will then
learn what is required of them.”
Now, about the passport. We know that the Queen travelled under
the name of the Baroness de Korff. The two children were the
Dauphin and Madame Royal; the intendant was the King; and the two
_femmes-de-chambre_ Mesdames de Neuville and Brunier.
That did not comprise, it is true, Madame Elizabeth, or M. d’Agout,
whom M. de Bouillé had recommended the King to take with him, but
they were obliged to trust something to chance.
On the morning of the 20th, M. Moustier presented his two companions
to the King.
M. Malden was to take the name of Jean, M. de Moustier the name of
Melchior, and M. Valory the name of François. As for M. de Choiseul,
he awaited the orders of the King at his house, Rue d’Artois, on the
20th. Up to three o’clock, he had heard nothing, and he ought to
start twelve hours in advance of the King. He began to despair, when
a servant entered to say that a messenger had arrived from the Queen.
He ordered the messenger to be shown up.
The fellow entered. He had a great hat thrust over his eyes, and was
wrapped in an immense cloak.
It was the Queen’s hair-dresser, the famous Léonard, who has left his
memoirs to posterity. He was a personage of the utmost importance.
“What, Léonard! It was not you whom I expected; but, since you are
come, make yourself at home.”
“It is not my fault if I have kept you waiting, M. le Comte; but it
is but ten minutes since I left the Queen to come here.”
“And she has told you nothing, given you no message?” cried the
Count, astonished.
“She told me to take all her diamonds, and bring you this letter.”
“Well, well—give it me!”
M. de Choiseul read the letter.
It was long, and full of instructions. It announced that they would
leave punctually to the moment.
As to the Comte de Choiseul, it commanded him to set out that
instant, begging him to take Léonard with him, who, continued Marie
Antoinette, had orders to obey him as he would herself.
M. de Choiseul read aloud that recommendation to Léonard, who made a
lowly obeisance.
He then burnt the letter.
At this moment one of the Comte’s servant entered.
“The carriage awaits M. le Comte,” said he.
“Come, my dear Léonard—come!” said the young gentleman.
“Why should I come?” cried the stupefied hair-dresser.
“Why should you? Are you not to obey me as you would the Queen? Come!
I command you!”
“But her Majesty’s diamonds?”
“You will bring them with you.”
“Where?”
“Where we are going.”
“But where are we going?”
“A few leagues from here, where we have to fulfil a most particular
and important mission.”
“Impossible, M. le Comte!” cried Léonard, drawing himself back with
affright.
“Léonard, you forget that her Majesty said that you were to obey me
as you would herself.”
He then assisted the despairing hair-dresser to mount into the
cabriolet, and lashed the horse into full speed in the direction of
the Petite Vilette.
At the same hour that M. de Choiseul passed the barrier the three
guards were admitted to the presence of the King, and then shut up in
an ante-chamber.
At ten o’clock M. de Lafayette was announced.
He was attended by MM. de Gouvion and De Romeuf, his aides-de-camp.
Madame de Rochereul, his mistress, had told him that the flight was
arranged for the same night.
The Queen and Madame Elizabeth had gone in the evening, without an
escort, to promenade in the Bois de Boulogne.
M. de Lafayette, with the exquisite politeness which was one of his
characteristics, asked the Queen if she had enjoyed her stroll; and
added, “Your Majesty was wrong to stay out so late.”
“Why so, sir?” asked the Queen.
“Because the evening fog might do you an injury.”
“What! a fog in the middle of June?” said she. “In truth, unless I
manufactured one on purpose to hide our flight, which people talk so
much about, I do not know where I should find one.”
“The fact is, madame,” replied the General, “people not only talk
about your flight, but I have received information that it will take
place this evening.”
“Ah!” said the Queen; “I engage that it is M. de Gouvion who has
given you that good news.”
“Why I, madame?” said the young officer, blushing.
“I do not know,” replied the Queen, “except that, perhaps, you hear
a great deal more than is true at the château. Wait! Here is M.
Romeuf, who hears no news; I am sure he will contradict the rumor.”
“There is no great credit in doing that, madame,” said the young man,
“when the King has given his word to the Assembly not to leave Paris.”
At ten o clock, General Lafayette and his aides-de-camp retired.
When they were gone, the Queen and Madame Elizabeth summoned their
domestics to perform the necessary offices of their toilettes, and at
eleven, as was their custom, they retired for the night.
The doors shut, each commenced to dress.
The Queen and Madame Elizabeth assisted each other. They had some
plain dresses, and hats, with hoods, to hide the face.
They had scarcely finished their disguise, when the King entered, in
his costume of intendant.
For the last eight days, the King’s valet, Hue, had been in the habit
of going out in the costume the King now wore, and by the same door
the King intended to depart from. This was done in order to accustom
the sentinel to a man dressed in gray.
On arriving, he released the three guards from their hiding-place.
Madame Royale was ready, but the Dauphin was not. He had been
awakened from his first sleep; and so, for the sake of disguise, it
had been arranged to dress him like a girl. He made all sorts of
objections to the humiliating costume.
He asked, “If he were intended to act in a comedy?” They replied
“Yes.” And as he liked comedies, he allowed them to finish his
toilette.
The gardes du corps received their last instructions.
They were to travel as far as Bondy on M. de Fersen’s horses; after
that they were to take post.
They had calculated that, if they went at a moderate rate, they would
be at Châlons in twelve or fourteen hours. They approached the door,
and listened. All was silent.
Let us see with what difficulties they encompassed themselves.
Firstly, against M. de Bouillé’s advice, who proposed two English
diligences, the Queen had had made two enormous berlins, in which she
might put her trunks, boxes and bags.
Then, in place of having a courier in simple livery, there were three
gardes du corps, in the livery of the Prince de Condé.
Then, in place of choosing three men who knew the route, they chose
three who had never travelled that way before.
Then, in place of hiding the King, who was supposed to be Madame de
Korff’s steward, in the other carriage, he was placed face to face
and knee to knee, with his pretended mistress, in the principal
conveyance.
Then, in place of having the carriages drawn by two, or even four,
horses, they must needs have six, not remembering that the King alone
is allowed to have that number.
Then, in place of arming the gardes du corps to the teeth, they give
them small hunting-knives for use, and locked up the pistols and
other implements of warfare in the trunk, covered with red, bordered
with gold, the same as the King used at Cherbourg.
Then, in place of taking M. d’Agout, that resolute man who knew the
route, and whom M. de Bouillé had recommended, they take Madame
Tourzel, the children’s governess, who claimed the place by etiquette
that D’Agout would have won by devotion.
Taking all in all, every precaution was taken.
_Quos vult perdere Jupiter prius dementat._
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ROAD.
In a moment, the clock struck eleven.
Every stroke penetrated the hearts of the fugitives, and caused them
to tremble.
They went out, one by one. But how were they able to make a passage
to the court, you will ask? This is how it was.
Madame de Rochereul, whose duties had finished on the 12th, occupied
a little chamber which opened into another, which had not been used
for six months.
The empty apartment was M. Villequier’s, first gentleman of the
bed-chamber. It was empty because M. Villequier had emigrated.
That apartment, situate on the ground floor, had a door opening into
the Cour des Princes.
On one side, the chamber of Madame de Rochereul opened both into one
belonging to M. Villequier and Madame Royale.
On the 11th, the moment that Madame Rochereul quitted the château,
the King and Queen visited her apartment.
Under the pretext of enlarging Madame Royale’s suite of rooms, the
Queen kept these apartments, and said that the _femme-de-chambre_ of
the Dauphin could share those of Madame de Chinnai, maid of honor.
When in the apartment of M. Villequier, the King demanded the key of
M. Renard, inspector of buildings. It was sent to him on the 13th of
June.
Numerous as were the sentinels, they had neglected to place one at
the door of that chamber, which had been unoccupied for the space of
three months. At eleven o’clock in the evening, the services in the
château being finished, the sentinels were accustomed to witness the
departure of a great number of people at one time.
So that once in the apartment of M. Villequier, and as the clock
struck eleven, they had every chance of escaping unobserved.
It was M. de Fersen’s business to smuggle the royal family out of
Paris, unobserved.
He was waiting with a fiacre, disguised as a coachman, at the Wicket
de l’Echelle; thence he was to take the fugitives to the barrier
at Clichy, where the berlin was in waiting, under the charge of an
Englishman, Mr. Crawford.
The three gardes du corps were to follow, in another fiacre.
The two _femmes-de-chambre_, Madame Brunier and Madame de Neuville,
went on foot to the Pont Royal, where they found a two-horsed
carriage stationed, in which they started for Claye, where they were
to await the Queen.
Madame Elizabeth stepped out first, with Madame Royale; then came
Madame de Tourzel, and the Dauphin, accompanied by one of the gardes
du corps.
The two parties were separated one from the other by about twenty
paces.
One of the sentinels crossed the road, and on seeing the first party,
stopped them.
“Oh, aunt!” cried Madame Royale; “we are lost! That man recognises
us!”
Madame Elizabeth made no reply, but continued to advance.
Madame Royale was deceived. They were not recognised—or, if they
were, it was by a friend.
The sentinel turned his back on them, and allowed them to pass.
At the expiration of five minutes, Madame de Tourzel, the two
princesses, and the Dauphin were in the carriage, which was awaiting
them at the corner of the Rue de l’Echelle.
M. de Fersen was so well disguised, that the princesses did not
recognize him. It was he who knew them. He leapt from his box, opened
the door, and assisted them in.
At the moment that M. de Fersen shut the door, an empty fiacre passed
by. Seeing a brother cabman stopping, he stopped likewise, and began
to enter into a conversation about the times.
M. de Fersen, a man of ready wit, sustained the conversation
wonderfully, and, drawing a snuff-box from his pocket, offered his
friend a pinch.
He plunged his fingers deep into the box, took a long and voluptuous
sniff, and drove on.
At this moment the King, followed by his garde du corps, came out in
his turn, his hands in his pockets, and swaggering like a well-to-do
tradesman.
He was followed by the second garde.
During his passage, one of the buckles of his shoes slipped off. The
King did not care to stop for such a trifling matter as that, but the
garde who came after him picked it up.
M. de Fersen got in front of the King.
“And the Queen, sire?” asked he.
“The Queen follows us,” replied the King.
He then got into the carriage in his turn.
They awaited the Queen.
Half an hour passed, and she did not arrive.
What detained her?
The Queen was lost. She maintained that the Wicket de l’Echelle was
to the right. The third garde, not knowing Paris well, yielded to the
Queen’s certainty, though he fancied that it was to the left.
They therefore left by the wicket at the water’s side; got confused
on the quays; crossed the bridge; walked down the Rue du Bac, where
the Queen was forced to acknowledge her error, as they had completely
lost their way.
The garde was compelled to inquire the way to the Wicket de
l’Echelle. They had to cross the Place de Carrousel a second time.
Under the arch, they found themselves face to face with some
lacqueys, carrying torches, and escorting a carriage which was
approaching at a trot. The Queen had just time to turn her face to
the wall, in order to avoid being recognised.
She had recognised Lafayette.
The garde came to the front, in order to the more effectually screen
her.
But she struck the wheels of the carriage with the little cane that
ladies carried at that period, saying, “Go to, gaoler!—I am out of
thy power.”
This is but a tradition; the garde says, on the contrary, that the
Queen was so frightened, that she dropped his arm and fled, but that
he ran after her, took her by the hand, and drew her back.
They crossed the Carrousel at full speed, passed the Wicket de
l’Echelle, and at last saw the carriage which was awaiting them.
M. de Fersen assisted the Queen into the vehicle, and she sank into
her seat by the side of the King, trembling with fear.
M. de Fersen had stopped a voiture, for the accommodation of the
three gardes du corps.
They jumped into it, telling the driver to follow the other vehicle.
M. de Fersen, who knew not Paris much better than the garde du corps,
who had followed the Queen, fearing to get lost in the streets, went
to Faubourg St. Honoré, along the length of the Tuileries.
Thence, he soon found his way to the barrière of Clichy.
A few paces before the house of Mr. Crawford, the gardes du corps
got down, paid and dismissed their vehicle, and took their places
behind the other.
The travelling berlin was ready when they arrived.
The change was effected.
M. de Fersen overturned his carriage in a ditch, then mounted on the
box of the berlin. One of his men mounted a horse, and conducted them
to Daumont.
They took at least an hour to arrive at Bondy.
All progressed capitally.
At Bondy, they found the two _femmes-de-chambre_, who were to have
awaited them at Claye.
It appeared that they came in a cabriolet, expecting to find at Bondy
a post-chaise; but there were none, so they had struck a bargain with
the postmaster for a cabriolet, the price of which was a thousand
francs.
The driver of the other cabriolet was brushing down his horse
previously to returning to Paris.
At this place, M. de Fersen was to leave their Majesties.
He kissed the King’s hand, in order that he might be able to kiss the
Queen’s.
M. de Fersen would rejoin them in Austria.
He returned to Paris, to acquaint himself with what was going on; he
would then start for Brussels.
Man proposes, God disposes.
The Queen, two years later, was executed in the Place de la
Revolution; and M. de Person perished at Stockholm, where he
was slain in a riot, stricken to death by blows from umbrellas,
administered by drunken women.
But, mercifully, the future was not known to them. They parted full
of hope.
M. de Valory borrowed a post-horse, and galloped on in advance, to
command the relays.
M. de Malden and De Moustier took their seats on the box of the
berlin, which set off at the full speed of which six vigorous horses
were capable.
The cabriolet came on in the rear.
M. de Fersen followed with his eyes the carriage, rapidly
disappearing in the distance; and when it had entirely disappeared,
he got into his own carriage, and returned to Paris.
He had on his costume as coachman; and much did it astonish the
driver of the cabriolet to see a coachman kissing the hands of the
King, disguised as a domestic.
It is true that M. de Fersen had only kissed the King’s hands in
order to be able to go through the same ceremony with regard to the
Queen.
That was another imprudence added to those which we have already
mentioned.
All went well as far as Montmirail, where the traces of the royal
carriage snapped asunder.
It was necessary to stop. They thus lost two hours—the days were
long; the night of the 20th of June is the shortest in the year.
Then they came to a hill. The King insisted on their walking up; thus
they lost another half-hour.
Half-past four sounded from the cathedral as the berlin entered
Châlons, and stopped at the post-house, then situated at the end of
the Rue St. Jacques.
M. de Valory approached the carriage.
“All goes well, Francis,” said the Queen to him. “It seems to me
that, if there had been an intention of stopping us, it would have
been put into execution before now.”
In speaking to M. de Valory, the Queen disclosed her countenance.
The King likewise imprudently showed himself.
The postmaster, Oudes, recognized him; one of the spectators, whom
curiosity had drawn to the spot, at once knew that it was the King.
The postmaster saw the above-mentioned spectator disappear, and
consequently feared some evil to the King.
“Sire,” said he, in a whisper, “for heaven’s sake do not expose
yourself, or you are lost!” Then, speaking to the postilions, “How
now, idlers!” cried he. “Is this the way that you treat well-to-do
travellers who pay thirty sous?”
And he himself, to set an example to the postilions, put his shoulder
to the work.
The horses were put to, and the carriage was in readiness speedily.
“Off you go!” cried the postmaster.
The first postilion wished to raise his horses into a gallop. They
both fell, but gained their feet again on the application of the
whip. They wished to upset the carriage. The two horses under the
guidance of the second postilion fell in their turn.
They drew the postilion from under the horse he had been riding, with
the loss of one of his boots.
The horses picked themselves up, the postilion regained his boot,
and, putting it on, he remounted his saddle.
Off goes the carriage.
The travelers breathe again.
But as the postmaster had warned them of danger, in place of riding
in front, M. de Valory took up his position by the side of the
carriage.
The fact of the horses having fallen one after the other, without any
apparent reason, seemed to the Queen a presage of evil to come.
As yet, however, they had escaped the consequences of recognition.
The man who witnessed the arrival of the berlin had ran to the
Mayor’s house; but that official was a Royalist. However, the witness
swore that he recognised the King and the other members of the royal
family; so the Mayor, driven into his last entrenchment, was forced
to proceed forthwith to the Rue St. Jacques; but, happily, when he
arrived there, he found that the carriage had started some five
minutes before.
Passing through the gates of the city, and noticing the ardor with
which the postilion urged on their steeds, the Queen, and Madame
Elizabeth gave vent each to the same cry:—“We are saved!”
But at that very moment a man, arisen, as it were, suddenly from
the very bosom of the earth, passed on horseback to the door of the
carriage, and said, “Your measures are badly taken! You will be
stopped!”
It was never known who this man was.
By good luck, they were distant only four leagues from
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, where M. de Choiseul was awaiting them with his
forty hussars.
Perhaps they should have sent M. de Valory to the rear, in order to
prevent this.
But the last warning had increased the Queen’s terrors, and she would
not part with one of her defenders.
They incited the postilions to greater speed.
The four leagues were accomplished in an hour.
They arrived at Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, a little hamlet, consisting of
two or three houses. They pierced with their eyes the wood which
overshadowed the farm to the left; and the trees which indicated the
windings of the river on the right, formed, as it were, a curtain of
green to hide the modest streamlet from the curious eye, but still no
De Choiseul, no De Goguelot, no forty hussars were to be seen.
On seeing that the place was desolate, the Queen uttered the words
“We are lost!”
In the meantime, let us explain why the hussars were not at their
post.
At eleven o’clock M. de Choiseul, still accompanied by Léonard, in
tears, who knew not where they were taking him, and who believed
himself to be the victim of some unjustifiable violence, arrived at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles.
The hussars, as yet, were not at their posts; all around was tranquil.
He alighted at the post-house, his example being followed by Léonard,
who had the diamonds still concealed in his bosom, and asked for a
private chamber in which to don his uniform.
Léonard watched him; his cup of misery was filled to the brim.
Now that M. de Choiseul had, as he believed, nothing to fear, he
found time to pity him.
“My dear Léonard!” said he, “it is time that you knew the whole
truth.”
“How the truth? Do I not, then, already know the truth?”
“You know a portion. It is now my duty to tell you the rest. You are
devoted to your customers, are you not, my dear Léonard?”
“In life and death, M. le Comte.”
“Well, in two hours they will be here—in two hours they will be
saved.”
The hot tears coursed down poor Léonard’s cheeks, but this time they
were tears of joy.
“In two hours?” cried he, at last. “Are you sure of it?”
“Yes; they were to have left the Tuileries at eleven or half-past,
in the evening; they were to arrive at Châlons at mid-day; and an
hour, or, at most, an hour and a half, is sufficient to cover the
four leagues from Châlons to this place. They will be here in an hour
at the latest. I am awaiting a detachment of hussars, which should
arrive here under the command of M. Goguelot.”
Hearing a rumbling sound, M. de Choiseul put his head out of the
window.
“Ah, there they are, coming from the direction of Cilloy!”
And, in fact, the hussars were, at the moment, on the point of
entering the village.
“Come on!—all is well!” said M. de Choiseul.
And he waved his hat, making signs out of the window.
A horseman approached at a gallop.
M. de Choiseul went down stairs to meet him.
The two gentlemen met in the high road.
The horseman, who was M. Goguelot, gave M. de Choiseul a packet from
M. de Bouillé. This packet contained six blank signatures, and a copy
of the order which had been given by the King to every officer of the
army whatsoever his grade, commanding them in all things to obey M.
de Choiseul.
The hussars rode up. M. de Choiseul ordered them to picket their
horses, and caused rations of bread and wine to be served out to them.
The news which M. Goguelot brought was bad. All along his route,
everybody had been in a state of expectation. The reports of the
King’s flight, which had been disseminated about for more than a
year, had spread from Paris to the provinces; and the sight of the
different bodies of men arriving at Dun, Varennes, Clermont, and St.
Menehould, had awakened suspicion. The tocsin had been sounded in a
village by the side of the road.
M. de Choiseul had ordered dinner for M. de Goguelot and himself.
The two young men drew up to the table, leaving the detachment under
the command of M. de Boudet.
At the expiration of half an hour, M. de Choiseul fancied that he
heard a noise outside the door.
He went out.
The peasants from the neighboring villages had begun to crowd round
the soldiers.
Whence came these peasants, in a country which was almost a desert?
It was surmised that some days before the inhabitants of a tract of
land, near Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, belonging to Madame d’Elbœuf, had
refused the payment of irredeemable rights, on the strength of which
they had been threatened with military law.
But the federation of 1790 had made France one great family; and the
peasants of the villages had promised the tenants of Madame d’Elbœuf
to use their arms if any soldiers showed themselves in the vicinity.
As we know, forty had arrived.
On seeing them Madame d’Elbœuf’s tenants believed that they had come
with hostile intentions against them; so they sent messages to all
the neighboring villages, imploring them to keep their promise.
Those situate nearest arrived first, and that is how M. de Choiseul,
on arising from table, found a turbulent throng of peasants
surrounding the hussars.
He believed that curiosity alone had drawn them thither, and, without
paying any further attention to them, gained the most elevated part
of the road, which runs in a straight line through the plain of
Châlons to St. Menehould.
A little further on than could be seen with the naked eye was the
village itself.
An hour slipped away.
Two hours, three hours, four hours, followed in the track of the
first.
The fugitives ought to have arrived in one hour at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles; and the time they had lost on the road made it
half-past four, as we have said, before they arrived at Châlons.
M. de Choiseul was anxious.
Léonard was in despair.
About three o’clock, the numbers of peasants increased; their
intentions became more hostile, and the tocsin began to sound.
The hussars were, perhaps, more unpopular than any other corps in
the army, on account of their supposed plundering propensities. The
peasants provoked them by all sorts of insults and menaces, and sang
under their very noses—
“The hussars are forlorn,
And we laugh them to scorn.”
Presently better informed people came up, and spread a report that
the hussars had come, not to injure Madame d’Elbœuf’s tenants, but to
escort the King and Queen.
This was also a very serious matter.
At about half-past four, M. de Choiseul and his hussars were so
completely hemmed in, that the three officers counselled together as
to what was best to be done.
They agreed unanimously that it was impossible that they could hold
out much longer.
The number of peasants was augmented to about three hundred, many of
whom were armed.
If, by ill luck, the King and Queen arrived at this critical
juncture, forty men, supposing that each killed his adversary, would
be insufficient to protect them.
M. de Choiseul re-read his orders:—
“Manage in such a manner that the King’s carriage shall continue its
progress without interruption.”
But his presence and that of the forty men became an obstacle instead
of a support.
There was no doubt about it. Their best plan was to depart.
But a pretext must be found.
M. de Choiseul, in the midst of some five or six hundred gaping
peasants who surrounded him, summoned the postmaster.
“Monsieur,” said he, “we are here for the purpose of escorting a
treasure, but this treasure does not arrive. Do you know if any gold
has been this last day or so to Metz?”
“This morning,” replied the postmaster, “the diligence brought a
hundred thousand crowns, and was escorted by two gendarmes.”
If the postmaster had been prompted, he could not have spoken better.
“It was Robin and me who escorted it,” cried a gendarme, hidden among
the crowd.
Then M. de Choiseul, turning to M. Goguelot, said, “Monsieur, the
Ministry have preferred the ordinary mode of carriage. As a hundred
thousand crowns have passed through here this morning, our further
presence here is unnecessary. Trumpeter, sound boot and saddle, and
we will be off.”
The trumpeter obeyed.
In a second, the hussars, who wished nothing better than to be off,
were mounted.
“Gentlemen of the hussars, march. Form by fours, and proceed at a
foot pace.”
And he and his forty men left Pont-de-Somme-Vesles at five punctually
by his watch.
The detachment was to have fallen upon Varennes. He took the by-road
in order to avoid St. Menehould, but lost his way above Mofficourt.
The little troop hesitated for a moment, when a horseman coming
from Neuville saw the perplexity of M. de Choiseul, and finding
that he was a Royalist and a gentleman, asked if he could be of any
assistance to him.
“Indeed you can,” replied M. de Choiseul. “You can conduct us to
Varennes by the Chalade.”
“Follow me, then,” cried the gentleman.
And he placed himself at the head of the hussars.
This gentleman was no other than M. de Malmy, and that is how it was
that I met him on the Place Latry, between two officers whom I knew
not—namely, M. de Choiseul and M. Goguelot.
CHAPTER XXIX.
STILL IN FLIGHT.
There was therefore, no escort awaiting the King at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles when he arrived there.
But if there was no escort, there were likewise no peasants. The road
was clear; the King therefore changed horses without an obstacle, and
started for St. Menehould.
At St. Menehould, M. Dandoins awaited the King’s arrival with as much
impatience as M. de Choiseul and M. Goguelot had; and about mid-day
he set out with his lieutenant on the road to Châlons, in the hopes
of seeing some sign of his arrival.
This road is one long descent from St. Menehould to Châlons. They
cast their eyes for a length of two leagues on a straight line,
traced, as it were, by a pencil, between two rows of trees, with
uncultivated green patches of country around them.
Nothing was visible on the road.
M. Dandoins and his lieutenant returned to St. Menehould.
Two hours afterward they again strolled along that same road.
To get to the barracks situated at the bottom of the Faubourg
Fleurion, it was necessary to pass right through the town.
They returned, as on the former occasion, without having seen
anything.
These in-comings and out-goings excited the attention of a population
already alarmed. They perceived that the two officers had the
appearance of being restless and uneasy.
To the queries put them on the subject, they replied that they were
awaiting a treasure which apparently was delayed, and that this delay
gave rise to uneasiness.
About seven o’clock in the evening, a courier, dressed in a chamois
leather vest, arrived, drew up at the post-house, and commanded
horses for two carriages.
The postmaster was Jean Baptiste Drouet.
M. de Dandoins approached M. de Valory.
“Monsieur,” said he, in a whisper, “you are preceding the King’s
carriage, are you not?”
“Yes, monsieur,” replied the courier; “and let me add, that I am
astonished to see you and your men in policemen’s hats.”
“We did not know the exact hour of the King’s arrival. Our presence
annoys the people; demonstrations of the most menacing character with
regard to us have been made, and they have tried to entice away my
men.”
“Silence,” said M. de Valory; “they hear what we are saying. Rejoin
your men, sir, and try to keep them to their duty.”
MM. de Valory and de Dandoins then separated.
At the same moment the crackings of a whip were heard, and the two
carriages crossed the Place de l’Hotel de Ville.
They drew up in front of the post-house.
One can easily recognise the house, then built about three years, and
which bears upon its face the date 1788.
Scarcely had the carriage stopped, when crowds of people surrounded
them.
One of the lookers-on asked M. Malden, who was descending from the
box, “Who are the travellers who journey in this style?”
“Madame the Baronne de Korff,” replied de Malden.
“What! another of the exiles who are sucking at the vitals of
France?” murmured the spectator, discontentedly.
“No; this lady is a Russian, and, consequently, a stranger.”
During this, M. de Dandoins, his policeman’s hat in his hand,
approached the carriage door, before which he stood, respectfully.
“Sir officer,” said the King, “how is it that I found no one at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles?”
“I was asking myself, sire, how it was that you arrived without
escort.”
The sight of a commander of dragoons talking with the deepest respect
to a sort of _valet-de-chambre_, seated in the front seat of the
carriage, redoubled the astonishment of the people, and began to
change that astonishment rapidly into suspicion.
Still, the King took no precaution to hide himself.
At this moment, M. Drouet came out from the door of his house, and
seeing the man who was talking to the commander of the dragoons, he
cried, “Just heavens—the King!”
He had much the same expression of face as he had at the federation,
and his general appearance was such that he was not easily disguised.
A municipal officer was there; his name was Farcy.
Drouet touched him on the elbow.
“Do you recognize that man?” said he, pointing to the King.
“Yes,” replied the other. “It is the King.”
“Call together the municipal council.”
Then, running to the door of the house, “Guillaume, Guillaume!” he
cried.
Guillaume, who was within, ran out to him. Drouet pointed out to him
the King.
“That is he whom we have been expecting,” said he.
Meanwhile M. Farcy had run to the municipality, and there made his
report.
Drouet followed after him, and likewise entered the municipal council
chamber.
Scarcely had he turned the corner of the street, than the carriages,
which had been relayed in the twinkling of an eye, started off at a
sharp trot.
A somewhat strange event accompanied their departure.
Behind the carriage a sous-officer of dragoons, whom we have seen
speaking to the King, notwithstanding his inferior rank, pushed on at
a gallop, firing, as he did so, a pistol in the air.
Without doubt, it was a signal; but the citizens took it as a sign
for hostilities, especially as, on hearing it, the dragoons rushed to
their horses.
At this pistol-shot, cries were heard. A man who was threshing in
a barn on the left-hand side of the road, a little above the small
bridge thrown over the Aisne, left the barn, and tried to stop the
sous-officer with his flail.
The officer drew his sabre, cut the flail in half, and passed on.
During this time the municipal council had decided that some one
should run after the royal carriages, and stop them.
“But who will do it?” asked the Mayor.
“I will,” replied M. Drouet.
Other young men offered to accompany him; but he had not at the
post-house more than one horse of his own, with the exception of a
little pony, which was for his friend Guillaume, on which he could
count as well as he could on himself. Two other citizens seized
horses, and determining not to leave them, set out with them, or, at
least, behind them.
They started, amid shouts of encouragement from the whole town.
Two hours after, the two citizens returned on their paltry hacks.
They had not been able to keep up the pace.
But M. Jean Baptiste Drouet, bearer of _A Warrant from the
Municipality to arrest the King_, and Citizen Guillaume, continued
the chase.
I underline the warrant given by the municipality for the arrest
of the King, because I have never seen mention made of it by any
historian, and because, having seen the warrant in M. Drouet’s hand,
I can speak positively with regard to the existence of the paper.
I wish you to understand why I lay so much stress on the fact of the
existence of a warrant. It is because M. Jean Baptiste Drouet, sent
by the municipality of St. Menehould to arrest the King and the royal
family, is not the isolated fanatic, obeying a regicidal impulse,
as the Royalist journals and histories would have it, but a citizen
of unblemished character, who fulfilled but his duty in obeying the
commands of the magistrates of his country.
But to return to our tale.
The royal carriage started, and MM. Drouet and Guillaume in pursuit.
M. Dandoins ordered his dragoons to mount, and follow.
But the order was more easily given than executed.
The pistol-shot fired by the sous-officer had found an echo in the
hearts—or, rather, the imaginations of—of those who heard it. The
National Guard armed themselves with their double-barrelled guns. A
tumultuous and noisy mob gathered in front of the post-house—that
is to say, on the very road that the dragoons would be obliged to
follow, in order to come up with the royal carriages.
M. Dandoins was about to spring into his saddle, when the municipal
council commanded him to surrender on the spot at the Hotel de Ville.
He did so, and was then ordered to give his name and to show his
orders.
“I am named Dandoins,” replied he. “I am a Chevalier of St. Louis,
a captain in the 1st Regiment of Dragoon Guards, and there are the
orders which I have received.”
Suiting the action to the word, he placed on the table the following
order:—
“On behalf of the King, I, François Claude Amour de Bouillé,
lieutenant-general of the King’s armies, &c. The captain of the
1st Regiment of Dragoons is ordered to march, with forty men of
his regiment, on the 19th, from Clermont to St. Menehould, where,
on the 20th and 21st, he will await a convoy of money, which will
be escorted by a detachment of the 6th Regiment of Hussars from
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, on the Châlons road. The dragoons and their
horses will be lodged equally among the hotel keepers. The captain
will be reimbursed for all expenses incurred for the provender for
the horses, and each dragoon will receive increased pay in place of
his rations.
“DE BOUILLÉ.
“Metz, 14th June, 1791.”
At this moment the cries of the people mounted to the chamber in
which the council were assembled, interrogating M. Dandoins. These
cries demanded that the dragoons should be disarmed.
“You hear, captain?” said the Mayor. “It is needful, in order to
tranquillize the people, that your men lay down their arms. Go down,
and order them to do so.”
“I will do so, if you will give me a written authority,” replied M.
Dandoins.
The order was given, and at the command of M. Dandoins the arms of
the dragoons, and the accoutrements of the horses, were carried into
the Hotel de Ville.
At the moment M. Dandoins and his lieutenant M. La Cour, reappeared
at the door of the Hotel de Ville opening on the Place, the
exasperation of the multitude reached a culminating point. Every
voice cried, “He is a traitor! He knew all! He has imposed upon the
municipality!”
They conducted the two officers to the town prison.
Let us now follow the royal carriages, and, as a matter of course,
MM. Guillaume and Drouet, their pursuers.
They had seen them start at full gallop by the Clermont route.
At eight o’clock a courier arrived from M. de Choiseul.
This courier was poor Léonard, with his cabriolet.
He came to tell M. Damas that he had left M. de Choiseul at
Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, at half-past four, and that up to that time no
courier had arrived.
Léonard told him also the danger that M. Gorguelot, M. Boudet, and
their forty hussars, had incurred.
M. Damas ran no less risk. The same excitement prevailed everywhere.
The sight of his soldiers had provoked murmurs. The hour for retreat
approached, and he knew that it would be difficult to keep the men
under arms, and the horses saddled, during the whole night, so
manifest had the hostile demonstrations become.
In this interval the cracking of postilions’ whips announced from
afar the arrival of the carriages.
M. Bouillé’s orders were to mount half an hour after the passage of
the carriages, and to fall back upon Montmedy, in passing by Varennes.
M. de Damas rushed to the door, told the King what orders he had
received from de Bouillé, and asked him what his orders were.
“Let the carriages pass without making any remark,” replied the King,
“and follow with your dragoons.”
During this time, incredible as it may appear, a discussion arose
between the person charged with the payment of the postilion and the
postmaster.
It is a double post from St. Menehould to Varennes. They did not wish
to pay more than single. Ten minutes were lost in this squabble,
which estranged the people, who were helping.
At last, the carriages set off.
They could have been half a league distant when Drouet arrived.
Above Islettes, he and Guillaume separated, Guillaume took the short
cut by the wood, and thus gained a league; while Drouet followed the
road, striving to arrive at Clermont before the King or, if he could
not succeed in that, at any rate to catch him up at Varennes.
On the other hand, thanks to the advantage which the short cut gave
him, Guillaume was sure to arrive at Varennes before the King.
If the King took the Châlons route, Drouet would arrive at Verdun
before him.
Drouet arrived at Châlons, not in time to arrest the King, but in
time to prevent the dragoons from following him.
M. de Damas’s dragoons were on horseback. M. de Damas ordered them
to march four deep, with their swords drawn in their hand; but they
stood motionless, thrusting their swords into their scabbards.
At this moment, the municipal officers appeared. They commanded M.
de Damas to order his men back to their barracks, as the hour for
retreat had passed away.
During this time, Drouet had changed his horse and started off at a
gallop.
M. de Damas, who had not yet lost all hope of taking off his men,
doubted to what end M. Drouet had set off. He called a dragoon, on
whose fidelity he knew that he could depend; ordered him to catch up
Drouet; stop him from following that road; and, if he resisted to
slay him.
The name of the dragoon was Legache.
Without making any objection, with the passive obedience of a
soldier—perhaps with the warm devotion of a Royalist,—he darted off
in pursuit of Drouet.
Scarcely had he started, when, as you have already been told, the
council commanded M. de Damas to withdraw his men into barracks.
But instead of obeying, like M. Dandoins, M. de Damas drew his sword,
struck his spurs into the belly of his horse, dashed into the midst
of the crowd, and cried, “All who love me, follow!”
Three men alone replied to this appeal, and dashed after M. Damas, at
a gallop, down the hill of Clermont.
Drouet was three-quarters of a league in advance of them, but he was
pursued by a brave, determined, and well-mounted man.
Only on leaving Clermont the road splits—one part going to Verdun,
the other to Varennes.
It was not probable that the King would go to Varennes, where he had
no relays; if that route had been indicated, it was simply to throw
pursuers off the scent.
Anyhow, Guillaume would be at Varennes; and as he was a native of
that place, he would have plenty of influence.
Drouet galloped, therefore, along the road to Verdun.
Scarcely had he gone two hundred yards, when he met a postilion, who
was leading some horses.
“Have you seen a large berlin and a cabriolet going past, one with
six horses and the other with three?”
“No, M. Drouet,” replied the postilion.
The King had therefore gone to Varennes.
Drouet got on the road to Varennes by cutting across the country,
after having leapt a ditch.
This error, in all probability, saved him.
The dragoon, Lagache—who knew that the King had gone to Varennes, and
not to Verdun, and who saw Drouet take the road to Verdun,—did not
think it worth while to pursue him much longer; and when he saw him
change his route, it was too late—he was a good half-hour in advance
of him.
In the midst of all this, the King, continuing his route, had left
M. Dandoins and his dragoons behind him, at St. Menehould, and M. de
Damas and his at Clermont.
The one and the other ought to be pushing on behind him; and in all
probability there was nothing to fear in the localities through which
he was now travelling.
This reflection brought tranquillity to the travellers, who, between
Neuvilly and Varennes, find oblivion in sleep.
We have seen how M. Valory, not finding relays at his post, had
thought fit to await the illustrious travellers, in order to consult
with them.
We have seen the Queen descend from the berlin, take the arm of M.
Valory, and interrogate M. Préfontaine.
We have seen M. Préfontaine advance, trembling, to the door of the
King’s carriage, answer his interrogatories, return to his house,
shut his door, and afterwards open his window.
We have seen M. Drouet appear like a phantom from the midst of the
shadow, forbidding the postilions to proceed, and rushing through the
Rue des Réligieuses on to the Place de Latry.
We have seen the royal berlin stopped, and the occupants forced to
descend, and accept the hospitality of M. Sauce, who ushered into a
chamber on the first floor of his house the King, the Queen, Madame
Elizabeth, Madame de Tourzel, Madame Royale, and the young Dauphin.
The windows of this chamber were separated from the windows of mine
by a passage, some seven or eight feet in breadth only.
We have also heard the noise at the top of the Rue Basse Cour, which
was made by the arrival of the forty hussars of M. Goguelot and M.
de Choiseul, in the midst of whom I recognised M. de Malmy, who had,
without doubt, served as their guide.
We can, therefore—a light being thrown on the past,—resume the thread
of our story, without fear of complication or confusion.
CHAPTER XXX.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE GROCER’S LITTLE SHOP.
At the end of some minutes, during which they had been parleying, M.
Goguelot and M. de Choiseul contrived to get admitted to the King.
M. Sauce, who, after he had conducted his guests to the chamber in
which they were confined, had descended to get the key, remounted the
stairs, followed by M. Goguelot and M. de Choiseul.
On seeing M. Goguelot, the King joyously clapped his hands, for he
was the only person that he knew whom he had as yet seen. He was,
without doubt, the precursor of assistance.
Behind M. Goguelot, he recognised M. de Choiseul.
Other footsteps were heard on the staircase—they were those of M. de
Damas.
The three officers, as soon as they entered, bent looks of inquiry
around them.
This is what they saw on entering, and what I saw from my window.
A narrow room, in the midst of which was a cask, which served as
a table; on that table was placed some paper and some glasses.
In a corner stood the King and Queen; by the window were Madame
Elizabeth and Madame Royale; in the background, the Dauphin,
overcome with fatigue, was sleeping on a bed, at the foot of
which was Madame de Tourzel; at the door were stationed the two
_femmes-de-chambre_—Madame de Neuville and Madame de Brunier, acting
as sentinels—or, rather, two women armed with forks.
The first word that the King uttered was, “Well, gentlemen, when do
we start?”
“When it pleases your Majesty.”
“Give your commands, sire,” said M. de Choiseul. “I have with me
forty hussars; but lose no time. We must act before the citizens have
an opportunity of bribing my men.”
“Well, gentlemen, descend, and clear the way; but mind, no violence.”
The young men went down.
The moment that M. de Goguelot had his hand on the street door, the
National Guard summoned the hussars to dismount.
“Hussars,” cried M. de Goguelot, “remain in your saddles.”
“Wherefore?” queried the officer commanding the National Guard.
“To protect the King,” replied M. de Goguelot.
“Good!” returned the officers; “we can take care of him without you.”
A hundred voices at the same time cried, “Yes, yes, yes! Make the
hussars dismount! It is our business, and not the business of
strangers, to protect the King! Dismount, hussars—dismount!”
M. de Damas slipped through the crowd, and rejoined the three or four
men who had been faithful to him.
M. de Goguelot exchanged signals with M. de Malmy, and in company
with M. de Choiseul again ascended to the King’s chamber. Both
addressed the Queen, as they knew that it was her head that planned.
“Madame,” said M. de Goguelot, “it is no use thinking of proceeding
in the carriages; but there is a way of safety.”
“What?”
“Will you mount a horse, and set out with the King? He will take
charge of the Dauphin. The bridge is barricaded, but at the bottom of
the Rue Jean the river is fordable. With our forty hussars we will
pass. In any case, make a quick resolution. Our hussars are already
drinking with the people; in another quarter of an hour they will be
brothers.”
The Queen drew back; that iron heart failed her at that critical
moment. She again became a woman; she feared a struggle, a
skirmish—perhaps a bullet.
“Speak to the King, messieurs,” said she; “it is he who should decide
on this plan; it is he who should command; it is for me but to
follow.”
She then added, timidly, “After all, it cannot be long before M. de
Bouillé arrives.”
The gardes du corps were there ready to attempt anything.
M. de Valory said, in his and the name of all his comrades, “Her
Majesty knows that she can command. We are ready to die for her.”
M. de Goguelot and M. de Choiseul chimed in.
“M. de Damas is below,” said M. de Choiseul; “he told us to tell your
Majesty that he had but three or four dragoons, but that he could
count on their fidelity as on his own.”
“Let us set out, sire—let us set out, since the Queen places herself
in your hands.”
If the King replied yes, there was still hope.
“Messieurs,” asked the King, “can you promise me that in the struggle
which must take place as a consequence of our departure, no ball will
strike the Queen, my sister, or my children?”
A sigh passed the lips of the King’s defenders. They felt him giving
way in their hands.
“Let us reason coolly,” said the King. “The municipal council do not
refuse to let me go. The annoyance is, that we are compelled to spend
the night here; but before daybreak, M. de Bouillé will be acquainted
with the situation in which we are. He is at Stenay. Stenay is but
eight leagues from here; two hours will take one there, and another
two suffice to bring back a message. M. de Bouillé cannot fail to be
here in the morning, then shall we depart without danger or violence.”
As he uttered these words, without announcing themselves, or asking
the permission of the King to be admitted, the municipal council
entered the room.
The decision that they had arrived at was brief and precise.
The people strongly objected to the King’s continuing his route, and
had resolved to send a courier to the National Assembly to know its
sentiments.
In fact, a citizen of Varennes, an M. Maugin, surgeon by profession,
had started at full speed for Paris.
M. de Goguelot saw that there was not an instant to lose; he dashed
from the house, and found M. de Malmy at the door.
“Monsieur,” he said, “you live here, therefore you know this part of
the country. A man, come what will, must set out for Stenay to advise
M. de Bouillé of the predicament in which the King is placed, and
return with a sufficient force to rescue him.”
“I will go myself,” said M. de Malmy.
And sticking his spurs into his horse, he set off at a gallop.
At M. Gerbaut’s door, he saw a file of National Guards, who commanded
him to stop.
“All very well,” replied M. de Malmy; “but I intend to go on.”
“Not you, more than another!” cried an officer, seizing his horse by
the bridle.
“If you advance another step,” said M. Roland, the commander of the
National Guard, cocking a pistol, “I will shoot you.”
M. de Malmy, without reply, spurred his horse right on to him.
M. Roland fired off the pistol so close that the flame blinded M.
de Malmy’s horse, at the same time as the bullet passed through the
fleshy part of the horseman’s arm.
The frightened animal reared, and fell back upon his master.
From the chamber where I was engaged in watching the King, I heard
the pistol-shot, the fall of the horse and man, and the scream of a
woman.
I recognised the voice of Mdlle. Sophie. I dashed down stairs, and
arrived in time to see her throw herself on the breathless, and, as
she thought, dead body of M. de Malmy.
“Réné, Réné!” she cried. “Help me—oh, help me!”
I rushed out of the house, took M. de Malmy in my arms, and, at the
moment when he tried to stand, I took him into the house, and laid
him on M. Gerhaut’s bed.
“He is dead—he is dead! They have killed him, the wretches!” cried
the unhappy and despairing girl, who was covered with the blood which
had flowed from his wound.
At this moment, M. de Malmy opened his eyes.
“He is not dead, Mdlle. Sophie,” cried I.
“Oh!” said she.
And she threw herself prostrate on the bed.
“Leave me—leave me!” said M. de Malmy, making an effort to lift
himself up. “I must go and seek M. de Bouillé.”
Pain and weakness compelled him to fall back again.
“In the name of heaven, stay there, Alphonse!” cried Mdlle. Sophie.
“Do not move, or you will uselessly throw away your life. You owe me
somewhat; grant me that favor.”
“I must,” said the young man. “I think that my leg is broken.”
“Réné, Réné! I pray, I implore you, my friend—my brother—run for a
surgeon!”
“Immediately!” said I, dashing out into the street.
But it was impossible to move.
The crowd had become something fearful.
“Hussars!” cried M. de Goguelot, “are you for the King or the nation?”
They all replied, “For the nation!”
“The others?”
“For the King—for the King!” they cried out, in German.
“Do you hear them?” said M. Drouet. “They are strangers—they are
Germans—that is to say, enemies.”
“No, sir,” cried the officer; “it is a Frenchman, who, in good
French, says to you, ‘Make way, in the name of the King!’”
“And I reply to you, in better French, if your hussars do not lay
down their arms, we will fire on them, and not one shall leave
Varennes alive. Soldiers, present arms—and, gunners, to your pieces!”
Then, stepping two paces forward, he said to M. Goguelot, “Take care,
sir. I have sighted you with my gun.”
“Vive la nation!” cried the hussars, as they saw the musket barrels
pointed at them, with the matches burning brightly in the obscurity,
and the two little pieces of cannon placed in battery at the bottom
of the Rue St. Jean.
At this moment, several National Guards sprang upon M. Goguelot’s
horse, snatched the rider from the saddle, and dashed him
head-foremost into the road, where he lay for a moment or so,
completely stunned.
They treated M. Damas and M. de Choiseul, who appeared on the
door-step at that moment, in the same fashion.
In the midst of this struggle, I set out for the Place Latry, by way
of the Rue l’Horloge. When I got there, I found that M. Maugin had
started for Paris, by wish of the municipality, at full speed.
I ran to the house of another doctor of less skill than M. Maugin—a
M. Saulnier—and brought him to the Rue de la Basse Cour, where the
hussars were drinking and fraternizing with the National Guard.
M. de Malmy was wounded in the shoulder by a ball which had traversed
the deltoid muscles. His leg was not broken, but his knee was badly
sprained.
Mdlle. Gerbaut, who feared that the condition of the wounded man
would not be improved by his remaining on the ground floor in direct
communication with the street, begged us to carry M. de Malmy into a
chamber where the surgeon could pay, without inconvenience, all the
cares necessary to a man in his condition.
I assisted M. Saulnier—a sufficiently difficult job—to carry a man
who could use neither his left arm nor his right leg. Afterwards, as
I saw that my presence was not welcome to Mdlle. Sophie, and as I
felt no particular interest in the wounded man, I retired, so as not
to lose a single scene of the drama which was being played out before
my eyes, and which was nothing less than a duel between a King and a
nation.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE RETURN OF ROYALTY IN ARREST.
In the midst of the tumult which was produced by the disarming of
M. de Choiseul and M. de Damas, and the cries of “Vive la nation!”
shouted out by the hussars, to the great delight of the people, M.
de Goguelot, profiting by a moment of inattention on the part of his
guards, rushed up-stairs, and, all bleeding as he was, entered the
chamber of the King.
His head had been cut open by the fall, but he did not feel the wound.
The appearance of the chamber had changed. It had become a prison.
Marie Antoinette, who was in reality the strength and life of the
family, was overwhelmed. She had heard the cries, the shots, and she
saw M. de Goguelot return all covered with blood.
The King, standing upright, prayed M. Sauce, the grocer, to assist
them; as if he had the power, even had he wished to do so.
The Queen, seated on a stool between two packages of candles,
likewise implored his assistance.
But with brutal and petty selfishness, he replied, “I should like
to be able to serve you, certainly; but if you think of the King, I
think of M. Sauce.”
The Queen turned aside, shedding tears of rage.
She had never been so humbled before.
The day began to dawn.
The crowd filled the street, the Place de la Rue Neuve, and the Place
Latry.
All the citizens cried from their windows, “To Paris—to Paris—to
Paris with the King!”
Alas! to show himself—he was to appear no longer, as on the 6th of
October, on the balcony of the marble court, but at the windows of a
grocer’s house.
The King had fallen into a state of torpor.
The cries redoubled.
Five or six people had seen, or rather had caught a glimpse, of the
King; the others wished to inspect him thoroughly.
At that period, when it took a diligence six or seven days to go to
Paris, to have seen the King was a thing to talk about. Each one had
formed an imaginary portrait of him for him or herself.
Therefore the astonishment was intense when Louis the Sixteenth
showed himself with swollen eyes, and proved to that multitude a
thing which they did not before believe—namely, that a king may be
fat, pale, bloated—with dull eyes, hanging lips, a bad peruke, and a
gray suit of clothes.
The crowd believed that they were being deceived, and growled
accordingly.
Afterwards, when they knew that it was the King, “Oh, heavens!” said
they. “Poor man!”
Pity having once seized them, their hearts opened, and they began to
shed tears.
“Long live the King!” cried the crowd.
If Louis XVI had profited by that moment—if he had prayed that
concourse of people to help him and his children,—perhaps they would
have passed him and the royal family over the barricaded bridge, and
delivered them into the hands of the hussars.
He took no advantage of that pity and sorrow.
An example was given of the commiseration which the royal family
inspired.
Sauce had an aged mother—a woman of some eighty years of age. She was
born in the reign of Louis XIV, and was a Royalist. She entered the
chamber; and seeing the King and Queen bowed down with sorrow, and
the children sleeping on the bed, which had never been destined for
such a mournful honor, she fell on her knees beside it, repeated a
prayer, and, turning towards the Queen, “Madame,” said she, “will you
allow me to kiss the hands of the two innocents?”
The Queen bowed her head, in token of assent.
The good woman kissed their hands, and left the room, sobbing, as if
her heart would break.
The Queen was the only one who did not sleep.
The King, who had need, whatever his preoccupation of mind might
be, to eat and sleep well, having neither ate nor slept to his
satisfaction, was distracted.
About half-past six, M. Deslon was announced.
M. Deslon had arrived from Dun with about a hundred men.
He had found the Rue de l’Hôpital barricaded; had held a parley;
and demanding admission to the presence of the King, was accorded
permission to visit him.
He informed them how, at the sound of the tocsin, he had hurried
on; and that M. de Bouillé, warned by his son and M. de Raigecourt,
would, without doubt, arrive in a short time.
The King, however, seemed as if he did not hear him.
Three times M. Deslon repeated the same thing, and rather impatiently
the last time.
“Sire,” said he, “do you not hear me?”
“What do you wish, monsieur?” said the King, as if starting from a
reverie.
“I ask your commands for M. de Bouillé, sire!”
“I have no more commands to give, monsieur—I am a prisoner.”
“But, at least, sir—”
“That he does what he can for me.”
M. Deslon retired, without being able to obtain another answer.
In fact, the King was indeed a prisoner.
The tocsin had completed its dismal task. Every village had sent
its contingent. Four or five thousand men encumbered the streets of
Varennes.
About seven in the morning, two men arriving by the Clermont road,
and bestriding horses flecked with foam, pushed their way through the
multitude.
The shouts of the people announced something new to the King.
Soon the door opened, and admitted an officer of the National Guard.
It was the same Rayon, who, whilst snatching a moment’s rest at
Châlons, sent on an express to St. Menehould.
He entered the royal chamber fatigued, excited, almost mad, without a
cravat, and with his hair unpowdered.
“Ah, sire,” said he, in a hoarse voice—“our wives, our children! They
slaughter them at Paris, sire; you will not go much further. The
interest of the State—”
And he fell, almost fainting, into an arm-chair.
“Well, sir,” said the Queen, taking his hand, and showing him the
Dauphin and Madame Royale sleeping on the bed, “am I not a mother,
too?”
“In short, sir,” said the King, “what have you to announce to me?”
“Sire, a decree of the Assembly.”
“Where is it?”
“My comrade has it.”
“Your comrade?”
The officer made a sign to open the door.
One of the gardes du corps opened it, and they saw M. de Romeuf
leaning against the window of the ante-chamber, and weeping.
He came forward, with downcast eyes.
The Queen started at sight of him.
It was the same young man who had accompanied M. Lafayette in the
visit he had paid the King just a quarter of an hour before he
started.
“Ah, monsieur! is it you?” said the Queen. “I could never have
believed it.”
It was she who should have blushed before him, and she tried to make
him blush.
M. de Romeuf held in his hands the decree of the Assembly.
The King snatched it from him, cast his eyes over it, and cried,
“There is no longer a King in France!”
The Queen took it in her turn, read it, and returned it to the King.
The King re-read it, and then placed it on the bed where his children
slept.
“No—no!” cried the Queen, exasperated, furious, mad with hate and
anger; “I do not wish that infamous paper to defile my children.”
“Madame,” at last said Romeuf, “you have just reproached me for
being charged with this mission. Is it not better that I should have
undertaken the task than one who would have borne witness with regard
to transports of passion?”
There was, in fact, at this action of the Queen’s, a terrible murmur
among the spectators.
The Queen had crumpled up the decree, and dashed it on the floor.
M. de Choiseul, who had regained his liberty, and who, at the moment,
entered the chamber, accompanied by two messengers, picked up the
decree, and placed it on the table.
The Queen appreciated his intention, and thanked him with a look.
“At least, sir,” said she, addressing M. de Romeuf, “I hope that
you will do all you can for M. de Choiseul, M. de Damas, and M. de
Goguelot when we are gone.”
In fact, the Queen well understood that go she must.
It was seven o’clock in the morning, and M. de Bouillé had not put in
an appearance.
The peasants of the villages round Varennes continued to pour into
the town, armed with guns, pitchforks, and scythes, and each cried
louder than the other, “To Paris! to Paris!”
The carriage was in readiness.
The King made the most of each little obstacle, counting each moment,
awaiting Bouillé.
At last, it was necessary to make a move.
The King rose first.
The Queen followed his example.
One of her women—whether naturally, or whether as an artifice, to
gain time—fainted.
“They may cut me into pieces if they will,” said the Queen, “but I
will not leave without one who has the misfortune to be my friend.”
“As you will—stay if you like,” said a man of the people, “At any
rate, I will take the Dauphin.”
He took the royal child in his arms, and stepped towards the door.
The Queen seized the Dauphin from him, and descended the stairs,
blushing.
All the family were filled with poignant anxiety. On arriving in the
street, Madame Elizabeth perceived that half of the Queen’s hair had
turned gray; the other half was to grow gray at the Conciergerie in
a second night of agony, which was not, perhaps, more terrible than
that which we have recounted.
They got into the carriage; the three gardes du corps mounted on the
box.
M. de Goguelot, in the hope of bringing succor, had found means of
escaping through the little passage situate at the back of the house
of M. Sauce.
M. de Choiseul and M. de Damas were conducted to the city prison,
where M. de Romeuf caused himself to be imprisoned with them, for the
sake of protecting them more efficiently.
At last, after having exhausted every possible means of delay, the
carriage started, escorted by the National Guard, under the command
of M. Signemont, by the hussars of M. de Choiseul, which had been
sent to protect his flight, and by more than four thousand citizens
of Varennes and its suburbs, armed with guns, pitchforks, and scythes.
The carriage of the King did not, as some historians say, pass the
house of the grocer, Sauce; that was the historical limit of the
fatal journey.
The moment that the carriage moved, I felt great doubt—or, rather,
great remorse.
The catastrophe of the arrest of the King had brought in its train an
event which, though I have but mentioned it in the place it occupied
relatively to that arrest, influenced in a strange manner the whole
of my life.
One can readily understand that I speak of M. de Malmy’s wound; of
the impression that that wound produced on Mdlle. Sophie, and of the
involuntary avowal that, on her part, she had made to me.
I had a deep affection for Sophie. This affection, more than
fraternal, had a spice of jealousy in it; although I must do the poor
girl the justice to say that from the moment that she perceived my
nascent love, she had done all she could to nip it in the bud, by
telling me that she could never be anything more than a sister to me.
I always had the suspicion—I will not say that my rival, for there
was no real rivalry, was M. de Malmy.
This time I could no longer doubt it, and I felt it impossible to
remain under the same roof with him. Not only because Sophie loved
him and he loved Sophie, but because I knew that he was the origin of
all the misery and unhappiness that was gradually wearing her away.
As soon as I saw the King ready to set out, and the carriage about
to move on to Paris, I bade adieu to M. Gerbaut, without telling
him that I did not think of returning to Varennes, and started
off without having the courage to see Sophie, whom however, I
unexpectedly found in my road, barring up the corridor.
“What, Mdlle. Sophie!”
She threw herself, weeping, on to my neck.
“Each one has his destiny, my good Réné,” said she. “Mine is to
suffer. I shall accomplish it.”
“Shall I always be your brother?” asked I, weeping myself.
“Ah, yes! And if ever I have need of you, I will show you that I am
your sister, by coming to you for assistance.”
“Heaven guard you, Mdlle. Sophie,” cried I, withdrawing myself from
her embrace.
“And you, also—heaven bless you, Réné!”
And I heard the sobs which followed these words even as far as the
door which opened into the street.
I took my place at the door of the King’s carriage, making a signal
to MM. Drouet and Guillaume, who were on horseback, with the
intention of preceding the carriages, in order to make way for, and
protect them.
What was M. de Bouillé doing at this time? We will tell you in the
following chapter.
CHAPTER XXXII.
WHAT M. DE BOUILLE DID IN THE MEANTIME.
M. de Bouillé was at Dun, where he had passed the night in a state of
mortal disquietude.
It was the advanced post of his watch.
At three o’clock, having received no news, he proceeded to Stenay.
At Stenay he was in the centre of his forces, and was able to act
with greater facility, having at his disposal a great number of men.
From four to five o’clock he was successively joined by M. de Rohrig,
M. de Raigecourt, and by his son.
He then knew all.
But M. de Bouillé could but little depend on his men. He was
surrounded by hostile villagers, as he called them—that is to say,
patriotic. He was menaced by Metz, by Verdun, and by Stenay. It was
his fear of Stenay that had caused him to quit Dun.
The Royal German was the sole regiment on which he could depend. It
was necessary to keep up their loyalty.
M. de Bouillé and his son Louis sat themselves to the work body and
soul.
A bottle of wine and a louis per man settled the affair.
But it took two hours to arm and set out.
At last, he started; but at seven o’clock, just at the time when the
King got into the carriage.
In two hours he covered the eight leagues which separated him from
Varennes.
On the road he met a hussar.
“Well?”
“The King is arrested.”
“We know it. What then?”
“He has just set out from Varennes.”
“Where goes he?”
“To Paris.”
Bouillé did not give himself time to reply.
He dashed his spurs into the flanks of his horse.
His regiment followed him.
Varennes saw the regiment descend “like a waterspout amongst its
vines,” to quote the language of the _proces verbal_.
When he arrived at the Place du Grand Monarque, the King had started
more than an hour.
He acted so as to lose no time. The Rue de l’Hôpital was barricaded;
the bridge was barricaded. They made a detour round the town; they
crossed the river by the ford at the Boucheries, in order to take up
a favorable position on the Clermont road, to attack the escort.
The order was given, and the manœuvre accomplished.
The river was crossed.
A hundred steps more, and they would be on the road.
But the Moulin Canal was on their way—six feet deep, and impossible
to ford.
It was necessary to stop and march back.
For an instant, they held the idea of fording the river at St.
Gengoulf, taking the Rue St. Jean, passing through Varennes and
falling on the rear of the escort.
But the dragoons were fatigued; the horses rebelled at every step. It
would be necessary to fight a way through Varennes, and to fight to
get to the King.
They said that the garrison of Verdun were on the march, with some
cannon.
Their courage failed them. They felt that all was lost.
M. de Bouillé, weeping with rage, dashed his sword into its sheath,
and ordered a retreat.
The inhabitants of the high town saw him and his men standing there
for an hour, unable to make up their minds to return.
Eventually he and his men took the route to Dun, and disappeared in
the distance.
The King continued his way—_the way of the Cross_.
* * * * *
After the arrest of M. Dandoins and his lieutenant, an officer of the
National Guard, Citizen Legay, had established under the trees at
the angle of the Rue de la Post au Bois and the Rue du Marais a post
of National Guards, picked men, and all ordered to fire on any one
entering or leaving the city at a gallop, without responding to the
challenge of the sentinels.
Some minutes after these orders had been given, a report was
circulated that the hussars of Pont-de-Somme-Vesles had gone round
the town, and that Drouet and Guillaume ran a great risk of falling
into their hands.
M. Legay then asked for two volunteers to go with him on the road,
and pick up what information they could with regard to Drouet and
Guillaume.
Two gendarmes, Collet and Pointe, offered themselves, and all three
set out on their voyage of discovery.
On the road they met the two citizens of St. Menehould, who had
started on sorry hacks, and been unable to keep up the chase. They
learnt from them that no accident had happened to the two messengers.
Anxious to be the bearers of this good news, they put their horses
to the gallop, and, forgetting the orders given by Legay, omitted to
answer the challenge of the sentinels in ambuscade.
The sentinels fired. Two of the horsemen fell; one dead, and the
other wounded.
Legay received five or six shots in the arm and hand.
The same day that the King repassed St. Menehould, the slain gendarme
was buried.
The King, on arriving, found the church hung with black, and the
whole town prepared to follow the body to its last home.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE TURNS UP.
Nothing important passed between Varennes and St. Menehould. The
illustrious prisoners, starting at every new noise, lost in a
measure, as they approached the latter town, every hope of succor.
The first thing they encountered was a sort of rebuke from the dead.
Of course, I allude to the interment of the man shot in the evening
by the sentinels.
The royal carriages stopped in order to allow the funeral procession
to pass. Two kings found themselves face to face with each other—a
living majesty and the King of Death. The living King recognised the
power of King Death, and bowed down before him.
St. Menehould was crowded. The National Guard poured in from all
points, those from Châlons coming in public or private vehicles. In
fact, the affluence of people was such that they feared a lack of
provisions.
In the midst of all these people coming and going, I recognised,
mounted on a little pony, M. Dampierre, our old chasseur of the
Forest of Argonne. He knew me, and came to me, trying to force the
line of guards on duty at the side of the gates.
It was I who repulsed him, because he did not count on my resistance.
“Pardon, M. le Comte,” said I; “you cannot pass!”
“Why can I not pass?” asked he.
“Because it is ordered that none shall be allowed to approach the
King’s carriage.”
“Who gave that order?”
“Our Captain, M. Drouet.”
“A revolutionist!”
“Possibly so, M. le Comte; but he is our commander, and we are bound
to obey him.”
“Is it forbidden to cry ‘Vive le Roi?’”
“No, M. le Comte; we are all Royalists.”
M. de Dampierre lifted his hat as high as his length of arm would
permit him, raised himself in his stirrups, and cried “Vive le Roi!”
The King put his head out of the window, and without any expression
of gratitude or remembrance, bowed to him.
M. de Dampierre retreated out of the crowd with trouble, being
obliged to make his horse go backwards. I remember him as well as
if the events occurred but yesterday. He wore gray trousers, long
riding boots, a white waistcoat, a three-cornered hat, trimmed with
gold lace. As usual with him, he carried, slung over his shoulder, a
little single-barrelled gun.
I lost sight of him. I fancied that he took the direction of the Rue
de l’Abreuvoir.
During this time, the Mayor and members of the municipality had
advanced as far as the bridge of the Aisne, situate at the extremity
of the Porte au Bois, to meet the royal family.
A municipal officer then took occasion to speak, and to tell the King
what alarms his flight had caused in France.
Louis XVI was contented to reply, with an ill-tempered air, “I never
intended to leave my kingdom.”
The crowd was so great that we took half an hour to go five hundred
yards.
About half-past eleven, the King mounted the steps of the Hotel de
Ville, his garments covered with dust, and his face altered and
careworn.
The Queen dressed in black. She had changed her robe at M. Sauce’s,
and held the Dauphin by the hand.
Louis XVI and his children were hungry.
As for the Queen, in the same manner, as she cared not to sleep, she
now seemed to care not to eat.
A breakfast had been prepared through the forethought of the
municipal council, but as they were a long time serving it, a
gendarme named Lapointe brought some cherries in his hat for Madame
Royale.
The royal family had likewise need of rest.
The Mayor, M. Dupuis de Dammartin, offered them hospitality; they
accepted it; only M. Dupuis de Dammartin observed to the King that it
would be just as well if the Queen and the Dauphin showed themselves
to the people.
The King made no difficulty. He showed himself first. Afterwards the
Queen appeared in her turn, holding the Dauphin in her arms. The
window of the Hotel de Ville—the only one which had a balcony—was so
narrow that the King and Queen could not both show themselves at the
same time.
A municipal officer then announced to the people that the King, being
fatigued, intended to honor the citizens of St. Menehould by sleeping
within their walls.
The carriages had already been taken to the stables, and the news of
a halt for twenty-four hours was not less agreeable to us, who had
been marching seven or eight leagues under a burning sun, than it was
to the royal family, when the National Guards from the adjacent towns
and villages, who filled the hotels and cafés, rushed into the place,
crying “Aristocrats! Traitors!” and saying that the royal family were
far too near the frontier to be allowed to halt.
In consequence, they ordered the immediate departure of the King and
his family.
The King, having informed himself of the cause of the tumult, said,
with his usual impassibility, “Very well; let us go.”
The Queen then reappeared on the balcony holding her son by the hand.
She pointed out the National Guards to him, saying some words in a
whisper.
An inhabitant of St. Menehould, who was at an adjoining window,
assured me that the following were the words that she spoke. “Do you
see those blue toads? It is they who wish us to set out!”
It is needless to say that the National Guards wore the blue uniform.
As the royal family crossed the hall of the Hotel de Ville, into
which opened the door of the chapel, where the prisoners had heard
mass, the Queen perceiving the captives, distributed among them five
louis—the King ten.
At two o’clock the carriages started for Châlons. From the time
that the King had been recognised he took the place of honor in the
vehicle.
MM. de Malden, de Moustier, and de Valory, sat on the box, but they
were not strapped to it as some people have said.
Not a single shout for the King, except that which Dampierre uttered,
as we have before mentioned, was used at either his arrival or
departure. The only shouts raised were “Vive la nation!” “Vivent les
patriotes!”
About nine or ten in the morning the Comte de Haus arrived at St.
Menehould, exasperated by the news of the arrest of the King.
Many persons had heard him say, “The King is arrested! We are all
lost! But the King shall know that he still has some faithful
subjects!”
I have said that, after speaking to me, I had seen him go round to
the side of the horse-pond.
As the royal carriage passed, he presented arms to the august
prisoners, after the fashion of a sentinel.
The King recognised him, pointed him out to the Queen, and returned
his salute.
M. Dampierre then put his horse to a gallop, and disappeared at the
Rue de l’Abreuvoir so as to get in advance of the King’s carriage,
stopped in the most public part of the town, at the corner of the Rue
de l’Abreuvoir, and presented arms afresh.
The King saluted him a third time.
Then pushing his horse through the crowd on the side where I was, he
approached the carriage.
It was going at this time up the Fleurion at a foot pace.
“Sire,” said he, “you see before you one of your most faithful
servants. My name is Duval de Dampierre, Comte de Haus. I have
married a lady of the House of Legur, a relative of the minister of
that name, and a niece of M. d’Allonville.”
“All these names are known to me,” replied the King; “and I am
touched at the proof of fidelity which you give me.”
This whispered conversation, after the pretence of the Comte in
presenting arms to the King on his road, was a direct provocation to
that crowd who were taking him who had wished to escape back to Paris.
In the meantime the Comte had been gently pushed on one side, and
darting off, he disappeared in the distance.
The head of the procession reached the end of the town, and arrived
at the decline of Dammartin la Planchette.
As they left the city, M. de Dampierre reappeared, and followed their
route, keeping himself on the other side of the hedge and ditch. He
wished, by some means, to get on to the top of the King’s carriage,
from whence he could hold communication with the royal party inside.
These signs, as they could easily understand them, excited defiance.
They believed that in the few words exchanged at the door of the
carriage, a project for a rescue had been broached; they closed round
the carriage, and the words “Be on the alert!” circulated through the
ranks of the National Guards.
M. de Dampierre tried to approach the carriage once again, and
was repulsed, not only with murmurs, but with menaces; the guards
crossing their muskets across the door to prevent his holding any
communication with the King.
This almost insolent persistence on his part had exasperated even the
most temperate.
Seeing that his efforts were useless, M. de Dampierre resolved to
finish with an act of bravado.
Having accomplished two-thirds of the descent, at a spot called La
Grevières, M. de Dampierre called out a second time “Vive le Roi!”
fired off his gun in the air, and plunging his rowels into his steed,
darted off at a gallop.
A wood was situated about half a league from the road. They believed
that some troops were in ambuscade there, and that the discharge of
the gun was a preconcerted signal for them.
Five or six horsemen dashed off in pursuit of M. de Dampierre; ten
or twelve shots were fired at him at the same time, but none of the
bullets touched him.
M. de Dampierre, still at a gallop, waved his arm in a triumphant
manner in the air.
I rushed off like the others, though on foot, not to capture M. de
Dampierre—heaven forbid!—but, on the contrary, to help him if needful.
M. de Dampierre had already galloped more than five hundred yards,
and he had almost escaped from his pursuers, when his horse, in
leaping a ditch, stumbled, and fell.
But, with the aid of the bit and bridle, he managed to raise him up
again, and once more set off at a gallop. His gun was left in the
ditch.
At this moment a solitary gun was discharged.
It was fired by a peasant, mounted on a horse belonging to one of the
hussars, which he had captured the evening before.
It was easy to see that M. de Dampierre was wounded. He fell
backwards on the croup of his horse, which reared.
Then, in a moment, with the rapidity of lightning, on the little
bridge of St. Catherine, by the borders of the ditch, the waters of
which pass under the bridge, a horrible scene took place, which I saw
in all its dreadful details, but was unable to oppose.
The peasant who had fired the shot, followed by about forty men,
caught up the Comte de Haus, dealt him a blow with his sabre, and
then unhorsed him. I saw no more. I heard the report of about twenty
guns, into the suffocating smoke of which I dashed.
They were firing at M. de Dampierre.
I arrived too late. Had I reached the mob sooner, it would have been
to have died with him, for I could not have saved him.
His body was riddled with bullets, and gashed with bayonets; his
face, scratched by the peasants’ hob-nailed boots, was unrecognisable.
His watch was dashed to pieces by a ball which had penetrated his fob.
There was nothing to be done. I threw my gun over my shoulder, and,
with tears in my eyes and sweat on my brow, I rejoined my rank.
The royal berlin continued its route slowly and sorrowfully under
a sweltering sun, along that unbending route which crosses like a
pencil line that sorrowful portion of France called the Paltry Land.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CRITICS CRITICISED.
Not only does it seem to me sufficient to relate what I have seen; I
desire also, as an eye-witness, to rectify history and to combat, on
sure grounds, the mistake of historians.
In order to give a slight idea of the intense excitement of
Republican France against the King, and more particularly against the
Queen, I quote the following letter, the original of which was sent
by the citizens of Counien to the municipal officers of Varennes:—
“27th of June, 2nd year of Liberty.
“GENTLEMEN,—
“Allow the patriotic women of the State, who have the honor of
being members of the Club of the Society of the Friends of the
Constitution, to present to you their best congratulations at
the capture in your city of the execrable traitors, Citizen and
Citizeness Capet, whose traitorous machinations have so long tried
to crush freedom in France. Our only prayer is that both may
speedily be humiliated. Vive la France! Vive la Liberté! A bas les
Capets!
“For the Citizenesses of Counien,
(Signed) “Citoyenne Marie Benoit.
“To the Municipal Officers of Varennes.”
After this specimen of the feeling of the women of France can it be
wondered that the fate of the King and Queen seemed assured. Either
they must die, or France must sink lower than ever. This, of course,
was only my opinion; but events have proved whether I was right or
wrong.
CHAPTER XXXV.
IS LOVE ETERNAL?
The route from St. Menehould to Châlons is long and fatiguing—nine
apparently never-ending leagues, traversing flat and arid plains
under a leaden sky, with a sun darting his scorching rays with
reflected lustre on the musket barrels and sword blades.
The royal family arrived at Châlons fatigued, dispirited and worn
out, at ten in the evening.
Half the original followers of the royal escort had thrown themselves
down under hedges and in ditches, unable any longer to proceed.
But the actual escort was as strong on arriving at Châlons as when
leaving St. Menehould, since it was recruited by the National Guard
of every village through which it passed; and the villages were
pretty thickly scattered on the right and left of that road.
The authorities, of whom the Mayor took the lead, conducted the
prisoners to the gate of the Dauphin. I use the word prisoners
advisedly, as the royal family were in fact, at that time, prisoners
of the nation.
Strange coincidence!—the gate through which they passed was the
triumphal arch raised by the French people in commemoration of the
entry of Madame the Dauphine into France.
It still bore the inscription, “_May it stand eternal like our love_.”
The arch, in fact, still stood, but the love which prompted it had
fallen away.
At Châlons, especially, opinion changes.
The bluffness of the national party was lessened. The old town where
Attila lost himself, and which now preserved its trade only in the
wines of Champagne, was inhabited by Royalists of the better class,
and by poor gentlemen. These good people were sorely vexed to see
their unhappy King in such doleful plight.
They expected his arrival; consequently a great supper was prepared.
The King and Queen partook of the meal in public, as they did at
Varennes. A sort of royal drawing-room was held. The ladies bore with
them immense bouquets. The Queen was positively overwhelmed with
flowers.
They determined to start on the morrow, feeling an increase of
confidence on account of the reception they had met with.
Before they set out, mass was celebrated at ten o’clock by M.
Charber, perpetual-curate of Notre Dame. The King was present,
accompanied by the Queen and the royal family; but hardly had the
solemn service commenced, before a disturbance was made.
It was the National Guard of Rheims, who wished the King to set out
at once. The time spent in mass appeared to them wasted, as they had
come solely to gloat over the downfall of monarchy, and the ruin of
their King. They broke open, therefore, the doors of the chapel,
despite the resistance offered to them by the National Guard.
The King and Queen were advised to show themselves at the balcony.
They did so; but the sight of their august persons exasperated, in
place of calming, the turbulence of the excited populace, who shouted
for the royal family to leave their city, and actually drew the
carriages to the door, harnessed the horses, and did, in fact, all
they could do to accelerate the departure of the King.
The King appeared again at the balcony, and pronounced the following
words:—
“Since you oblige me to leave you, I go!”
Although this was a reproach more than anything else, it satisfied
the people.
At eleven exactly, the royal family re-entered their carriage, and
put themselves _en route_.
The heat was dreadfully oppressive. Their journey was made, as it
were, through a blast furnace, and their eyes were incessantly
tormented by a penetrating dust.
I happened to know the situation of a cool spring. I approached the
royal carriage, and demanded respectfully of her Majesty the Queen if
she desired a glass of fresh water, as we were near to some of a most
excellent quality.
“Thank you,” replied the Queen.
“Oh, do have some, mamma—do have some! I am so thirsty!” said the
Dauphin.
“I wish it not; but give me some for my children,” said the Queen.
Madame de Tourzel handed me a silver cup.
“Fill this up for me, also,” said Madame Elizabeth.
She handed me another cup.
In fancy, after a lapse of sixty years, I can still see her angelic
face—still hear that charming voice, whose entreaties were more than
commands.
I leant my gun against the trunk of a tree, rushed to the fountain,
and brought back the two cups filled with the sparkling water, which,
through my rapidity, had not had time to lose its freshness.
The Dauphin and Madame Royale shared one cup between them.
Madame Elizabeth, after offering the other cup to the Queen, who
refused it, drank it herself.
“Oh, what delicious water it is,” cried the Dauphin. “Why does the
world drink aught else?”
“Because they have drinks they like better,” replied the King.
“My son thanks you, sir,” said the Queen.
“I also thank you,” said Madame Elizabeth, with her sweet smile.
I seized my gun, which had been left at the foot of a tree.
“I saw you once run after M. de Dampierre,” said the Queen. “With
what intention?”
“With the hope of saving him, if possible, madame.”
“You have the same opinions, then, as M. de Dampierre,” said the
Queen.
“I agree with him in the respect which he feels towards your enemies.”
“Do you know that you give an ambiguous answer, young man?” said the
King.
“Yes, sire,” I replied.
“Ha, ha!” said he.
Then to the Queen: “The minds of these people are poisoned against
us, from their very childhood.”
“Oh, papa!” cried the Dauphin, “what a beautiful gun he has!”
I was the person referred to. To the Queen and Madame Elizabeth I was
“monsieur,” but to the Dauphin I was simply “he.”
The King looked at my gun.
“It is,” said he, “a gun manufactured at Versailles. Where did you
procure it?”
“The Duc d’Enghien gave it to me, sire.”
“Yes,” said the King, “the Condés have all the benefits on this
side,—‘the department of the Meuse,’ as they call it.”
Then looking towards me: “Have you ever served princes?”
“Sire,” said I, smiling, “is it necessary to have served princes in
order to receive a present from them?”
The Queen bent her regards upon the King.
“Strange!” said she.
I retreated a pace.
The King beckoned me, but not knowing how to address me, he said, “My
young friend, you say that the Duc d’Enghien gave you that gun?”
“Yes, sire. I understand,” said I, “that the King wishes to know
upon what occasion this gun was presented to me. I was the nephew
of a park-keeper of the Forest of Argonne, whose name was Father
Descharmes. The Duc de Condé and the Duc d’Enghien often hunted in
this forest. The Duc d’Enghien took a fancy to me, and gave me this
gun.”
The King, for a moment, appeared buried in thought.
“Your uncle is still alive?” he then asked.
“Sire, he is dead?”
“Why do you not solicit his place?”
“Because, sire, the keepers wear livery. I am a free man.”
“Children suck in republican ideas, even with their mothers’ milk!”
murmured the King.
He then threw himself back in his carriage.
I know not if the King spoke again; but the carriage at the moment
stopped; and, perchance, with it stopped something of importance.
We had arrived at Port Bassion.
Suddenly was heard a cry: “The commissaires! the commissaires!”
At this moment, a man on horseback dashed up to the door of the
King’s carriage. The King put out his head, to see what had caused
the halt.
“Sire,” said the horseman, “here are three deputies, who wish to
direct the return of your Majesty.”
“Aha!” said the King, “Can you tell me the names of these estimable
gentlemen?”
“Their names, sire, are Citizens Latour-Maubourg, Barnave, and
Pétion.”
The three deputies represented the three different parties of the
Assembly. Latour-Maubourg was Royalist, Barnave was Constitutional,
Pétion was Republican.
The crowd respectfully drew back. Three men approached the royal
carriage, stopped at the door, and saluted the King, who returned
their inclination.
One of them held in his hand a paper, which he read in a loud voice.
It was the decree of the National Assembly.
The man who read it was Pétion.
This decree ordered them to proceed to the King, not only to ensure
his safety, but also as a mark of respect due to royalty, as
represented in the persons of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
The King knew that M. Latour-Maubourg was a Royalist.
He therefore desired that, as two deputies had to sit in the carriage
with him, he would name the two. The Queen expressed the same desire.
M. Latour-Maubourg replied, in a whisper:—
“I accepted the sad mission which introduces me to your Majesty only
in the hopes of being of some service to you. Your Majesty can, then,
count upon me as a faithful follower. But I have not the power of
Barnave, who exercises an enormous influence over the Assembly. He is
vain as an advocate, and will be flattered by having a seat in the
carriage of the King. It is, therefore, needful that he should occupy
a place, and that the Queen should take the opportunity of improving
his acquaintance. I, therefore, beg your Majesties to excuse my
surrendering my seat.”
The Queen bowed her head. She wished to again assume her womanly
properties, and to seduce Barnave, as she had Mirabeau. To be sure,
it was humiliating, but, at the same time, it was a distraction.
Strange contradiction! It was the King who had most repugnance to
Barnave’s occupying a seat in the royal carriage. Barnave, a little
Dauphinois advocate, pride upon his face, his nose perked up in
the air, and his _tout ensemble_ proclaiming insufferable conceit,
took his place. Pétion likewise, his rosy cheeks glowing with
satisfaction, disposed of himself to his perfect content.
Barnave and Pétion, therefore, as we have said, entered the royal
carriage.
Madame de Tourzel had resigned her place, and entered, with M.
Latour-Maubourg, the carriage set apart for the attendants.
Pétion at once proclaimed his discourtesy by claiming, as
representative of the National Assembly, a seat with his face to the
horses. The King and Queen made a sign to Madame Elizabeth, who at
once changed places with him.
At last, all inside the royal carriage were satisfactorily arranged.
On the back seat were the King, Pétion, the Queen; and on the front,
Madame Elizabeth, face to face with Pétion, Madame Royale and the
Dauphin face to face and knee to knee with the Queen, who was
opposite, also, to Barnave.
At the first glance the Queen fancied that Barnave was dry, cold, and
wicked.
Barnave had hoped to take the place of Mirabeau at the Assembly. He
had succeeded in part; could not the Queen confer the rest?
Why not?
Had she not, at St. Cloud, given a secret interview to Mirabeau? Why
should not he, Barnave, be accorded a similar favor.
But then, public rumor spread abroad that one of the three gentlemen
on the box of the carriage, “M. Fersen,” was the accepted lover of
the Queen.
Strange thing! As I have told you the good self-opinion of Barnave,
he was yet jealous of M. de Fersen.
With the admirable shrewdness of women, the Queen discovered this
before a quarter of an hour had elapsed.
She managed to get the three guards, named respectively MM. de
Malden, de Valory, and de Moustier.
No Fersen!
Barnave breathed, smiled, and became positively charming.
Barnave was young, handsome, polished, of fascinating manners, and
felt great commiseration for the unfortunate royal party.
In place of the Queen seducing Barnave, Barnave almost seduced the
Queen.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
BARNAVE AND PETION.
One naturally asks how I became acquainted with all this.
I have already said that, on leaving Varennes, I had taken a place
on the back of the carriage of the King. Happily, I had managed to
retain my position, despite the heat, the fatigue, and the dust.
Twice only, for a few minutes, had I quitted my location; firstly, to
try and assist M. de Dampierre, and, secondly, to procure the water
for Madame Elizabeth and the Dauphin. Both times, on my return, I
recovered my place. The glass windows of the berlin were let down on
account of the heat, and the royal family, not speaking in very low
voices, I managed to hear pretty well all that was said.
This explanation given, I will continue my story, with the history of
the rudeness of Pétion, and the courtesy of Barnave.
There was placed between Madame Elizabeth and Madame Royale, a bottle
of lemonade and a glass. Pétion was thirsty, and felt inclined to
drink. He took the glass, and handed it to Madame Elizabeth, who took
up the lemonade, and filled it.
“Enough!” said Pétion, lifting his glass as he would have done at a
cabaret.
The Queen’s eyes flashed with anger.
The Dauphin, with the impatience of a youngster, shifted in his seat;
Pétion seized him, and imprisoned him between his legs.
The Queen said nothing, but again darted a look of menace at Pétion;
who, remembering that it might be politic to gain the favor of the
King, caressed the Dauphin’s white locks with apparent affection.
The Dauphin made a grimace expressive of grief.
The Queen snatched him from Pétion’s legs.
Barnave, smiling, immediately opened his arms to him.
The boy seemed willing, and was, therefore, soon installed on
Barnave’s knees.
His instinct shewed him that he would find in Barnave a protector.
Playing with a button on the coat of the representative, he
discovered that a device was inscribed upon it, and, after many
efforts, succeeded in reading it.
The device was, “Live free, or die.”
The Queen sighed, and regarded Barnave, her eyes filled with tears.
Barnave’s heart smote him.
This was his position. He followed his own individual romance in the
midst of a royal and terrible history, when suddenly a noise was
heard some paces behind the royal carriage.
The cries and tumult drew Barnave from the magic circle which
surrounded him.
A venerable ecclesiastic approached the carriage, much in the same
manner as M. de Dampierre had done, and uplifted his hands and
blessed the royal martyr.
The mob, unsatiated by one murder, rushed upon the priest, and drew
him away, to slaughter him in the ditch by the roadside.
I was on the opposite side of the carriage to where this affair was
taking place.
“M. Barnave, M. Barnave!” cried I; “help, help!”
At the same moment, M. Barnave, putting his head out of the window,
saw what was taking place.
He placed the Dauphin in the arms of his aunt, and opened the
carriage door with such violence and rapidity, that he almost fell
out; in fact, he would have fallen, had not Madame Elizabeth caught
and retained him by his coat-tails.
“Oh, Frenchmen!” cried he; “ye are a nation of brave men—would ye
become a horde of assassins?”
At this eloquent appeal, the people let go the priest, who escaped,
protected by the outspread arms and eloquent gestures of Barnave.
The door was again shut, Barnave retook his place, and the Queen said
to him, “I thank you, M. Barnave.”
He bowed his head.
Before the arrival of the commissaires, the King had eaten alone with
his family; but now, after consulting the Queen, he invited them to
share his repast.
Pétion accepted the invitation; Latour-Maubourg and Barnave declined.
Barnave insisted, however, on waiting on the royal family; but the
Queen made him a sign, and he yielded.
I was one of the guard at the door of the dining-room.
In the evening, MM. Drouet and Guillaume set out at full speed, to
inform the Assembly of what had taken place.
Drouet came to bid me good-bye.
“M. Drouet,” said I to him, “you know me, as I am your pupil. I take
the greatest interest in that which is going on. It will be something
to talk about for the rest of my life. Give the order, before you
leave, to have me always placed close to their Majesties. The fatigue
will be nothing, and I wish to see all that goes on.”
“Be it as you wish,” said he, without making the least objection.
That was the reason why I had been appointed one of the guards that
day at the door of the dining-room.
This is what happened at Dormans.
After dinner, the three commissaires went into the neighboring
room—that is to say, the one at which I mounted guard.
“Citizens,” said Barnave to them, “we are commissaires of the
National Assembly, and not the executioners of the royal family; and
to make them proceed under this burning sun is simply to conduct them
to the scaffold.”
“Good!” said Pétion. “What has happened to them has been brought on
by their own follies.”
“Still they are no less King and Queen,” replied M. de
Latour-Maubourg.
“If affairs keep progressing as they do now, it is extremely probable
that they will not long even have that title to console them.”
“Quite right,” said Barnave. “But still I think that, as long as they
retain the titles of King and Queen, they ought to be treated as
such.”
“I have no objection,” said Pétion, in an indifferent tone. “Do as
you like, most loyal gentlemen.”
Saying these words, he left the room.
Barnave and M. de Latour-Maubourg, being alone, decided that the
royal carriage should be accompanied only by a cavalry escort, so
that it might proceed at a trot, and on the third evening arrive at
Meaux.
At that moment, they relieved guard. I ran to the postmaster at
Dormans, who was a friend of M. Drouet’s, and with whom we had lodged
on our way to the federation, and prayed him to lend me a horse, to
go as far as Meaux, where the royal family would halt, to pass the
night in repose.
In these critical times, paternal feeling elevated itself. The
postmaster had seen M. Drouet the evening before, who had announced
to him my arrival to-day. He would not let me hire the steed—he gave
it to me.
They arrived at Meaux about six in the evening.
The King again invited the commissaires to sup with him, as he had
before invited them to dine. Pétion accepted the invitation; M. de
Latour-Maubourg and Barnave refused it.
But the Queen, with charming grace, turning towards Barnave, said,
“Pray accept it, M. Barnave, as, after the meal, I shall have need of
you.”
Barnave bowed, the King signed to M. de Latour-Maubourg and the two
took their places at the royal table.
They were located in the palace of the Bishop of Meaux, a
melancholy-looking place enough, with its dark oak staircase and
mysterious and dusty passages.
I was on guard at the garden gate.
After dinner, the Queen, who, as she had said to Barnave, had need of
him, took his arm, and mounted the staircase to the apartments above,
under pretext of seeing a chamber once occupied by Bossuet.
As for the King, he descended into the gardens with Pétion. Pétion it
was who desired the _tête-à-tête_.
Pétion, who, apart from his folly, was a good man, and had a good
heart, had formed an idea of escape for the King. It was, to allow
the three body-guards to go, so that they might disguise themselves
as National Guards, and so facilitate their entrance into Paris.
But, extraordinary to relate, the King could not understand this idea
of Pétion’s; and not wishing to be under an obligation to Pétion,
and having the absurd suspicion that he wished to assassinate the
guards, he refused.
And yet, on the day when he could have caused Lafayette to be
proclaimed Mayor of Paris, he nominated Pétion.
It was because the Queen hated Lafayette more than the King detested
Pétion.
As for the Queen, no one knows what passed between her and Barnave,
except through the account which she afterwards gave to Madame Campan.
The impression which the young representative produced on the Queen
may be summed up in those words.
“If ever power returns into our hands, the pardon of Barnave is
assured in our hearts.”
The Queen was ready to pardon Barnave for his rebellion; France did
not pardon him for his weakness.
The unhappy orator paid with his head for the few moments of
happiness he spent with this second Marie Stuart.
Perchance he had the same honor as Mirabeau, of kissing her hand.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
PARIS.
Day dawned.
It was the 25th of June. They returned to Paris after five days
absence.
Five days! What terrible events had come to pass in the space of five
days!
As they approached Paris, Barnave retook his seat at the back.
No longer was it a seat of honor, but the place of danger.
If a fanatic should fire on the King, which was, indeed, probable;
if on the Queen, which was more than probable;—Barnave was there, to
arrest with his own body the fell bullet aimed at royalty.
M. Mathieu Damas had been charged by Lafayette, Royalist though he
was, to protect their entry.
This able strategist had drawn from all parties in order to diminish
the danger. He confided the guarding of the carriage to the
grenadiers, whose tall hats hid entirely the doors; a line of horse
grenadiers formed a second ring.
As for the three guards whom Louis XVI had not wished to go, two
grenadiers, with their muskets bayoneted, sat a little behind the
box-seat, ready to suppress any attempt at rescue or flight.
The heat was tremendous. The carriage, the nearer it approached
Paris, appeared to be entering the mouth of a furnace.
The Queen, whom nothing hitherto had conquered, was beaten by the
heat. Twice or thrice she cried, “I suffocate!”
At Bourget, the King asked for wine.
Broken down by fatigue, Madame Elizabeth slept.
The change of places had brought Pétion close by her. The face of the
future Mayor of Paris had a remarkable expression of joy. The Queen,
who cared not for sleeping herself, shook her by the arm in order to
awaken her.
“Let her alone,” cried Pétion. “Nature must take its course.”
They passed the barrier, and entered into the midst of a moving and
agitated people.
From time to time the crowd gave a tremendous yell. The King, trying
to show _sang-froid_ began, apparently, to read.
“Suppose one were to applaud the King!”
“He shall be scourged!”
“Suppose one were to insult him?”
“He shall be hanged!”
The crowd kept pace with the carriage.
Mathieu Damas, commanding the escort, did not wish to enter Paris by
the Faubourg St. Martin. He was nearer the Faubourg St. Antoine, of
terrible memory, on account of the attack and seizure of the Bastille.
He asked himself if he had a human barrier strong enough to protect
the royal family from the crowd who had virtually sentenced them to
death. He went round Paris by the external Boulevards, and entered it
by the Champ Elysées and the Place Louis XV.
On the Place Louis XV stood, at that period, the statue of the
monarch whose name the place bore.
They had bandaged the eyes of the statue with a handkerchief.
This allusion, though ignored by the King, still disquieted him.
“Why this bandage on the eyes of my predecessor?” inquired the King.
“To show the blindness of the monarchy, sire,” replied Pétion.
In the progress from the Champs Elysées to the Place Louis XV, the
barrier of grenadiers was often broken.
Then the Queen saw appear at the windows hideous faces, expressive of
satisfaction and revenge.
What caused those devils to turn away and bow?
It was a kiss which the Dauphin sent them, and a bow from his sister;
those white-winged angels hovering over the royal family.
Lafayette, with his etat major, passed by the Queen.
As soon as she perceived them, she cried out, “M. Lafayette, above
all things save my three body-guards; their crime has been but to
obey me.”
The same cry was uttered by her at Versailles on the 6th of October.
Their danger was really great.
The carriages passed through the gate of the Tuileries, which was
vainly endeavored to be shut after them. They proceeded along the
grand promenade of the garden, and halted only at the end of the
great terrace which stretched along the front of the palace.
It was there that the crowd, greater than ever, awaited them. It was
impossible to go farther; they must get out of their carriage.
The Assembly was not present, but it had sent twenty deputies.
Lafayette cleared a pathway from the terrace to the palace door.
He constructed an iron arch with the muskets and bayonets of the
National Guard.
“M. Barnave,” again cried the Queen, “I ask you to protect my three
guards.”
The children first descended, and entered the palace without
opposition. It was then the turn of the three guards, for whom the
Queen had asked protection from M. Lafayette and M. Barnave.
Then there came a terrible outcry.
I had left my horse at the top of the Champs Elysées, and marched
with the grenadiers on foot. At first, they tried to turn me out, but
the King said, “Let him alone; he is a friend.”
They did leave me alone. M. Pétion gave me a side glance; M. Barnave
smiled.
The King and Queen looked to see what would happen to the three
guards; the King gazed with his usual apathy, the Queen with intense
interest.
The sabres and pikes of the National Guard waved over them as they
shouted, “Death to the traitors!”
All of a sudden, I saw a stream of blood running down M. de Malden’s
cheek.
Being in the circle, I drew him, with a vigorous effort, towards me,
crying, “Peace! peace! I am the friend of M. Drouet.”
Five hundred voices shouted, “Long live Drouet! Long live Guillaume!”
I drew M. de Malden under the arch of the Grand Pavilion, but he
would proceed no farther until assured of the safety of the King and
Queen.
During this time, in the midst of the most terrible murmurs, they
saved M. de Valory and M. de Moustier.
Like M. de Malden, M. de Valory was wounded; but also like M. de
Malden, his wound was but slight.
At this moment, the Queen cried, in a suffocating voice, “Help! help!”
In getting out of the carriage, she found herself in the arms of two
men, who regarded her with looks of mortal enmity, and at the same
time held her fast.
These two men were M. de Aguillon and M. de Noailles. The Queen
seemed likely to faint with terror. Both said to her, “Fear nothing,
madame; we protect you.”
At the peril of their lives, they conducted her to her room. There
she was seized with agony. She called the Dauphin—she looked for the
Dauphin, but no Dauphin was there.
Madame Royale took her by the hand and led her into the bed-room, and
pointed out to her the Dauphin, who, overcome with fatigue, slept.
She could not believe, after the threats she had heard, that the
whole of the royal family could re-enter their palace safe and sound.
I returned to the carriage, where still remained Madame Elizabeth and
the King.
Barnave thought that it would not be too much for him and Pétion to
safeguard the King.
“Some one,” cried he—“some one to offer Madame Elizabeth an arm.”
Madame Elizabeth descended from the carriage with her usual angelic
calmness.
“Monsieur,” said she to me, “will you give me your arm?”
I was frightened out of my wits.
“Oh, madame,” said I; “this dress?”
“The dress that you wear is far better than a royal robe. And
besides,” continued she, “I have watched you: you are a young man of
a good heart.”
I threw my gun over my shoulder, and took my hat in my hand.
“Madame,” said I, “if you desire one ready to die for you—to throw
down his life in your behalf, your choice could not fall on one
better than myself.”
They saw Madame Elizabeth take the arm of a simple National Guard,
and they clapped their hands.
Arrived at the foot of the staircase, I wished to retire.
“My brother?” said she, trying to see.
I looked back.
“He is coming,” said I, “between M. Barnave and M. Pétion.”
I then bowed to Madame Elizabeth a second time.
“Will you not return to see us, sir?” asked Madame Elizabeth.
“I fear, madame, that I shall not again have the opportunity of being
of service to you.”
“Perhaps so, but you have been; and, whatever people may say, we are
a family that never forget.”
At this moment the King arrived.
“Thank you, gentlemen; thank you,” said he to Barnave and Pétion. “I
need not say to you that if you like to come up-stairs——”
“Sire,” replied Barnave, “your Majesty and her Majesty the Queen are
at present in safety. We must go to render an account of our mission
to the Assembly.”
They bowed to the King, and retired.
I did the same; that is to say, I bowed; but as I was retiring,
Madame Elizabeth, pointing me out to the King, said, “My brother,
this young man?”
She evidently, in her noble heart, did not wish me to go without some
recompense.
“’Tis true,” said the King; “I forgot that he was your _protegé_.”
“Say, rather, that I am his _protegé_.”
He took me by the collar of my coat.
“Look here, young man; unhappy as we are, can we do nothing to help
you?”
I felt wounded that the King should think that I required to be paid
for what I had done.
“Sire,” replied I, “if you make a promise to the nation, keep it;
and, as a citizen, you will have done all for me that I can ask.”
“You see, sister,” said the King, “he is a savage.”
“What is your name, sir?” asked Madame Elizabeth.
“Réné Besson.”
“Whence come you?”
“From the Forest of Argonne.”
“I told you he was a savage,” said the King. “What else could you
expect?”
“What trade are you?”
“A carpenter.”
“My brother, you know the fable of the Lion and the Rat,” said Madame
Elizabeth.
“My friend,” said the King, “you see that I must enter my house. If
you have need of me, ask for Cléry, my _valet-de-chambre_.”
“Sire,” replied I, “a man who has an occupation has need of no one,
much less of a King.”
The King shrugged his shoulders, and mounted the staircase. Madame
Elizabeth stayed behind.
“But, on the other hand, my friend,” said she, “suppose that we have
need of you?”
“Ah, madame,” cried I, “that is another affair!”
“In that case, M. Réné Besson, ask for Cléry.”
She followed her brother, whilst I stood there motionless, regarding
that angel who knew how to recompense one in asking.
On the morrow, the journalist, Prudhomme, wrote:—
“Certain good patriots, in whom the sentiment of loyalty has not
extinguished that of compassion, appear uneasy concerning the moral
and physical state of Louis XVI and his family, after a journey so
fatiguing in all respects as that from St. Menehould.
“Let them reassure themselves. Our friend, on entering his
apartments, on his return, felt no more fatigue than if he had been
indulging in the pleasures of the chase.
“He ate his chicken as usual, and the next day played after dinner
with his son.
“As for the mother, she took a bath on her arrival. Her first
request was for boots; she having remarked with sorrow, that hers
had been destroyed by travelling. She acted with hauteur to the
officers picked out especially to guard her, and said that it was
ridiculous and indecent to have the door of her bath-room and
bed-chamber left open.”
We quote these four paragraphs to show to what an extent party spirit
can blind men.
The Citizen Prudhomme, who, after having written “The Revolutions of
Paris in ’91,” was to write “The Crimes of the Revolution of ’98,”
wrongfully describes four incidents:—“That the King ate a fowl, and
that he played with his son; that the Queen had a bath, and shut her
door when taking it.”
It is always so. There can never be a revolution without a Prudhomme:
first, to glorify them: and then to grossly insult.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
I RESUME MY ORIGINAL PROFESSION.
It was nine o’clock in the evening. I went to look after my horse,
which I had left in a house by the barrier. They gave it back to me
as promised, and I retook it to the stables, always using the name
of M. Drouet. I took a receipt for it, and at ten o’clock I entered
the Rue St. Honoré.
I found all the family at table, as, on account of the day’s
excitement, the supper, which usually was partaken of at eight
o’clock, to-night was delayed till ten.
They raised a cry of joy when they saw me. Maître Duplay, who had
been with the National Guard of the Quartier St. Honoré, fancied
that he saw me at the door of the royal carriage, by the side of the
grenadiers; but the thing appeared so improbable, that he had told it
to his family more as a delusion than a fact.
Scarcely was I recognised, than the two girls immediately made a
space for me between them.
This was the more easy, as the elder apprentice was absent, leaving
only the one enamoured of Mdlle. Cornelie, Félicién Herda.
I did not want much pressing to sit down; I was literally dying of
hunger and thirst. The young girls wished to ask me questions; but M.
Duplay excused me until I had both eaten and drank.
In a few minutes, I rejoined the supper eaters, and set myself to
gratify the public curiosity.
It was necessary for me to recount everything, omitting no details,
from the moment when M. Drouet appeared to the King as a vision, on
the top of the Hill des Réligieuses, to the moment when the carriage
started from the house of the grocer, Sauce, and, lastly, to their
arrival at the gate of the Tuileries.
It can be easily understood with what avidity my tale was devoured,
especially by the women. At that period, the women took a great
interest in the Revolution: Madame Duplay, Mdlle. Cornelie, and
Mdlle. Estelle made me repeat the same details over and over again;
and, though they had a sigh for Madame Elizabeth, the Queen was ever
an Austrian—that is to say, an enemy.
It was now eleven o’clock. Duplay, bursting with the news which I
brought him, resolved to go to the Jacobin Club. There was no doubt
but that, in consequence of the great events taking place, the club
would, despite the late hour, be holding a sitting.
He asked me if I would like to accompany him; but, indefatigable
though I was, I asked his permission to retire to repose.
They gave me Dumont’s chamber, which was vacant, on account of its
owner having left the shop some eight days previously. The ladies
undertook to arrange the bed draperies, and perform all the little
offices which come so gratefully from a woman’s tender hand and kind
heart. Félicién commenced by scowling at me; but when he perceived
that upon Estelle, by tacit consent, fell the greater share of the
labor on my account, his brow gradually relaxed.
Duplay set out for his club. They then informed me that my chamber
was ready. It was the first time for four nights that I had slept
in a bed, so you may imagine that I stood upon no ceremony. I made
a hurried bow to all, rushed up to my room; and, on arriving there,
blessed Madame Duplay for the quantity of water and towels that she
had left me—as it required plenty of both to rid me of that accursed
dust of Champagne, with which I seemed to be perfectly coated.
I jumped into bed, and, in a second, fell into the most profound
sleep.
On the next morning, I was awakened by M. Duplay, after a most
persistent shaking, which, in my sleep, I attributed to other causes.
“Ah!” said he; “when you sleep you do sleep, and no mistake, you
drowsy provincials.”
“Bah!” said I. “It is you, then, who have been trying to awaken, me?”
“Yes; and who tried last night, but could not succeed.”
“What did you wish of me?”
“Citizen Réné Besson, I fancied that you would excuse the breach of
hospitality, when you knew that I had something most important to
tell you.”
“Well, I am all attention, M. Duplay.”
“Call me Citizen,” said Duplay, pluming himself.
“Well, I listen to you, citizen.”
“As you know, I went to the club last night.”
“Yes.”
“There I met M. Chanderlos de Laclos.”
“Citizen Laclos, you mean, I suppose?”
“I stand corrected. All men are now equal. Well, I met Citizen
Laclos, and told him all that you had related to me concerning the
journey of the King to Paris. Do you know what he asked me? He asked
me to take you to the Palais Royal, in order that you may give your
version of the affair to the Duc d’Orleans.”
“I?”
“Yes, thou! In the meantime, you had better dress yourself.”
“Do I go this morning, then?”
“Between nine and ten o’clock.”
“What time is it now?”
“Half-past eight.”
“You know, I suppose, that my only costume is that of a National
Guard?”
“It is the costume of patriots.”
“But still, when one goes near princes! Does my coat want brushing?”
“Leave that to Catherine. You occupy yourself with putting on a clean
shirt, if you have any. I will see that your clothes and boots are
brushed. If you have not any clean linen, I can lend you some.”
“Thank you; I have all that I require in my bag.”
“Dress, then; don’t waste time.”
And Maître Duplay, Republican though he was, enchanted to conduct me
before a prince, took my coat, hat, trousers and boots, down stairs
for Catherine to brush.
At nine o’clock exactly, I was ready.
We went along the Rue St. Honoré to the Rue de Valois, and,
arm-in-arm, entered the Palais Royal by the gate which opens into
that street.
Maître Duplay gave his name. _Citizen_ Laclos had, no doubt, given
previous orders, for we were immediately admitted.
Arrived at the first floor, no sooner had Duplay given his name, than
they sent at once for M. Chanderlos de Laclos.
M. Chanderlos de Laclos rushed up.
“Is this the young fellow?” asked he.
“Himself,” replied M. Duplay.
“Let him come into the presence of his Highness.”
He conducted me along a straight corridor into a boudoir, which led
into a bed-room, the open door of which allowed me to see that the
bed was unmade. The open windows, with the closed jalousies, gave
access to a most refreshing breeze.
His Royal Highness, clothed in a dressing-gown, made of cashmere,
with a cap to match, was sipping tea—a new fashion imported
from England; every one knows that his Highness was thoroughly
English—with a charming dame of twenty-nine or thirty years of age,
clothed in an elegant morning dress, and who was, as I afterward
learnt, Madame Buffon.
M. le Duc d’Orleans, afterwards so celebrated under the name of
Philip Egalité, was a man of from forty-four to forty-five years of
age; a fat, full figure, red complexion, with a good carriage, but
the head a little too large—who, on account of a quarrel with the
Queen, had been cruelly and unjustly treated by the court of inquiry
into the naval engagement at Ouessant, where he had comported himself
most bravely.
The result of this, on his side, was a most bitter hatred of the
Queen.
He received me with a nod of the head; Madame de Buffon regarded me
with curiosity. I was far from being elegant, but I possessed great
propriety of manner. Without being handsome, I was at an age when
youth supplies the want of beauty. I was tall, well-made, with an
open expression of countenance, and a well-knit frame. The loyalty of
my heart beamed upon my face. In short, I made the same impression
upon the Duc d’Orleans and Madame de Buffon as I had upon the King,
the Queen, and Madame Elizabeth—that of being a well-looking lad.
“You come from Varennes, my friend?” said the Duke.
“Yes, monseigneur,” replied I.
“And you saw all that passed at the grocer’s—what do you call him?”
“Sauce, monseigneur.”
“So it is. And you also saw what took place on the road?”
“Monseigneur, I have not lost sight of the royal family since their
arrest.”
“Aha! There is a lady, a thorough Royalist. She wishes to know all
that has happened to her good King and dear Queen. Will you be kind
enough to give her a history of it?”
I commenced the account. When I mentioned Drouet, the Duke
interrupted me to ask particulars about him. When I mentioned M.
Dampierre, he made another interruption. He made another when I
mentioned Barnave, Pétion, and Latour-Maubourg; in fact, he wished to
know even the minutest particulars.
Before I had finished, “Go and find Chartres,” he said to M. de
Laclos.
M. de Laclos went out; I continued my recital.
It was nearly brought to an end, when the door opened, and gave
entrance to a handsome young man, whom I had already seen at the
Jacobin Club on the occasion of my first visit to Paris.
The young Prince bowed respectfully to his father, gallantly kissed
Madame Buffon’s hand, threw a scrutinizing glance on me, and seemed
to bend his whole attention on what was passing.
“I regret not having summoned you before, Chartres,” said the Duke.
“Here is a young man who came to tell us an extremely interesting
history of the journey from Varennes. He knew M. Drouet well—knew
also the unhappy Comte de Dampierre. He has seen the commissioners
sent by the National Assembly. He has seen all, in fact; and all he
has seen, he has retained; and I am sure you would have felt great
pleasure in listening to his recital.”
“But,” said the Duc de Chartres, “perhaps this young gentleman will
have the kindness——” Then, stopping, and looking at his father,
“Better still,” continued he; “just as M. Laclos told me that you
wished to see me, I was going to breakfast.”
The Duc d’Orleans appeared to understand, and nodded his head
imperceptibly. M. le Duc de Chartres did the same, pointing to me.
“Will you do me the favor to breakfast with me?—and, during the meal,
you can relate the whole affair.”
I addressed myself to M. Laclos.
“’Tis for me,” said I to him, “to thank his Highness for the great
honor which he has conferred upon me; but it is for you to explain
to him that I have left in the entrance-hall some one who awaits me;
but that will not prevent me from giving Monseigneur,” continued I,
turning to Duc d’Orleans, “the recital which I have just given you.”
“But,” said the Duc de Chartres, smiling, “it will prevent you from
accepting my breakfast.”
“Monseigneur,” said I, “I am apprenticed to M. Duplay, your
carpenter. It was he who had the goodness to tell M. Laclos that
I should have the honor of being received this morning by the
Prince, your father. It would be but a bad return, I think, for his
kindness were I to leave him waiting in the ante-chamber—he who is my
master,—whilst I had the honor of breakfasting with you. Excuse me,”
said I, laughing. “I am a savage from the forest of Argonne; but, in
all cases, I know Monseigneur to be sufficiently just and good to
make him my judge in this case, and I promise faithfully to comply
with his decree.”
“But, sir,” said Madame de Buffon, “do you know that, for a
savage——From what forest said you?”
“The Forest of Argonne.”
“You express yourself well. One would think that all your life you
had been talking to princes.”
“I have not all my life spoken to princes, but princes have often
done me the honor to speak to me.”
“Truly! Who were they?”
“M. le Prince de Condé and M. le Duc d’Enghien. They used to hunt in
the Forest of Argonne, and M. d’Enghien was in the habit of taking me
with him.”
“Well, nothing can astonish me, after this!” cried Madame de Buffon.
“Did you see my cousin just before his departure?” asked the Duc de
Chartres.
“I am probably the last Frenchman to whom he paid the honor of
shaking his hand.”
“Well, then, you must accept my offer, and breakfast with me.”
“That is my affair,” said the Duc. “Dear lady, methinks I heard you
say that you have some carpentry work to be done in your apartments.
I, for my part, have several orders to give Duplay. Let him be
brought up, M. Laclos: we will give him our commands ourselves. Let
him pass through the _salle-à-manger_, and there he can drink a
health to the nation, in a glass of wine, with these young gentlemen.”
Thus was the affair arranged.
I told the Duc de Chartres, while breakfasting with him, all that
related to our hunting expeditions in the Forest of Argonne, to my
education, the death of Pére Descharmes, my sojourn at Varennes, the
arrest of the King, and the return to Paris.
“You are only half-armed, my dear M. Réné,” said the Duc de Chartres,
when leaving me. “My cousin of Enghien gave you a gun: allow me to
present you with a pair of pistols.”
He then took down a pair from a trophy—they were of Versailles
manufacture—and insisted on my accepting them, as they matched my gun
in pattern.
When I say insisted, perhaps I exaggerated a little, as nothing could
give me greater pleasure than to accept his present.
As for Duplay, he received an order of the value of 5,000 francs, and
drank with the Duc de Chartres to the health of the nation, so that
he returned home in the best of spirits, rejoiced to have combined,
in his morning’s visit, pleasure and profit.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
TOUCHING THE PRINCESS LAMBALLE.
It will easily be imagined that the event of which I am treating was
the subject of conversation for fifteen days in the house of Duplay
in which I was apprentice, in the place of Dumont.
Félicién, seeing that I entertained for Mdlle. Cornelie and Mdlle.
Estelle only such affection as every well-educated man ought to have
for women, drew in his nails and teeth, and became as good a comrade
towards me as it was possible for him to be.
Still the revolution marched on with gigantic strides; the flight to
Varennes having given it a terrible impetus.
On the 27th and 28th June, the Assembly promulgated the following
decrees:—
“The gard du corps is disbanded.
“The King will be given a guard, under the command of the commander
of the Parisian National Guard, to contribute to his safety and
well being.
“The Queen will have a private guard of her own.
“Upon the events of the 21st of June, the Assembly will nominate
three commissioners, selected from their whole body, to receive the
declaration of the King and Queen.
“The sanction, the acceptance of the King, and all his legislative
and executive functions, are suspended.
“The ministers are authorized, each in his own department, and on
his own responsibility, to assume the executive power.”
The three commissioners were MM. Touche, Dandré, and Dupont.
There was, therefore, as can be readily seen, positive suspension of
the functions of royalty.
This private guard of the Queen’s was a torment to her every
day—every hour—every minute.
We have seen Prudhomme astonished that the Queen, having worn-out
shoes, should require new ones, and that she should consider it
indecent to leave open the doors of her bath and her bed-room.
In fact, the National Guard, frightened of the responsibility placed
on their shoulders, literally kept the Queen in eyesight, and
compelled her to keep open the doors of her bathing and bed-room.
Once, the Queen, inspired with a natural feeling of modesty, having
drawn the curtains of her bed the man on guard drew them back, for
fear that she should escape by the staircase. On another occasion,
the King having come to visit her about one in the morning, and
having shut the door of the apartment—not of the Queen, but of his
wife—the sentinel thrice opened it, saying, “Shut it as often as you
like; I shall open it every time that you shut it!”
Happily, in this misery, the Queen found a friend. This friend was
the Princess de Lamballe whose history is so well known that it is
needless for me to touch upon it.
She was, however, through all vicissitudes, a faithful and
affectionate friend to the Queen.
About the commencement of 1791, after the death of Mirabeau, the
political horizon became so black that the King and Queen, the Count
de Fersen, and Madame Elizabeth, all counselled the Princess to fly
to Sardinia. Even the Pope, Pius the Sixth himself, insisted that
she should visit Rome, to rejoin the friends of the King, who having
raised in the Assembly the famous storm concerning the right of
emigration sustained by Mirabeau, had happily crossed the frontier;
but she firmly rejected all such proposals.
The Duc de Penthièvre who loved her as if she were his daughter, and
the Duchess of Orleans, who admired her courage, wished by some means
to force her to leave France. The Duc persuaded Louis the Sixteenth
to write to the Court at Turin, in order that the King of Sardinia,
as head of the family, should interpose his influence to compel the
Princess to return to his dominions.
Here is the reply of the Princess de Lamballe:—
“SIRE AND RESPECTED COUSIN,—
“I do not remember that any of our illustrious ancestors of the
House of Savoy, before or after the great Charles Emmanuel,
of illustrious memory, ever disgraced themselves by an act of
treachery. I should do so were I to quit the Court of France at
this critical juncture. You will excuse my refusing your truly
royal invitation. The shedding of blood, and the madness of the
States, alike command that one and all should unite their efforts
for the preservation of the King and Queen and the royal family of
France. It is impossible to shake my resolution. I have determined,
once and for all, never to abandon, at a moment when they are
forsaken by their oldest servants, those who have none to look to
but me.
“In happier days, your Majesty can count on my obedience; but
to-day, as the Court of France is open to the persecutions of its
most atrocious enemies, I beg humbly the right of following my own
instincts of right. At the most brilliant epoch of the reign of
Marie Antoinette, I felt the warmth of royal favor, and can I now
abandon her? To do so, sire, would be to set the seal of eternal
infamy not only on my brow, but on those of all my relations; and I
fear that more than all other torments.”
It was then that the Queen employed a _ruse_ to get her to quit
France.
She had been sent once before on a mission from the Queen to England;
and the inherent grace of the family of Savoy—the same which made the
Duchess of Burgundy so powerful over Louis XIV—enabled her to obtain
from the King and Queen of England a promise never to forsake the
King and Queen of France.
The moment to recall that promise to the English Court had arrived.
The Queen desired the Princess de Lamballe to set out for London, and
continue the negotiations already so happily commenced. She therefore
left Paris, and reached England, stopping at Calais, at the famous
“Hotel Dessein,” immortalized by Sterne in his “Sentimental Journey.”
It was whilst in London that the Princess learnt the flight to
Varennes, the return of the royal family, and their imprisonment in
the Tuileries. She sent a young English girl, in whom she had the
utmost confidence, to Paris.
This messenger appeared close to the Queen. She had come in the name
of the Princess, to learn the exact situation in which the family
were placed.
The Queen sent her a letter, and a ring, enclosing a lock of her
hair, as white as if her years numbered eighty.
On the ring was inscribed, “Whitened by sorrow.”
I give, underneath, an exact copy of the letter:—
“MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—
“The King is about to accept the Constitution. In a short time,
he will be solemnly proclaimed. A few days since, I held a secret
consultation in your apartment, with some of our most trusty
friends, among whom were Alexandre Lameth, Duport, Barnave,
Montmarni, Bertrand de Malville. These two last combated against
the counsel of those of the Ministry, and others, who advised
the King to accept the Constitution immediately, and without
restrictions; but they formed too feeble a minority for me to
decide, as they wished to pray the King to pay heed to their
opinion. All the others seemed to think that the contrary measure
would re-establish tranquillity, weaken the party of the Jacobins,
our enemies, and enlarge greatly the number of our partizans in
the nation. Your absence compelled me to call Elizabeth to our
aid, to clear the Pavilion of Flora of spies. She did not acquit
herself very well. Poor Elizabeth! you cannot expect much cunning
or circumspection in a woman so little accustomed to the intrigues
of a Court, and to the dangers which surrounded us. They try to
persuade us that we are in no danger. Would that it were so, and
that I could again open my arms and heart freely, to receive my
best friend! Although these are the most ardent aspirations of my
heart, nevertheless, my dear, my very dear Lamballe, pay heed to
nothing but your own inspirations. Some people say that they see
the future brilliant as the sun at mid-day. For my part, I confess,
it seems covered with clouds. I cannot see future events with all
the security that I could wish. The King, Elizabeth, myself,—in
fact, all the family—wish much to see you; but we should be
horrified at the thought of dragging you into the midst of events
equally fearful as those you have already witnessed.
“Reflect, then, and act as you think best. If we cannot see you,
send us the result of your conferences with the Precipice.[1]
Your young English friend will bring you plenty of letters. Will
you have them sent to their respective addresses as quickly as
possible, either by her, or in any other way that you may consider
more fitting?
“Your affectionate
“MARIE ANTOINETTE.”
On receiving this letter, the Princess left London, where she was
in safety, and, without the slightest hesitation, returned to the
Tuileries, to take her place by the side of the Queen.
But whilst Madame de Lamballe was at London, great events were taking
place in Paris. The letter which we have quoted, although undated, is
virtually dated, through the fact that the Queen speaks of the King’s
accepting the Constitution; and it was on the 3rd of September only
that a deputation from the National Assembly presented the Act of the
Constitution for the acceptance of the King.
Let us now retrace our steps a little, and throw a glance at that
terrible day, the 17th of July—day of the Champs de Mars—day of the
red flag, which in 1848, furnished to M. de Lamartine, one of his
most wonderful oratorical efforts.
CHAPTER XL.
THE TIDE RISES.
The Queen was right in not viewing events in the same light as those
who surrounded her.
Firstly, the struggle was between the Assembly and the Court. The
Assembly won the day.
Then it was between the Constitutionals and the Aristocrats.
The Constitutionals won the day. Now it was to be between the
Constitutionals and the Republicans.
It is true that the Republicans had only just begun to appear, but
in their first birth they formed this terrible principle—_No more
monarchy!_
You will remember that the commissioners had been appointed by the
Assembly to examine Louis XVI.
These three declared, in the name of their seven committees, that
they had found no reason to put Louis XVI on his trial.
The Assembly took the opinion of the commissioners, but the Jacobin
Club refused its sanction to the Assembly. The Assembly had then
above it a high chamber, which could annihilate its decisions with
its veto.
In order to understand the situation and the events about to take
place, it is necessary to say that at this juncture there were
opposed to each other, three distinct parties.
The Royalists who wished the King absolute—that is to say, without
the Constitution; the Constitutionals, who wished the King with
a Constitution; and the Republicans, who wished neither King nor
Constitution, but a republic.
The Assembly, as we have said, voted that there was no necessity to
put the King on trial.
But, through concession to the public feeling, it had voted two
measures—one preventive, the other repressive.
This was the repressive measure.
“That Bouillé, and all servants, officers, couriers, and accomplices
in the flight, should be prosecuted.”
This was the preventive measure:—
“That if a king breaks his oath, or attacks, or does not defend, his
people, he shall be cast from his throne, become a simple citizen,
and be tried for the offences committed previous to his degradation.”
The repressive measure was one of those timid ones proper to a
decayed Assembly, which feels that its power is crumbling away.
During some days, or, rather, nights, the Jacobin sitting became
stormy.
During the sitting, in which the true culprit—that is to say,
the King—was left alone, in order to arrest and punish the minor
offenders—that is to say, Bouillé, Fersen, the gardes du corps, and
Madame de Tourzel,—M. Robespierre asked in vain to have the report
distributed, and the discussion adjourned.
As it was known in advance that the discussion would be stormy,
Robespierre went to the club. He had been accused, at the Assembly,
of republicanism, and—mark this well,—on the 13th of July 1791,
Robespierre did not disdain to again avow himself a Republican.
On that evening, we all went to the Jacobins; M. Duplay and myself in
the superior hall, and the three women and Félicién in the inferior,
where a society was held, called the Society of the Two Sexes.
During my absence from Paris, Robespierre had acquired a great
popularity, to which he had succeeded by degrees. He had still the
same voice, though, perhaps, he spoke a little stronger than the
last time that I had heard him; and I fancied that I noted a marked
progress in his intonation, but still the same spinning-out of his
facts.
He had just finished his discourse, when a great disturbance was
heard. It was the Cordeliers’ Club, which, in the persons of Danton
and Legendre, had made an irruption among the Jacobins.
They were neither vague nor lengthy in their demands.
Danton, in an outburst of ironic thunder, demanded how the Society
dared to take upon itself to pronounce reformed opinions before
the nation had done so? Legendre directly attacked the King—called
to reason the societies who, working in an underground manner,
undermined the decisions of the Assembly, and terminated in saying,
“What I say is for the good of the Assembly itself.”
There was almost a menace expressed in these last words. Keeping
calm and cold during Robespierre’s speech, M. de Laclos, the
intendant of the Duc d’Orleans, applauded vehemently Danton and
Legendre.
The Constitutionals of the Assembly got up, and went out.
Danton and Laclos conferred together an instant in a whisper; then a
voice was heard, crying, “Open the doors for the public deputies!”
The doors opened, and there entered the fraternal Society of the
Halles, and the Society of the Two Sexes, which held its meetings
in the Lower Hall. They carried addresses against the Assembly, or,
rather, against the monarchy.
Preoccupied with Danton and Legendre, I lost a part of the thread of
what passed at the tribune. A young surgeon read a letter, which had
been written in the Palais Royal in the presence of three hundred
persons. A bishop threw himself into his arms, and urged him to
oppose the deputies. Robespierre looked on with his sardonic smile;
Danton, Legendre, and Laclos with a hateful grin.
Robespierre saw not what was going on on the other side of Paris,
but probably Danton knew; and that was what he was recounting in
a whisper to Laclos, and what Laclos was listening to with such
attention.
On the other side of Paris was a club—a fraternal society,—in the
midst of which rested a young man, who was secretary to the club,
in oblivion. This young man one day emerged from his obscurity, to
raise around him a gigantic storm, after which he again subsided into
mediocrity. The name of this young man was Callieu.
What was Callieu doing in this fraternal society? Almost nothing. He
prepared an address against the Assembly, signed “_The People!_”
On the day before that evening—how I came to forget to mention it,
I cannot think,—the 12th of July, there was a great disturbance in
Paris. All hats were waving in a burst of enthusiasm.
On Sunday, the 10th, the body of Voltaire ought to have been removed
to the Pantheon, but the weather was unpropitious; and there was no
fête in Paris, on account of the rain. The removal of Voltaire’s
corpse was therefore postponed till the morrow.
The triumphal procession entered by the barrier of Charenton; and
accompanied by an immense crowd, drawn by horses presented by the
Queen, the bier crossed Paris, and stopped at the house where the
author of the “Philosophic Dictionary” had died.
There they sang choruses to his glory. The Calas family, led by
Madame de Vilette, laid down crowns on the sarcophagus, before the
temple of Flora, which was closed, on the pretence of the absence of
Madame de Lamballe.
On the 12th, Voltaire entered the Pantheon. On the 13th, in the
morning, they played a sacred drama, with a grand chorus and
orchestra, in Notre Dame. It was entitled, “Le Prise de la Bastille.”
In the evening, Danton and Legendre came to the Jacobins, and turned
out the Constitutionals; whilst at the club on the other side of
Paris they were signing an address against the Assembly.
On the 14th, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, when a
drama was performed on the subject, the Bishop of Paris performed
mass at the altar of the country in the midst of the rain.
Each day now brought an event. On the evening of the 15th, the
Assembly voted not only that the King should be brought to judgment,
but that his offices should be suspended until he agreed to _swear to
the Constitution_.
The Constitutionals carried it.
The Assembly knew so well that it had committed an unpopular act,
that it demanded to be protected by Lafayette and 5,000 men, without
counting the National Guard and the pikes of the Faubourg St. Antoine.
The crowd which could not enter—and their name was legion—took up
a position on the other side of the citizen guard, who made a ring
round the Riding Hall.
The moment the vote became known to the crowd, they yelled “Treason!”
and re-entered Paris by its three great arteries, the Boulevards, the
Rue St. Honoré, and the street which is now known by that name. They
then began to shut the theatres and the houses of play and pleasure,
and in consequence of the disturbance, the police themselves closed
two or three theatres.
Little work was done in these days of ebullition. M. Duplay sent me
to see what was going on at the Assembly; I returned to announce to
him the triumph of the King.
“Good!” said he. “Let us get over supper quickly, and then off to the
Jacobins. There will be a disturbance there this evening.”
M. Duplay was right.
Robespierre was in the tribune. He attacked, in the midst of
vociferous plaudits, the vote of the Assembly. When he had finished,
M. Laclos took his place. You must not forget that Laclos was the
intendant of the Duc d’Orleans. He demanded that a bulletin should be
issued, proclaiming the forfeiture.
“There will be,” said he, “ten million signatures.”
“Yes, yes!” cried the spectators, with one voice. “Ten, fifteen,
twenty millions! The women and children, even, shall be compelled to
sign!”
A powerful voice shook the nation. It was Danton’s. For some days the
Cordeliers had fraternized with the Jacobins, and Danton walked with
Robespierre.
“Only,” said Danton, in a low voice, “let us have no women. They are
generally Royalists. They would vote for the deposal of a King only
in order to raise up another.”
Saying these words, he stared fixedly at the author of “Liaisons
Dangereuses.” Not a smile nor a frown ruffled the habitually stern
features of Laclos.
Perceiving the silence kept by the Duke of Orleans’ man, he added,
“And more, I prefer an address to the adopted societies to a public
one.”
Laclos said nothing, but appeared as if listening to something
outside the building.
All at once, a large mass of people entered the club. They were what
were called the Bucks of the Palais Royal, dragging with them about
fifty young women of questionable character.
“Ah, ah!” murmured Danton. “’Tis a planned affair!”
All the newly-arrived mixed with the Jacobins, crying, “The
forfeiture—the forfeiture!”
Laclos ascended the tribune.
“You see,” said he, “’tis the people—the people who desire the
forfeiture. A petition is necessary, of which I approve.”
All this immense crowd, who probably had the word, cried with one
voice, “The petition—the petition!”
Then, with uproarious enthusiasm, the petition was voted. It was
agreed that the next day, at eleven o’clock, the Jacobins should meet
and hear the reading of it, after which it would be brought to the
Champs de Mars, where it was to be signed by the populace, and thence
forwarded to the adopted societies.
During this tumult, M. Duplay had taken hold of my arm, and drew me
sharply on one side. He then pointed me out a woman standing outside
one of the tribunes, who appeared to be taking the greatest possible
interest in what was passing.
“Look at that woman,” said he; “it is the Citizen Roland Platrière—a
good patriot.”
CHAPTER XLI.
CONCERNING THE BILL OF FORFEITURE.
Madame Roland was very far from having assumed at that period the
important position that she afterwards held. As yet she had never
fretted and fumed her hour upon the political stage. In fact, she
was not yet a minister. I did not pay more attention to her than one
commonly pays to a woman. She appeared to be about thirty years of
age, of fresh complexion—heat of the blood, if one may say so. Her
mouth was large, but filled with irreproachable teeth; her hands were
large and muscular, but well-shaped; her nose was _retroussé_; her
figure was good—small waist and well-filled hips, but, on the whole,
having a decidedly voluptuous tendency. Thus was Madame Roland, in
the evening of the 15th of July, 1791.
Just as I was observing her, I heard some one call M. Duplay.
Duplay turned round. It was M. Laclos who called him. He held a pen
in his hand, and had a sheet of paper on his table. M. Brissot was
sitting beside him.
“My dear Duplay,” said he, “I was about to write the petition for
which all are going to vote, but my writing is too much like that of
the secretary of the Duc d’Orleans. There is nothing wrong in the
matter, I assure you. Here is M. Brissot, a member of the National
Assembly, and he would not be likely to work against his colleagues.
We must have some one whose handwriting is unknown. Your young man
can write, I suppose?”
“Rather, I should say,” replied M. Duplay; “he is a scholar.”
“Well,” said Laclos, mildly, “be kind enough to call him hither, and
tell him what we require. You will dictate, Brissot, will you not?”
Feeling sure that the conversation concerned me, I approached.
They told me what was required. It would give me an active
participation in what was going on, so I was quite willing.
M. Brissot dictated.
As it was not permitted to make a copy of the petition, I can only
give it from memory. It was well and strongly worded; it had,
metamorphically speaking, two heads; the one reproached the Assembly
with timidity, and the other accused them of having not dared to
usurp the King’s so-called prerogative, and asserted, at the same
time, that the King’s supposed deprivation of his regal rights by the
Assembly was, in reality, a sham.
As I was writing these words, Brissot still dictating, Laclos
arousing himself, placed his hand on Brissot’s arm, and said,
“Citizen Brissot, I doubt whether the friends of the Constitution,
who compose the greater number of our club, will sign, unless you
make a slight alteration in the words, but which will not alter the
meaning.”
“What alteration?” demanded Brissot.
“Were I in your place, I would insert, after ‘_his original
dignity_,’ these words, ‘_by constitutional means_.’”
Brissot reflected a moment, and then, with a shrug of his shoulders
he said, “I see no objection.”
Then he continued dictating to me.
“_By constitutional means._”
I turned round to see whether Robespierre and Danton would not make
some objection to our employment; but both had gone, and, in fact,
the hall was all but empty, so that the petition was dictated to
space.
The two editors remarked that the members had retired because they
felt their presence to be useless, and knew that the petition would
be read to them on the following morning; but soon an emissary
arrived, who spoke in an undertone to M. de Laclos. During this
time I again read the petition, and then I understood the ponderous
significance of the five words which had been so aptly added by the
well-known author of “Liaisons Dangereuses.”
_The constitutional means_ by which they could replace the King, was
by placing on the throne the Dauphin, governed by a regency; but the
brothers of the King, the Comte d’Artois and the Comte de Provence,
being out of France, the Regent’s office belonged, of right, to the
Duc d’Orleans, who would thus take the same place by the throne of
Louis XVI as his ancestor had by the throne of his predecessor, Louis
XV. I asked myself why it was that Brissot never thought of that,
though I did. But I said to myself that perhaps he would not be angry
at being hidden behind the word _constitutional_ as he knew that the
petition was his own work.
At this moment, the fears of M. de Laclos appeared to be realized.
The emissary who had whispered in his ear, had come to tell him
that the constitutional Royalists of the Jacobins, and those of
the National Assembly, were going to rejoin the Feuillants, and
thus separate themselves from the pure Jacobin—that is to say, the
Republican.
The two heads of the emigration movement were Duport and Lameth.
Their intention was to form a new club, composed of friends of the
Constitution—an aristocratic assembly where none were admitted but
by a pass-card, and where they received none but electors, who then
stayed with the veritable Jacobins—none, with the exception of six or
seven demagogue deputies and the _canaille_ who followed in the steps
of the Duc d’Orleans, and who formed the entire club.
“What is to be done?” asked Brissot. “They wish to have the Assembly
to themselves.”
“Good!” said Laclos: “but what does it matter as long as we have the
people on our side? Let us proceed.”
Brissot continued his dictation, in which, however, Laclos no longer
took part.
On the morrow, Saturday, M. Duplay and myself did not fail to be at
the Jacobin club, where were assembled scarcely thirty persons.
They waited an hour; and at twelve there were assembled, perhaps,
forty. The petition was read and applauded. All paid attention to the
phrase introduced by M. Laclos, and it was decided that the petition
should be taken in its present form to the Champ de Mars, there to be
signed on the altar of the country.
A deputation was organized to carry the petition. M. Duplay had work
to do at the Palais Royal. He advised me to follow the delegates, and
then return to report to him what had passed.
We arrived at the Champ de Mars. As the report had spread about that
the petition would be taken there, thousands of people had assembled.
The altar of the country was surmounted with an immense picture,
representing the apotheosis of Voltaire.
The delegates mounted almost to the top of the altar, and commenced
the reading; but they saw a group approaching, whom they recognised
as members of the Cordeliers. They were received with acclamation,
and, on their behalf, the reading was again commenced.
All went well till the phrase introduced by M. Laclos, “_By all
constitutional means_.”
“Pardon,” said a voice; “would you mind reading that passage again?”
The reader continued, “_By all constitutional means_.”
“Stop!” cried the same voice.
A man then approached.
“Citizen,” said he, “my name is Bonneville. I am editor of _The Mouth
of Iron_. The people are deceived.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried the Cordeliers.
“How deceive the people?” said the delegate charged with the reading
of the petition.
“I say, for the second time, that the people are deceived!” cried
Bonneville. “‘_By all constitutional means_,’ signifies ‘_by a
regency_.’ And what is a regency? The royalty of D’Orleans in the
place of the royalty of Louis XVI.”
“In the place of the royalty of Capet!” cried a voice that I
recognised as having heard before.
“How Capet?” said a Jacobin.
“Without doubt,” replied the same mocking voice. “Since the nobles
no longer have titles—since M. Mirabeau called himself only
Riquetti—since M. de Lafayette called himself only M. Moltier—the
King Louis XVI can call himself only Capet.”
“Take care,” said a Jacobin; “France is not yet ripe for a republic.”
“If she is not ripe for a republic,” cried Camille Desmoulins—for
that was the man to whom the voice I recognised belonged—“how is it
that she is rotten for monarchy?”
“To the vote—to the vote!” all cried.
They voted, and, with almost perfect unanimity, declared that the
obnoxious phrase should be cut out. Then, in the enthusiasm which
followed this vote, they all swore neither to recognise Louis XVI nor
any other King.
On the morrow, Sunday, it was arranged that the people, forewarned
by notice posted on the walls, should go to sign the petition on the
altar.
“Still, citizen, we lack one thing.”
“What is that?” asked Camille Desmoulins.
“It is to have the law on our side.”
“We have it; since the Assembly have suspended the King, we have
deposed him.”
“We must get from the Hotel de Ville an authorization to hold the
meeting to-morrow.”
All started for the Hotel de Ville. They had but to keep on the
quays; but the distance was rather a lengthy one; but as the refusal
of the Mayor might spoil all, and as I wished to give a report to M.
Duplay, I went with the others to the Hotel de Ville.
M. Bailly was not there; he was at the Place Vendome, watching
the proceedings of the Assembly; but they found his substitute,
told him of the matter, found him not unwilling, and demanded a
written authorization. He said he did not see the necessity—a verbal
permission being quite sufficient; that the people were always legal,
exercising only their right of petition.
I returned to M. Duplay’s, telling him that the petition would be
signed to-morrow, and that the signature would be approved of by
Bailly, or, at least, by his substitute.
We were ignorant of what was going on in the Assembly.
The Assembly had learnt the decision taken by the Cordeliers and the
Jacobins. It would not do to allow the people to take this supremacy
upon itself. They appealed to Bailly and the municipal council.
At ten o’clock, Bailly and his council decided that on the morrow,
Sunday, 17th July, the decree of the Assembly, hearing “that the
suppression of executive power should last until the Constitutional
Act had been presented to, and accepted by, the King,” should be
fixed at eight o’clock punctually, and that proclamation of the
decree should be with sound of trumpet proclaimed by the huissiers of
the city.
Therefore, whoever did not recognise an act proceeding from the
National Assembly—that is to say, the people’s representatives—should
be rebels to the law, and should be treated as such.
CHAPTER XLII.
WHAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE HAIRDRESSER AND THE INVALID.
We had for neighbor, in the Rue St. Honoré, two doors lower down than
our own, a hair-dresser, named Léger. This hair-dresser, like all his
_confrères_, was a staunch Royalist. No doubt the reader would ask
the reason why hair-dressers were all Royalists.
That is easily explained.
The hair-dressers’ was one of the corporations that had suffered the
most in the Revolution. Those under Louis XV, and even under Louis
XVI—who had invented such fantastic head-dresses, worn by the ladies
of the nobility for more than half a century—were a body of men not
to be despised.
Hair-dressers of this period had a select circle of their own, and
many privileges, which they would not surrender, even on the night of
the 4th of August.
Not only could they mix in the society of the larger circles, but had
the _entrées_ to the more select boudoirs of the noblesse, and also
carried the sword, as was customary with gentlemen.
It is true that this sword, at most times, was of no more use than
a harlequin’s wand, being but a mere toy. Of some, the blades were
simply wood, others having no blade at all, the handle being attached
to the scabbard.
But for some time past things went from bad to worse with this
celebrated corporation of hair-dressers. Their society was gradually
sinking into oblivion, to them worse than death, and Talma had
just struck the last blow even to the head-dressing of men, by his
creation of the character of _Litus_, which had caused his name to be
given to the fashion of wearing the hair cut short.
The most desperate enemies of the new government—that is to say, the
revolutionary government—was, therefore, the hair-dressers.
That was not all. By frequenting the mansions of the aristocracy—by
holding so often between their hands, for more than an hour at a
time, the heads of the handsomest ladies of the Court—by chatting
with the several coxcombs whose hair they were in the habit of
dressing—by serving their noble clients in the character of
messengers of love—by becoming the _confidantes_ of the passions of
their employers—the hair-dressers had become libertines, for the
advantage of their pockets.
Now, on Saturday evening, as I have already stated, at the very
moment when the municipality issued the decree against the
petitioners, our neighbor Léger came and asked M. Duplay to lend him
a centre-bit.
Notwithstanding the difference of opinion which separated these two
neighbors, the centre-bit was at once lent, without a single question.
An Invalid awaited him at the door, to whom he handed it, at the same
time exchanging with him some few words, and each one went his own
way.
The following was their projected scheme for the next day:—
At this period, when the women commenced to take such an active part
in the revolution, many beautiful patriots intended accompanying
their brothers, husbands, and lovers to sign the petition on the
altar of the country. Thanks to the centre-bit lent by Maître Duplay,
our libertine hair-dresser would be enabled to bore a hole in the
platform of the altar, under the shelter of which, if he could not
see the lovely features of the charming patriotic women, he could, at
least, perceive the interesting proceedings of the people.
Not wishing to enjoy this pleasure alone, the Citizen Léger invited
an old Invalid to share it with him. The Invalid accepted the
invitation; but like a cautious man, knowing that they could not
feed themselves with their eyes, proposed that, in addition to the
centre-bit, they should take with them eatables and a barrel of
water. This last step was agreed to by Léger. Accordingly, on the
morning of Sunday, the 19th, half an hour before the light set in,
our two gallants might be seen scaling the altar of the country, with
their centre-bit and their provisions. Upon gaining the platform,
they gently lifted one of the planks, introduced themselves beneath,
replaced the plank, and then commenced their work.
Unfortunately for our two curious friends, the fête attracted none
but themselves. From daybreak, the Champ de Mars commenced to get
animated. The “merchands” of cakes and lemonade, hoping that the
patriotism would hunger and thirst those who signed the document,
commenced arriving from all quarters. Tired of walking about, one of
these women ascended the altar, for the purpose of looking at the
picture of the triumph of Voltaire. While reading the oath of Brutus,
of which she understood nothing, she felt an instrument piercing the
sole of her shoe. She immediately cried out for help, and declared
there were malefactors underneath the altar; upon which a young man
went in search of the guard of Gros Caillon. The guard, fancying the
affair was not worth while troubling himself about, refused to stir.
In the absence of the soldiers, he called the passing workmen. These,
more sensible to the cries of distress than the guard, came with
their tools. They set to work, without delay, to open the altar, and
there they found Léger and his companion, in a pretended sleep! They
were not long, however, bringing them to consciousness, when they
were commanded to explain the cause of their presence there, and to
state if their intentions were justifiable, and they were forced to
own the truth.
At that moment, a curious individual dropped himself under the
altar, to see what it was like, and there found the barrel of water.
Mistaking this for powder, he rushed forth, crying, with all his
might, that the two prisoners had intended blowing up the altar, as
well as those who would find themselves thereon. The hair-dresser and
Invalid cried loudly that it was water, and not powder, and that, by
breaking the barrel, they would arrive at the truth; but the truth
was too simple. They thought it more natural to strangle the two
unfortunate men, or decapitate them, and promenade their heads on the
top of a pike.
At this stage of the proceedings, the bailiffs of the municipality
arrived, and proclaimed the arrest of the Mayor. They then proceeded
towards the Roule, but were overtaken at the top of Rue St. Honoré by
the crowd carrying the heads of the two supposed assassins on the top
of their pikes. I fancied that I could recognise one of these as that
of a neighbor; it turned out to be that of the poor hair-dresser, who
came the preceding night to borrow the centre-bit from M. Duplay. I
could scarcely believe my eyes. What crime could they possibly be
guilty of? I called M. Duplay. There must have been a strange accent
in my voice; for, with the exception of my grandmother, who was
always occupied reading and re-reading her volume of the “Arabian
Nights,” the whole family rushed towards me; the women shrieked with
terror, but one was beginning to get accustomed to these sorts of
spectacles, and, by degrees, they risked looking.
Every one recognised Léger.
What had he done?
We inquired. They were two great criminals, who had intended blowing
up the altar of the country, and those who might be on it.
Others said they were two National Guards, who were beheaded by the
people for attempting to enforce the execution of the law.
The noise spread in the Assembly. Duport, who, with Charles Lameth,
separated himself from the Republican Jacobins, was then President.
He was not backward in accusing his late colleagues of the crime.
“Gentlemen,” said he, to the Assembly, “Two good citizens have just
perished on the Champ de Mars for having said to a deluded mass that
they must not break the laws of their country—they were hanged on the
spot.”
“’Tis true!” cried Regnault de St. Jean d’Angely. “I confirm that
news; they were two National Guards. Gentlemen, I demand martial law.
It is the duty of this Assembly, gentlemen, to pronounce all persons
attempting to exhort the people to resist, either by personal acts,
or by collective or individual writings, guilty of treachery to the
nation.”
This was just what the Assembly desired, composed, as it was,
principally of Royalists and Constitutionalists, and in which the
Republicans—that is to say, those who upheld the petition, and,
consequently, wished for the dethronement of the King—were to be
found in a very small number.
It was therefore decreed that the President of the Assembly, and the
Mayor of Paris, should inquire into the real state of affairs, in
order to take rigorous measures if events passed as were reported.
They did not give themselves the trouble to inquire into the truth,
but took the measures. Robespierre then left the Assembly without
saying a word, rushed to the Club of the Jacobins, to announce to
them the news.
At the club he found nearly thirty persons; they all tumultuously
voted the withdrawal of the petition, and Lanterre was despatched to
the Champ de Mars to take possession of it.
Such was the state of affairs when M. Duplay returned from the
Jacobins, and asked where were his wife and daughters.
He was told they were gone with Félicién to the Champ de Mars to see
the petition signed.
“Not an instant is to be lost!” cried M. Duplay. “If the petition is
not withdrawn in time, there will most certainly be a row, perhaps
fire-arms used! Quick!—let us on to the Champ de Mars!”
We left the house to the care of Catherine and the old grandmother
and set off in haste for the Porte St. Honoré.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE RED FLAG.
Upon our arrival, the Champ de Mars presented an aspect of the most
profound tranquillity.
A strong detachment of troops, with two or three pieces of cannon,
which had been stationed there in consequence of the assassination
which had taken place in the morning, seeing that nothing
extraordinary took place, gradually withdrew, leaving the place to
three or four hundred inoffensive strollers, and a small group of
men, to whom no one paid the slightest attention, but which, like
many small clouds, contained a terrific tempest.
This group seemed to have as leaders two strange-looking
individuals. One of these creatures, whose name was Verriéres, was a
fantastic-looking hunchback. He had not been seen since the 5th and
6th of October, when he had made himself conspicuous at Versailles.
He reappeared, however, on the night before our present date.
The other was from the department of Auvergne, and called Fournier,
the American, because he had been overseer of a negro plantation in
St. Domingo.
He held in his hand a firelock.
The miserable creatures who were listening to the harangue of these
two men were a sort of human larva, arising none knew from where.
On entering the Champ de Mars we threw a glance around, to see if
we could recognise, in the midst of these three or four hundred
strollers, the four persons we came in search of. At that moment, it
was all the easier to do so, as every one was following Lanterre to
the altar of the country. We followed as the rest. Lanterre announced
to the patriots, with a voice which suited admirably these sort of
proceedings, that the petition placed there the preceding night
could not be signed, as, at the moment this petition was written,
it was supposed that the Assembly had not yet decided the fate of
the King, but that, since then, they had recognised his innocence
and inviolability in the sitting of the night before. The Jacobins,
he continued, intended occupying themselves with the forming a new
petition, which they would, ere long, present for signature.
This declaration was received with murmurs.
“Why should we await the presentation of a petition already formed?
Don’t we know, as well as Messieurs Brissot, Laclos, and Robespierre,
what we want?” said an enormous man, of about forty years of age, a
young and beautiful woman leaning on his arm. “We can also write,”
added he, with a smile; “and I might even say that we commence to
think.”
“No one hinders you. Citizen Robert,” said Lanterre, who was,
probably, not annoyed at the interruption. “You, and, above all, the
Citizen Keralio, whose dear little arm you have the extreme felicity
of squeezing within your own, are more capable of success than any
one else. In the meantime, I take possession of the one made by the
Society.”
So saying, Lanterre placed in his pocket the petition written by me,
dictated by Brissot, amended by Laclos, and definitely corrected by
Bonneville and Camille Desmoulins.
“With all this, I neither see my wife nor my daughters,” exclaimed M.
Duplay.
“I have an idea,” replied I, “that, having required some
refreshments, she went to some _café_ with Félicién.”
“We require pen, ink, and paper,” said the citizen whom Lanterre had
called Robert, “which we will find at the first stationer’s.”
“Would you wish me to go and fetch it for you?” said a red-headed
individual, with a strong German accent.
“But,” said a strange voice, “do you think you can spare time to
go such a distance? How would it be, in the meantime, if the Queen
required your services?”
“The Queen!—the Queen!” demanded the people from all sides, and at
the same time fixing their eyes on the man with the red hair.
“Yes. Why, the Citizen Weder is the _valet-de-chambre_ of the Queen,
and has come here, probably, to see what was going on, so that he
might be enabled to carry it to her Majesty. If I make a mistake, and
you are not the Citizen Weder, say what your name is.”
“My name is Chaumette, a medical student, of No. 9, Rue Mazarine. Let
every one do as I have done, and make known his name, then we shall
be acquainted with who are our friends, and who are our enemies.”
“Yes, yes, let every one say who he is,” said a man of about
eight-and-twenty, whose black beard seemed to have added to the
sternness of his features. “My name is Brune, a typographical worker;
and, if futurity could be seen into,” he might have added, “a future
Marshal of France.”
“And if you want a printer for your petition, here am I, Momoro, the
printer of liberty!”
“And I, Hébert, journalist, Rue Mirabeau.”
Then succeeded such tumultuous uproar of men shrieking their names
with all their force, that one could scarcely distinguish those of
Renouard, Lagarde, Moreau, Henriot, Laschereau, and David.
When this tempestuous noise ceased, the man named Weder had
disappeared.
“M. Robert,” said I to him who had offered to frame the text of the
petition, “I have some business in yonder _café_, where I fancy I
can distinguish some of my friends, whence I will proceed to the
nearest stationer’s, and bring you back everything that is necessary
for writing purposes.” Then I added to M. Duplay, “Follow me with
your eyes, sir; and if, as I believe, those are the ladies we are in
search of, I will make you a sign with my pocket-handkerchief.”
As I had fancied, it was Madame Duplay and her daughters. I told them
where I had left M. Duplay, and asked them to go and meet him at the
altar of the country. I then proceeded to the stationer’s, and bought
two or three sheets of paper, knowing very well that if even there
was only one sheet required for the petition itself, there would be
one hundred or one hundred and fifty signatures. I also bought a
bottle of ink and a packet of pens already cut.
When returning, I met with M. Duplay and his family. This gentleman,
fearing some serious disorder, was taking his family home by the
nearest road—that is to say, by the Invalides. Before separating with
him, though, I promised that if anything grave took place, I would
return with a full account to the house.
I now hastened to the altar, where I was impatiently awaited.
I have already mentioned the names of Robert and Mademoiselle
Keralio. Notwithstanding how well posted we are at the present moment
in the history of the Revolution, very few persons are acquainted
with the very prominent part taken by these two persons in the
proceedings of that terrible day, the 17th of July, which killed with
the one blow the absolute royalty, which it ought to have raised from
its low position, and the constitutional royalty, which it ought to
have upheld, and which, directed against the Jacobins, whom it ought
to have extinguished, gave them, on the contrary, an additional
strength.
Robert, as I have said, was an enormous man, of forty or forty-five
years of age. Being a member of the Club of the Cordeliers, he vainly
searched with his eyes some of his colleagues of reputation. Either
by accident, or otherwise, he did not succeed in finding a single
one of these. On the Saturday evening, Danton was obliged to join a
meeting in the wood of Vincennes, and thence he went on to Fontenoy,
where his father-in-law was a street vender of lemonade. Legendre
had left about the same time, with Camille Desmoulins, and Féron. A
meeting had been arranged at Fontenoy, by Danton, and all four dined
there together.
A great responsibility was, therefore, about to be placed on the
shoulders of Robert; he would be obliged to represent alone, or
nearly so, the entire Club of the Cordeliers. We must, however, agree
that he accepted his position bravely. The Club of the Jacobins was
totally out of the question, since Lanterre, in the name of the
Society, had come and withdrawn the petition.
As to the wife of Robert, Mademoiselle Keralio was a young lady—very
gay, lively, talented. She was a Breton, and daughter of a Chevalier
de St. Louis, called Guniement de Keralio. As inspector of the
military colleges of France, he had, on paying a visit to the college
at Brienne, given a favorable account of a young Corsican, named
Bonaparte—he who afterwards became the Great Napoleon.
His calling not being sufficient for the support of his family, he
made translations, and wrote for several journals, among others for
the _Mercure_, and _Journal des Savants_. His daughter assisted
him to the best of her powers. At eighteen years of age, she wrote
a novel, called “Adelaide;” then the “History of Elizabeth,” a long
and serious work; afterwards she married Robert, a great friend of
Camille Desmoulins, and an enemy of Lafayette, who had written a
book, entitled, “Republicanism adapted to France.” Not less patriotic
than her husband, Madame Robert had come with him to add her
signature to the petition, declaring that France neither recognised
Louis XVI nor any other King; and seeing that it had been withdrawn,
she was the first to advise her husband to draw up another.
I had no sooner arrived on the spot with my pens, ink, and paper,
than she snatched them from my hands with such gracious vivacity,
that I could really say nothing, but thank her. She then handed a pen
to her husband, who was not very clever at composition.
“Write, write,” said she, “what I dictate.”
Then, amidst thunders of applause, and while consulting some with her
eyes, and others with words and signs, she set to work to dictate,
clearly, and with much eloquence, a petition for the dethronement of
the King, which was at the same time a violent charge against royalty.
The affair was done, and well done, in less than three-quarters of an
hour.
Robert, who had written the petition, signed it first and passed the
pen to his neighbor.
Every one wished for the pen. I had a packet, which I distributed;
and as it would take too long for them to sign one after the other,
so dense had the mass become, the idea struck me to distribute the
three extra sheets of paper, each of which could contain two hundred
signatures.
No doubt, the assembly had heard from Weder what was going on on the
Champ de Mars. The situation was grave; for if the people broke the
decrees of the Assembly, it would cease being the first power of the
State.
There was not a moment to be lost. The meeting would have to be
dissolved, and the petition destroyed at all risks; the more so,
as every instant the mob was becoming more and more numerous; not
from the side of Paris, where it was made known to all, that, by
proceeding to the Champ de Mars, they would be guilty of an act of
rebellion, but from the village of D’Yssy, Vaugirard, Sevres, St.
Cloud, and Boulogne, where they were foretold of the reunion, and had
not heard of any counter-petition. They flocked to it, as to a fête.
The intentions were good, although nothing was easier than to accuse
them of being bad. The Assembly—duped either by mistake, or profiting
by the occasion—sent a message to the Mayor, announcing that a band
of fifty thousand robbers were congregated in the Champ de Mars, and
were about to march upon the Salle du Manège.
They called to their protection a military body, and gave the order
to Bailly to disperse the brigands by force. Bailly, who was not
aware of the goings on, and who should, before all other things, obey
the orders of the Assembly, forewarned Lafayette, and sounded the
alarm.
In these times, the paid guard, strongly addicted to aristocratic—or,
rather, Lafayettish—principles, for it was nearly entirely composed
of the conquerors of the Bastille, were always the first to answer
such a call.
This body, perfectly armed and perfectly commanded, were exasperated
at the injuries they received from the Democratic journals, and
particularly the _Friend of the People_, of Marat, in which he called
them the spies of Lafayette; and one day demanded their noses to be
cut off, another day their ears, and even hinted at finishing with
them altogether with the assistance of the guillotine.
They applauded vociferously, when suddenly the red flag was seen to
float from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, which was a signal to
all the loyal citizens of the town of their help, and never did they
require help more than on this occasion.
In the midst of these cries, the Mayor, who was pale as the day on
which he marched to the scaffold, descended the Place de Grève,
and placed himself at the head of a column of the National Guard.
Lafayette, at the head of another column, followed the left bank of
the Seine, while Bailly took the right bank.
The red flag was unhooked, and followed the column, headed by the
Mayor.
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE MASSACRE OF THE CHAMP DE MARS.
We thought but little of the danger we were running at the Champ de
Mars, and knew nothing whatever of what was going on at the Hotel
de Ville. The crowd was nothing more than an ordinary Sunday crowd.
No weapons whatever were to be seen, save the sabres hanging to the
belts of some stray National Guards, who might be taking a walk with
their wives and children. Madame Roland says, in her “Memoirs,” that
she remained there till ten o’clock.
The only extraordinary proceeding that took place was that on the
altar.
They continued to sign the petition with a vigor that promised twelve
or fifteen hundred signatures before night-fall. Generally the person
signing cried out, “Vive la nation! Down with royalty!” threw his cap
up in the air, and ceded the place to another.
Two contrary currents were established on the north, south, and east
sides of the altar of the country, between the persons ascending and
the persons descending. The height of the altar was immense—that
it is to say, about one hundred feet. At about four o’clock in the
afternoon, it presented the aspect of an enormous hive, swarming with
bees.
At a few minutes past four o’clock, we heard the drums, but paid
little attention to them, the affair of the hair-dresser and Invalid
having for some time escaped the memory of every one. In Paris, one
soon forgets the events which are of but little interest to remember.
There was simply a movement of curiosity on the altar, where two
thousand people were seated, and on the ground of the Champ de Mars,
where some ten to twelve thousand were walking.
These drums were those of a battalion of the advanced guard of the
Faubourg St. Antoine. This battalion was totally misinformed of what
was taking place in the Champ de Mars. They had received an order
from Bailly and Lafayette to fire in case of any resistance being
made, but only in case of resistance.
Before entering the Champ de Mars, the command was given to halt,
and load their guns. They thought they would have to face some fifty
thousand brigands, determined on bloodshed and pillage.
They found, on the contrary, an inoffensive population amusing itself.
The battalion halted a second time; but, as they did not find what
they were in search of, they put their guns in clusters, and sent a
few unarmed grenadiers to see what was passing on the altar of the
country. These came back, saying that they were signing a petition in
the greatest possible order, and without the slightest noise.
The people walking in the Champ de Mars did not, on their side, pay
the slightest attention to the arrival of the military from the
Faubourg St. Antoine.
But about the same time, the drums of Gros Caillon and the Cours la
Reine were heard calling to arms.
From Gros Caillon it was Lafayette, and from Cours la Reine, Bailly,
who arrived with the National and paid Guards.
Lafayette sent, in advance, an aide-de-camp and a hundred armed men,
to find out what was really passing in the Champ de Mars. But from
the group, which I have already mentioned as having been commanded by
Verriéres and Fournier, a gun-shot was seen to proceed, which wounded
the aide-de-camp of Lafayette.
The advance guard returned to Lafayette, and the aide-de-camp,
bleeding, made his report on the manner in which he was received.
To him, wounded as he was on his entry into the Champs, all the
inoffensive strollers appeared to be brigands.
Lafayette placed himself at the head of the three thousand men he
commanded, and marched on the Champ de Mars.
He found Fournier, Verriéres, and those they led, busily engaged
in raising a barricade. He marched straight up to the barricade,
and destroyed it. From under a cart, Fournier, the American, fired
through one of the wheels on Lafayette.
The gun missed fire.
Fournier, the American, was taken, and charged with revolt and
homicide.
The National Guard would have shot him on the spot, had not Lafayette
torn him from their hands, and rendered him his liberty.
The most curious of all was, that this bloody day was caused by these
two bloodthirsty men, Lafayette and Bailly.
The battalion from the Faubourg St. Antoine and Marias entered the
Champ at the same time as Lafayette, and ranged themselves behind the
altar, in front of the Military College.
Lafayette, fearing that these might sympathise with the people, sent
a detachment of the National Guard to join them.
At this moment the promenaders, and those who were signing the
petition on the altar, preoccupied, but not alarmed, at the sort of
collision which had taken place between the National Guard and the
defenders of the barricade, saw, advancing by the Bridge of Bois
(to-day the Bridge of Jéna) another body of the army, headed by the
Mayor, and over the heads of which floated the red flag.
This red flag informed us that martial law was proclaimed.
Against whom?
It could not be against those who were guilty of no wrong, and who
were simply walking by right of the petition accorded to every
citizen.
In the midst of the troop following the Mayor were to be
distinguished a company of dragoons. The dragoons were well known to
be an aristocratic regiment, being used to firing on the people. Also
a band of hair-dressers, armed to the teeth, with their hair dressed
_à l’aile de pigeon_ and clad in the height of fashion. Their clothes
were of silks and satin, and of every color in the rainbow.
They came, no doubt, to avenge the death of that unfortunate poor
fellow, Léger.
The group which had opposed the entrance of Lafayette had gone and
reformed themselves a little further off. They were joined by all the
blackguards of the quarter.
At the moment when, after a roll of drums, M. Bailly commenced his
declaration, a shower of stones fell around him. A gun was fired
behind him at the same time, and wounded a dragoon.
Bailly gave the order to fire a round of blank cartridge in the air.
The order was executed. This inoffensive discharge injured no one,
but had the effect of making Lafayette think that it was real.
The promenaders nearly all rushed towards the altar of the country,
fancying that they, as simple spectators, could not be fired upon
without there having first been a summons to disperse.
At this moment, the Champ de Mars was invaded by cavalry.
The promenaders vainly search for an issue to re-enter Paris.
At all sides, nothing but troubles present themselves to our view; at
the Military College, at Gros Caillon, at the entrance to the wood.
Almost immediately the paid guards made an offensive movement
towards the altar. Abandoning the hostile group, which continued to
shower stones on their heads, they dashed themselves distractedly
and furiously against the altar; and, without an attack, without
provocation or resistance, fired on this mass of brothers—this living
pyramid, this human beehive, of which two-thirds were composed of
defenceless women and children.
The hurricane of fire fell on this disarmed throng, who only replied
by heart-rending cries of agony. The three faces of the altar were
covered with the dead and wounded bodies of the unfortunate victims.
From the height of the pyramid where I found myself—between Robert
and his wife,—I perceived that the artillery were about to make fire
on the people with the cannon, at the risk of firing on the cavaliers
and paid guard, when Lafayette perceiving the movement, dug the spurs
into his horse, and galloped to the mouth of the cannon, where he
placed himself.
The first cry of Madame Robert was—“’Tis on the petitioners they
would fire! Let us save the petition!” Then addressing herself to me,
she said, “Help me, monsieur—help me!”
It was no longer a question of signing; every one precipitated
himself by the only side of the altar which had not been fired
upon—that is to say, the side facing the Military College, and which
was protected by the battalions of the Faubourg St. Antoine and
Marais. Both the petition and the sheets, covered with signatures,
were seen to fly before the wind.
Madame Robert took possession of the petition, whilst her husband and
I collected about a hundred sheets of signatures.
We then descended by the west side of the altar.
Around us, seven or eight persons had been killed or wounded.
A hundred and fifty, at least, fell before this first discharge.
In descending this immense staircase, I lost Robert and his wife. The
National Guards of the Faubourg St. Antoine and Marais cried, “Come
with us—we will defend you!”
I rushed to their sides; the dragoons set out in pursuit of us; but
the battalion of the Marais opened their ranks to us, and prepared to
receive them with the bayonet. An aide-de-camp came up, and ordered
this battalion to march forward, and make a junction with the other
troops. The aide-de-camp was killed. None obeyed this order but the
paid guards.
The battalion, or rather, the two battalions, of National Guards,
formed themselves into two columns, sent out scouts, so as to protect
any fugitives who might come and ask for shelter in their ranks, and
marched from the Champ de Mars, leaving this horrible butchery to be
completed without their assistance.
CHAPTER XLV.
ROBESPIERRE PAYS A VISIT TO M. DUPLAY.
I had no sooner quitted this frightful scene of bloodshed, than,
thanking my saviors, I sprang forward towards the river, in order to
cross it by boat, or, if there was a necessity, to swim it.
The affair seemed to me grave. There must have been some treachery on
foot, of which, in my mind the Jacobins ought to be instructed.
There happened to be, in a boat anchored to the river’s bank, a man
fishing, who did not disturb himself, notwithstanding the thundering
of the cannon.
Nothing ever disturbs a man fishing. To untie the rope, jump into
the boat, and take possession of the oars, was but the work of a few
moments. I had nearly half-way crossed the river before he recovered
from his astonishment.
At length, he demanded what I meant by this violence, both to himself
and to his boat? I showed him a paper, and said, “An order from
General Lafayette.” That was sufficient.
I jumped out on the right bank, leaving the boat, with its owner, to
regain the left.
Once on solid ground, I took to my heels, and by Cours la Reine, and
the Porte St. Honoré, I set out for M. Duplay’s house as fast as my
legs could carry me.
From Cours la Reine to the Church of the Assumption, in front of
which M. Duplay lived, I found the streets greatly agitated and full
of people.
The red flag, the Mayor, the dragoons, and the paid guard were seen
to pass; then, again, they had heard the terrible discharge of
musketry; so that seeing me come from the Champ de Mars, running, the
perspiration dropping off me, and all covered with blood, every one
inquired of me the whole way along,—“What is the matter?”
I had but one reply to make, and that while I was running.
“The dragoons and the paid guard are slaughtering the people!”
I found M. Duplay at his door, surrounded by a group of neighbors and
acquaintances. I related to him all that had taken place.
“Oh, ho!” said he; “the Jacobins must be informed of this. Quick!—let
us run to the club!”
About fifty members awaited the news with impatience. They had,
as yet, heard nothing. I was the first messenger of the mournful
intelligence.
They said that M. Robespierre must at once be informed, and a
messenger was despatched to the Assembly to fetch him.
The Jacobins knew one fact, and that was, that all the blame would be
left on their shoulders. It was they who had taken the initiative in
the affair of the petition. The Constitutionals, who had separated
from them, in order to form the new clubs Feuillants, washed their
hands of this popular movement in opposition to the decree of the
Assembly.
They thanked M. Duplay and myself, and refused to recognise any
petition tending to the dethronement of the King. Everything was
circulated in the name of the Assembly, and the society swore anew
fidelity to the Constitution and submission to the decrees of the
Assembly.
After what had presented itself to my view the preceding days, and
after what I had written at the dictation of Citizen Brissot, I
found this submission too prompt. There was at the bottom of it all
an abandonment of the rights of the people, and a cowardice which
disgusted me.
I left the club, and returned pensively to the house.
A half an hour or so after, might be heard a great disturbance
towards the Place Louis XV.
It was the paid guard, who were re-entering Paris by the Rue St.
Honoré, to have an occasion to make a demonstration against the
Jacobins.
One had hardly the time to form palisades.
The paid guard collected themselves before the Convent, demanding
powder to blow the gate and demolish the den of the Republicans. They
were laughed at; they were applauded; they were hissed. The street
was full of people, looking at one another, ready to come to blows.
It was plain to be seen that one of those misunderstandings had taken
place which places the gun to one’s shoulder without one’s knowing
upon whom to fire.
All at once, I could perceive, in the Rue Luxembourg, a man gliding
down the street, with an evident desire to pass unnoticed.
I pulled my master’s coat, and whispered to him, “The Citizen
Robespierre.”
It was indeed none other but he, who had been sent to the Assembly,
and who had arrived there just in time to have the door shut on his
nose.
It was evident that if he was recognised by the paid guard, he would
run the risk of being shot.
He was at this moment recognised by a group of persons, and cheered.
No doubt, they were Jacobins.
He quickened his pace, descending the street, to gain speedily the
Faubourg St. Honoré.
At the Rue de Luxembourg, several cries were raised of “Vive
Robespierre!”
He turned pale, and hesitated whether to take the Luxembourg or
continue his road. He continued.
“Vive Robespierre!” again cried a man. “And since it is absolutely
necessary to have a King, why not have him?”
Robespierre thought himself lost. He looked on all sides for shelter.
Duplay rushed towards him.
“At my house—at my house, citizen!” said he. “My name is Duplay! I am
master carpenter, and a good citizen!”
“Yes, yes—at our house!” said Madame Duplay and Mademoiselle Cornelie.
And all three—the man and the two women—surrounded Robespierre, who,
without the slightest resistance, allowed himself to be led into the
alley.
I entered last, and locked the door.
The retreat was effected so prudently, that hardly a soul had
perceived the manœuvre.
Those that did see him said nothing, so that no noise was made at the
door.
Robespierre was extremely pale. He sat down, or rather fell, on the
first chair that came in his way. Mademoiselle Cornelie wiped his
forehead with her pocket-handkerchief, while Madame Duplay brought
him a glass of fresh water.
I placed the glass to his lips, but his hand shook so, that he made
the glass chink against his teeth.
However he drank, looked around him, tried to smile, and said, “I see
that I am with friends.”
“Say, rather, with admirers—with devoted admirers!” replied M. Duplay.
“Oh, yes!” replied the three women.
“Oh, if I had known it,” said M. Duplay, “I would not have allowed
you to present yourself at the National Assembly.”
“How so?” said Robespierre.
“Yes; it was Réné,”—M. Duplay pointed me out,—“it was Réné, a good
young man, a staunch patriot, and a friend of M. Drouet de St.
Menehould, who, you know, arrested the King; it was Réné who came and
announced the massacre on the Champ de Mars. We have but one bond to
the Jacobins, and, as I belong to the club——”
“Ah, I now recognise you,” said Robespierre.
“Then it was decided to go and fetch you.”
“And I arrived just in time to see the gates shut. Not wishing to
return home, at the bottom of the Marais, I was going to get a little
shelter at the house of Pétion, who lives in the Faubourg St. Honoré.
You came across me on my road, and brought me here. I ask permission
to remain here all night. Surrounded by the spies of Lafayette, and
satellites of Bailly, the life of an honest man runs great danger. I
do not fear death, but my ambition is to die in a way useful to my
country.”
I assisted at this scene without the slightest emotion. It seemed to
me a great honor to address this great man.
“Then,” said he, “you are the friend of the Citizen Drouet?”
“He cared for me like a father,” said I. “The little I know I owe to
him and to Rousseau.”
“Ah, young man, you have Rousseau?”
“I know him by heart.”
“Good master—great master! I, also, was his scholar, and I hope to do
him credit one of these days.”
Duplay and his wife listened with their mouths open, nearly on their
knees.
For some time, Duplay seemed as if he wished to ask a question. His
wife and he had exchanged two or three significant glances.
“Would the Citizen Robespierre do us the honor of supping with us?”
“I would not trouble you so much,” said Robespierre. “And then,
again, my sister would be anxious.”
“But you were going to sup with the Citizen Pétion.”
“Yes; but from Pétion’s I could have let my sister know.”
“Very well; she can be informed from here as well.”
“Have you any person certain?”
“There is me, citizen,” said I.
“Would you have that kindness?”
“I will be only too happy to render this service to M. Duplay.”
“Then have the goodness to give me pen, ink, and paper.”
The two young girls brought him the pen and paper.
He wrote, in a small hand, the following:—
“MY SISTER,—
“Don’t be uneasy. I am in safety.
“Your brother,
“MAXIMILIAN.”
He then sealed his letter, and wrote the address in a bold hand,
which reminded me greatly of his character,—
_To Mdlle. Charlotte de Robespierre_.
_No. 7 Rue Saintange_
_At the Marais._
I took the letter, and went on my mission.
CHAPTER XLVI.
INSTALLATION.
I have already said that nature had gifted me with strong legs, and
it was in days like the present that I appreciated the gift.
As yet, I knew not sufficient of Paris to be enabled to extricate
myself from the labyrinth of streets which joined the Rue St.
Honoré, and which stretched from the Rue Aubry le Boucher to the
Rue Boucherat, so that I spent six or seven minutes in making the
necessary inquiries, and at last arrived.
I saw a sombre house in a sombre street. It was No. 7. I mounted a
dark-looking staircase, and arrived at the second floor.
Three doors opened on the landing: one of them bore an inscription:—
“Le Citoyen Maximilian de Robespierre, et Deputé à l’Assemblée
Nationale.”
I knocked.
I heard footsteps approaching the door, and then stop cautiously.
“Is it you, Maximilian?” asked a voice, in which could be discerned
traces of emotion.
“No, mademoiselle,” I replied; “but I bring news of him.”
The door was quickly opened.
“Nothing has happened to him?” asked a stately female of about forty
years.
“Here are a few words to reassure you,” I replied.
I then handed her the letter.
It was too dark for her to be enabled to read it in the passage on
the landing.
Mademoiselle de Robespierre re-entered the apartment, inviting me to
follow her.
I entered a sort of dining-room, opening on a study and bed-room.
All was cold, cheerless, and almost unfurnished. If not actually
miserable, it was far below mediocrity.
Mademoiselle Robespierre read her brother’s letter.
“When my brother thinks it needless to tell me where he is, he has
his reasons. You have seen him, sir?”
“I have just left him, mademoiselle.”
“Nothing has happened to him?”
“Nothing.”
“Give him my congratulations, sir, and thank for me those people who
have been hospitable to him. I would that, after the long walk you
have had, I could offer you refreshment; but my brother is so sober,
and has such few wants, that we have naught but water in the house.”
At this moment, the tramp of footsteps was heard in the corridor. A
woman showed herself at the door of the dining-room, and, dimly, a
man could be perceived behind her.
Despite the semi-darkness, I recognised the female, and could not
resist crying out, “Madame Roland!”
Mademoiselle Robespierre repeated, in an accent of astonishment,
“Madame Roland!”
“Yes, I, myself, mademoiselle, and my husband, who, hearing that
Robespierre has been threatened by his enemies, are come to offer him
a shelter in our little house at the corner of the Rue Guenegaud.”
“I thank you in my brother’s name, madame,” replied Mademoiselle
Charlotte, with dignity. “He has already found the asylum which
you so nobly offer him, and which I know not myself. Here is the
gentleman who brought the news,” continued she, pointing me out to
Madame Roland.
“That proves, mademoiselle,” said, in his turn, the Citizen Roland,
“that other citizens are more favored than we;” and remarking that
he was unwilling to intrude longer on her privacy, he bowed, and
departed with his wife.
As my errand was fulfilled, I followed them, and returned in close
conversation with them. Madame Roland was at the Jacobin Club when
the paid guard made an irruption among them.
The terror was such among the few members of the society present,
that one of them, anxious to escape, escaladed the gallery set aside
for women. Madame Roland made him ashamed of himself, and compelled
him to descend the way that he had come.
They asked me about Robespierre. I told them that I was not
authorized to inform them of his place of shelter, but only could
assure them that he was in a place of safety among people who would
die for him.
Madame Roland asked me to tell Robespierre that they would bring him
to trial—that is to say, accuse him that evening at the Feuillants.
In that certainty, she and her husband were going to M. Buzal, to
pray him to defend his colleague.
We separated at the top of the Pont Neuf—M. Roland and Madame to go
down the Rue du Roule. I to follow the Rue St. Honoré.
It was quite night when I arrived at Duplay’s. Félicién had rejoined
the family during my absence; they were at table, and he regarded
askance the new arrival, who took the place of honor between Madame
Duplay and Mademoiselle Cornelie. I told M. Robespierre all about the
fulfilment of my message, and reported to him his sister’s reply.
I told him also that M. and Madame Roland had paid a visit to his
house.
Here he interrupted, and repeated after me,—“Citizen Roland!
Citizeness Roland!”
He appeared so astonished at the visit, that he was some time asking
me the cause.
I took my place at the table.
“Monsieur,” said Robespierre, after a moment’s silence, with his
habitual politeness, “does it please you to serve me to the end?”
“Not only will it be an honor, and a pleasure,” replied I, “but a
duty.”
“Well,” said he, “this time you have only a few steps to go, and I
shall not have to write a letter. Go to the Rue St. Anne; on the
left-hand side, in going up the street, by the Boulevards, you will
see the Hotel de Berry; there you will inquire for a young man named
St. Just. He lives on the fourth floor, in a room overlooking the
court. If he be at home, tell him that I want him. My kind host, I
hope, will allow me to receive him here. At present, this young man
is of no account, but one day he will lead us all. If he be not at
home, well; you leave your name and the address of this house, where
I have found such good friends, and such noble protectors, and under
the address you write, ‘Urgent for the sake of the public safety.’
Whenever he returns, he will come straight here, you may be sure.”
I wished to leave the table, but, placing his hand on my shoulder, he
said, “Finish your supper. I am not in so great a hurry, and we have
all the night before us.”
Five minutes after, I was proceeding up the Rue St. Anne.
The Hotel de Berry led out of the Rue Neuve des Petits-champs and the
Rue Neuve St. Augustin.
I asked for Citizen St. Just.
The concierge threw his eyes over the keys hung on the wall, and saw
that of St. Just was not there.
“No. 19, fourth story, at the bottom of the corridor.”
I mounted a dark staircase, and found the indicated corridor, and in
that corridor, No. 19.
I knocked; a powerful voice said, “Come in!”
I turned the key in the lock, and saw a young man in his
shirt-sleeves, working by an open window at the correction of proofs.
He was so absorbed in his work, that I approached and touched him
before he turned round.
The book, the proofs of which he was correcting, was, I could see,
entitled, “Mespasse temps ou le Voirvel organe.”
The preoccupation of the young poet was caused by the desire to find
a rhyme.
The rhyme found, he turned to me.
“Pardon,” said he; “what want you?”
“Citizen St. Just,” replied I, “I come on behalf of Citizen
Robespierre.”
“You?”
“Yes. He desires your presence immediately.”
“Where?”
“If you are not prepared, I will leave you the address; but if you
are, I will conduct you thither.”
“Is he at the Rue Saintange?”
“No; he is close by here—in the Rue St. Honoré.”
“At the Jacobins?”
“There are no longer Jacobins. The club is dead.”
“Who dared do it?”
“The paid guard, who, an hour before, dared do another thing.”
“What was the other thing?”
“Fire on the people at the Champ de Mars—slay, perchance, six or
seven hundred persons!”
St. Just shouted with rage.
“What! you a patriot—the friend of M. Robespierre,—and not know
better than that what takes place in Paris?” said I.
“I promised my publisher to have those proofs corrected by Thursday;
and in order to accomplish this I told the servant not to disturb me
for anything. He brought my breakfast in my chamber, and here is my
dinner already served. I have not had time to eat. I knew last night
from the Jacobins they must withdraw the petition; and I doubted
not that, the petition withdrawn, there might be a disturbance at
the Champ de Mars. But let us not lose a moment. Since Robespierre
requires me, I am at his orders.”
The young man put on a white waistcoat, irreproachable in its
cleanliness; a gray coat; a sword and dagger he hung at his side;
then took his hat, and said but the words, “Show the way!”
I went in front, and he followed.
CHAPTER XLVII.
A BREAK.
Here comes a break in my personal adventures during the course of the
great struggle for liberty throughout France. I leading the way, and
St. Just following, we went down the Rue St. Anne, and had almost
reached the Rue Neuve des Augustins, when the powerful voice of St.
Just (one that was soon to be heard by the Nation, which was to hush
at his first word) addressed me.
“Citizen!”
“Citizen St. Just?”
“Give me the address whither we are going!” he said.
“Why, I am leading you! Do you mistrust me?”
His face flushed.
“I mistrust no man,” he replied.
“Then why do you ask for the address?”
“By way of precaution.”
“What need is there of precaution?”
“Was not the Citizen Robespierre in danger not an hour since, by
being in the streets?”
“Yes.”
“Then the Citizen St. Just is equally in danger of a bullet from the
barrel of a paid guard.”
“I shall not desert you.”
“But——”
“Yes, citizen.”
“What if _you_ are killed?” St. Just replied calmly. “I should not
know whither you came.”
“True,” I replied; and he taking out his tablets, wrote upon them,
from my dictation, the address of the Citizen Duplay.
In this act may be seen an example of that forethought and
preparation which gave St. Just a position to which otherwise he
never would have attained.
“Good!” he said, having carefully taken down every particular. “Go
forward.”
How necessary was his precaution, the next few minutes showed.
We had only reached the end of the Rue St. Anne, when a sudden rush
of people along the Rue Neuve des Augustins warned us that danger was
at hand.
I turned and looked at St. Just.
Without regarding me, while apparently his sight was on the alert on
all sides, he repeated his direction, “Go forward.”
Suddenly, shots were heard, and, in a few moments, the street surged
with people, who poured out from the houses and joined those who were
speeding down the street, running by their sides and asking what the
commotion meant. So far, very few of the citizens were aware of the
massacres that had taken place upon the altar of the country.
Paris, in fact, was that day, for the first time, wholly shadowed
by the red flag—which was not to be furled again until a reign
of terror, never equalled in the history of the world, was to be
followed by the inauguration of Napoleon’s splendor.
We were proceeding as rapidly as possible past the current of excited
people, when, unquestionably, a deadly fire opened from a small
turning on the left.
Suddenly, I turned to the left, to see who had struck me; for I felt
that a blow had been aimed at my shoulder which had nearly sent me
off my feet.
As I turned, no man faced me, and I was wondering where the blow came
from; when, as suddenly and unexpectedly as I received the blow, I
felt sick and weak.
It was a woman who screamed, “Blood!”
She pointed to the ground.
As though looking through a mist, I followed the direction of her
pointing finger.
There was blood upon the ground.
All this had passed in a space not longer than six moments.
“Citizen” said the voice of St. Just, “you are wounded; the ball,
however, was meant for me.”
The last words sounded faintly in my ears, and I thought that he,
too, was hurt.
“And you, citizen—are you wounded?”
“No,” he replied, in a still fainter voice, as it appeared to me; but
it was my senses forsaking me.
“Citizens,” I heard him say, “if I fall, you will find an address in
my pocket, which is the home of this lad.”
That was all I heard. Suddenly, the earth appeared to slip from under
me, and there was an end of my consciousness.
When next I knew myself, I awoke to life with the feeling of a
beating red-hot hammer upon my left shoulder; I appeared to be
struggling out of a state of fearful horror. When this cleared off
and I knew myself to be once more alive, once more Citizen Réné
Besson, I was in a little room, which I soon learnt was an apartment
belonging to Citizen Duplay; and, at my side, reading a book, was
Citizeness Cornelie Duplay, who had constituted herself my nurse.
And inasmuch as this history is not so much one of myself as of the
Revolution, and of my part in it, I will only briefly recount the
events of the next few weeks—of the next few months, in relation to
myself.
It appeared that I had been wounded in the shoulder, not dangerously;
but the loss of blood was very great, and I was weak as a little
child. I could not raise my hand even to my head, while I had
scarcely voice sufficient with which to thank my kind nurse for the
offices she performed about me.
For weeks I lay upon that narrow bed, my constitution, and the
temperate life I had hitherto led, fighting well in my favor. I could
tell through chapters how gradually the memory of Sophie Gerbaut
faded from my mind, and of how Cornelie Duplay took her place in my
heart.
But I said nothing of my love; and when, weak, but quite safe, I
sat once more at Citizen Duplay’s hospitable table, I still kept my
passion to myself.
Released, however, as I was, from my bed, I was still a prisoner in
the house, which I did not quit for a couple more months.
Meanwhile the Revolution was progressing.
The sight of the altar of the country, after the flight of the people
from its steps, was terrible. It is said that the great mass of the
dead lying bleeding upon that mighty structure was composed of women
and children.
As the National Guard marched back to the city, after this massacre
of many hundreds—a massacre which would have been multiplied by ten,
had not Lafayette thrown himself before the cannon—they were greeted
with low cries of “Murder!” “Murder!” “Vengeance!”
That day utterly parted the people from the thought of royalty. Paris
was now ready to spill blood, for massacre would now take the name of
vengeance. In many a street in the common parts of Paris were to be
found the surviving relatives of those who had been slain. These were
naturally prompted by a spirit of revenge—by a determination to pay
blood with blood.
Nothing could wash out this hate—no words uttered by the weak and
vacillating King could now stem the torrent of hate. Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette were already condemned to death in the hearts of the
people. Nothing could save them.
The people were now ripe for rage, and therefore the terrible Danton
gained power. The total reverse of Robespierre, they were to rise to
power together. Robespierre was feeble, small, thin, and excessively
temperate. Habitually, he ate little, drank water, and used perfumes
when he was not surrounded by flowers; for he was as passionate an
admirer of flowers as Mirabeau himself. Danton, on the other hand,
was a huge monster—athletic, rude, coarse. He pleased the worst
rabble of the city, because he resembled them. His eloquence was as
thunder, and his very phrases were short, clear, and plain, like
the words of a general accustomed to command. His very gestures
intoxicated the people, who, however, more than by anything, were
attracted by his wit, which, coarse, brutal, and often unjust, was
never obscure, and always to the point. Men who went to hear his wit,
remained to be converted to his ways of thinking.
His one quality was ambition—his one passion, excitement. He was
quite devoid of honor, principles, or morality—he was already
drunk with the Revolution; but it was a drunkenness which produced
madness—not sleep. Moreover, he had the peculiar power of controlling
himself even in his most excited moments—times when he would launch
a bitter joke in the midst of his denunciations—a joke which should
compel his hearers to yell with laughter, while he himself remained
perfectly impassive. He laughed contemptuously at all honesty. He
despised a man who could pity. In a word, he was a wild beast gifted
with speech, but who could no more think beyond himself and his wants
or desires, than can the beasts that perish.
The first great act of the people after the massacre upon the altar
of the country, was the expression of a desire to honor the remains
of Voltaire—the man whose writings, together with those of Rousseau,
had actually sown the seed of revolution against that royalty which
in Gaul and France had unceasingly mastered the people through two
weary thousand years, before the death of Voltaire, in 1778—thirteen
years before the events I am now recording. The power of the Court
and the Church still maintained such sway over the minds and hearts
of the people, that it was impossible to hope to bury the great man
without creating a popular outrage. His nephew, therefore, secretly
removed the body from Paris, where Voltaire died, and bore it far
away to the Abbey of Sellières, in Champagne, where it found a
resting-place.
Now it was the National Assembly ordered the removal of Voltaire’s
remains to the Pantheon, the cathedral of philosophy, where lie
buried many great men—that building upon the face of which has been
carved “France, in gratitude to great men.”
“The people owe their freedom to Voltaire!” cried Regnault de St.
Jean d’Angely; “for by enlightening them he gave them power. Nations
are enthralled by ignorance alone; and when the torch of reason
displays to them the ignominy of bearing these chains, they blush to
wear them, and they snap them asunder!”
Like a conqueror, seated on his trophies, they placed Voltaire’s
coffin in the midst of the spot upon which the horrible Bastille had
stood, and upon a great heap of stones which had formed part of that
stronghold; and thus Voltaire, dead, triumphed over those stones
which had gained a victory over him in life, for Voltaire had been a
prisoner in the Bastille.
On one of the blocks which formed this second altar of the country
they carved this inscription:
“RECEIVE ON THIS SPOT, WHERE DESPOTISM ONCE FETTERED THEE, THE
HONORS DECREED TO THEE BY THY COUNTRY.”
All Paris poured out to walk in the triumphal procession which
accompanied the quiet ashes to their last resting-place. The car upon
which the coffin lay was harnessed by twelve horses, four abreast,
their manes plaited with golden tassels and beautiful flowers, the
reins being held by men dressed in ancient Greek costume. On the car
was a sort of altar upon which lay a waxen statue of the philosopher
crowned with laurel. This was placed over the remains.
The money spent upon this pageant was immense; whence it came, no one
has ever learnt. It was almost miraculous. Meanwhile, the people were
living upon a couple of ounces of bread apiece, and a few miserable
vegetables. That passion and vengeance could have been kept alive
upon such reducing diet, is the truest evidence of the justice of the
national cause.
The military formed a portion of the procession, while cannon boomed
incessantly during the march. Finally—and it is the most significant
fact of this remarkable pageant—a _printing-press_ was made to take
part in the procession. At this press, agile printers were taking off
impressions of sentences in honor of Voltaire, the printed papers
being cast to the seething multitude fresh printed as they were.
Here and there the red cap—the cap of liberty—might be seen,
surmounting the ominous pike.
Every actor and actress in Paris followed, dressed in the costumes of
the characters of Voltaire’s plays. Members of all the learned bodies
followed; a gigantic pyramid was carried along, bearing the titles
of all his works; and, finally, the statue of the demigod himself—a
statue of gold—was borne upon the shoulders of men dressed in Grecian
costume, this being followed by a casket of gold, containing a copy
of each of his works.
Troops of singing-girls dressed in white met the quiet cause of all
this demonstration, and showered white flowers upon the catafalque;
hymns to his genius were sung, the air was sick with perfume, and the
city trembled with the roar of adoration.
Night fell before the procession reached the temple dedicated to the
remains of great men, and here Voltaire was enthroned, for he was
King of France in that hour; and the weak, vacillating, and kindly
Louis XVI, away there in the Tuileries, was crownless, awaiting to
pay in his person—he the least odious of his race—for the unceasing
crimes and cruelties of his forefathers.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE THREAT IS LOUDER.
Throughout August, affairs were tending more and more to dangerous
threats. The National Assembly were ostensibly framing a new
constitution; but the delegates proceeded very slowly, except in the
matter of contradiction, at which they were very brisk.
The King’s brothers became still further estranged from him; while
the efforts made beyond the frontier, tending to liberate the royal
family from the state of imprisonment in which they lived, only
tended to hasten the growing belief of the people that by the death
of the King, alone could the nation hope to destroy the chances and
the plans of those Royalists who had escaped from France, and were
blindly endeavoring to serve their own interests by inducing foreign
Courts to declare war against France, and march upon Paris.
Throughout this period the King gave little expression of opinion,
worked and read incessantly, and bore the threatening aspect of
affairs about him and his family with great patience. He was an
estimable man, honest to a degree, but stupid, hopelessly prejudiced,
and apparently without any capability of experiencing tenderness or
sorrow.
It was now that Roland, the husband of the celebrated Madame Roland,
rose to eminence. Nothing in himself, he became notorious through his
wife—one of the most beautiful, accomplished, and brilliant, as one
of the most unfortunate, the world has yet seen. Her husband was much
older than herself—cold, deadly, impassive; but, on the other hand,
his steady principles were never for one moment shaken.
She was a republican, heart and soul; and when the people, towards
the close of the year 1791, began to believe that the differences
between the King and the nation would be amicably settled, she
never swerved one moment in maintaining that a republic, and only a
republic, could save France from invasion.
General Dumouriez was also rising to power. He was rather a courtier
than a soldier, although he was destined to win victories: especially
amongst women, he was very successful. He attempted to obtain favor
from Madame Roland herself; but that single-hearted lady, true to
her ice-cold husband, put down the General’s pretensions with calm
contempt. He, however, gained much attention from Marie Antoinette,
as the man who, amongst those who had acquired the confidence of
the people, was the most aristocratic, and who had, therefore, the
most sympathy with the falling royal cause. The Queen was right.
After gaining several battles for France against the Austrians, he
turned his army upon Paris, intending to intimidate the Republicans.
The army revolted, and Dumouriez himself had to take refuge in the
camp of those very Austrians whom but a short time previously he had
conquered. They would have nothing to do with him; and, finally, he
fled to England, always open to the refugee, and there he died in
obscurity.
This general, therefore, helped to destroy the royal family. At his
first interview with the King, he said, “Sire, I devote myself wholly
to your service. But a minister of to-day is no longer the minister
of yesterday. Without ceasing to be your Majesty’s devoted servant, I
am the slave of the nation.”
The Queen sent for him privately when he had become the idol of the
people.
“Sir,” said she, “you are all-powerful at this moment; but it is
through popular favor, and that soon destroys its idols. I tell you
I oppose the changes which are being made in the constitution, so
beware!”
“I am confounded,” the General replied; “but I am more the servant
of my country than of your Majesty. Think of your safety, of the
King’s, of that of your children! You are surrounded by enemies. If,
in the King’s interests, you oppose the new constitution made by the
Assembly you will endanger the royal family, and in no way prevent
the course of events.”
“Sir,” the Queen frantically replied, “this state of things cannot
last for ever. Beware for _yourself_.”
“Madame,” said Dumouriez, who _had_ accepted the post of Premier of
the Ministry, and who, at this time, appears to have very faithfully
served the nation—his great fault was his fickleness,—“madame, when
I became Prime Minister, I knew that my responsibility was not my
greatest danger.”
The Queen shrank back. “Do you think me capable of having you
assassinated?”
Tears were upon the Queen’s face.
“Far be such a fearful thought from me, your Majesty. Your soul is
great and noble, and the bravery you have shown on many occasions has
for ever made me your Majesty’s most devoted slave.”
The Queen’s anger was appeased in a moment, and she placed her right
hand upon the General’s arm in token of reconciliation.
Thus it was that this unhappy woman, who had begun life so
extravagantly, while the masses were starving, irritated the people,
and especially all those who had dealings with her, by the apparent
childishness and weakness of her general character. It was felt
that no reliance could be placed upon her. Born of the great feudal
Austrian family about whom etiquette was so plastered, that only
nobles could sit down in the presence of the royal family, and then
upon a very low stool, she was brought to France at a very early
age, to a Court almost as ridiculous as the one she had left. But
while the Austrians had been excited to no feelings of hate against
their Emperor, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, had taught the French
to look upon royalty as made up of merciless, greedy puppets; and,
unfortunately, Marie Antoinette—a pure and noble-hearted woman in
herself—had the appearance of totally agreeing with this description.
While the people were starving, her passion for jewels became
absorbing; while mothers were begging meals for their little ones,
she was taking parts in little comedies at Versailles.
Her memory can scarcely be blamed. She had never seen the people;
and, as a proof that she knew nothing about them and their wants, we
hear about her the celebrated anecdote, which helped to send her to
the scaffold. Being told the people wanted bread, she replied, “If
there is no bread, why do they not eat cake?”
The people never forgave that—she washed those words only partly
out with her blood. Did she really mean what she said, or were the
words intended for a joke? Did she really think that if there was no
bread there must be cake; or did she utter that fatal sentence as
a witticism? I venture to think that she was ignorant of the very
meaning of starvation; for courtiers treat kings and queens like
children. A misfortune this, when the people expect them to be men
and women—the condition of things when the Revolution broke out.
Louis XVI was incapable of managing anything but a lock; his wife
thought she could govern for him, and she made a sorry mistake.
The King’s grandfather, Louis XV, the preceding King, had said,
“After me, the deluge.” The deluge was upon the royal family,
sweeping around them, and was to overwhelm the family.
The popular feeling was far stronger against the Queen than the King.
“See,” she said, one day, before Dumouriez and the King, and pointing
through a window near her; “a prisoner in this palace, I dare not
venture to present myself at a window that overlooks the garden. But
yesterday I wished to breathe the air, and went to the window. An
artilleryman used the language of a guard-room, and hurled his words
at me; held up his sword, and said he should like to see my head on
it. I have seen them murdering a priest, and meanwhile, not ten yards
away, children and their nurses are playing at ball. What a country,
and what people!”
That the Queen incessantly conspired to induce a foreign army to
march into France, is very certain.
The King soon mistrusted Dumouriez, who at once offered to resign his
position of Minister. The King at once accepted, and another friend
was lost by royalty.
On taking his leave, Dumouriez foretold what was to happen.
“Sire,” said he, “you think you are about to save religion. You are
destroying it. The priesthood will be killed; your crown will be
taken from you; perhaps even the Queen and the royal children——”
Dumouriez could not finish the sentence.
“I await—I expect death!” said the King, much moved; “and I pardon my
enemies.”
He turned away, with quivering lips.
Dumouriez never saw Louis XVI again.
He fled from Paris, and especially from La Belle Liègoise, who, in
her blood-colored dress, was now rising to utter power.
“Build the new parliament,” she cried, “on the site of the Bastille;
and let every woman give her jewels, that the gold may be coined to
pay for the work.”
And taking the golden earrings from her ears, the rings from her
fingers, she cast them before her hearers.
Her power was so great, that during every sudden outbreak her “nod”
condemned any man brought before her, to death; her “Let him go,” set
him at liberty.
She was mad for years before she was placed in the asylum where
she ended her days, twenty years after the death of the King and
Queen. Not a Frenchwoman, but born at Liège, she had been brought
up respectably; she was even accomplished; but at seventeen she had
fallen a victim to the snares of a young French nobleman.
Thus fallen, she threw herself into all shapes of debauchery; and
when the Revolution broke out, she came to France, to hunt down and
destroy the man who had destroyed her.
This she did in the raging time to come, of which I have to tell, and
she showed him no mercy.
Neither found she any mercy for herself. The furies of the
Revolution—the _tricoteuses_—seized her, stripped her to the skin,
and whipped her in public, as an obscene prostitute. This act
brought into active force the latent madness from which she had been
suffering for some time. She was removed to a madhouse, and there
she dragged through twenty years of life. In fierce memory of the
indignity which had been put upon her, she would never put on any
clothing; and so she lived, clutching the bars of her den, screaming,
alternately, “Blood!” and “Liberty!”
It took twenty years to enfeeble her constitution, and to wear her
life away into the peacefulness of death.
She was the greatest enemy the Queen had. She declared Marie
Antoinette as frail as herself; for this demon in woman’s shape
insanely gloried in her condition. And when she gloried in this
statement against the “Austrian”—the most opprobrious name the people
could find to cast at the Queen—her hearers applauded loudly.
So the months drifted on, the events of every day darkening the
fortunes of the royal family.
And now came the time when the palace was besieged. The King, looking
from his window, saw the meeting of a huge crowd without any alarm:
he was, by this time, accustomed to sudden crowds.
Again a soldier had led the way for the mob. An artillery officer,
instead of obeying orders, and retiring his guns to defend the
palace, pointed to its windows, and cried, “The enemy is there!”
Two minutes after, the people had got possession of the Tuileries.
The king—who, whatever his faults, was no coward—rushed forward
towards the massive folding-doors, which the populace finding bolted,
were breaking open.
As he approached, the panels fell at his feet. He ordered a couple of
valets to open these folding-doors.
“What have I to fear,” he said, “from my people?”
A ragged man rushed forward, and thrust a stick, pointed with iron,
at the King. A grenadier of the guard struck it down with his
bayonet. And now the man fell, whether in a fit or not will always
remain a question. Certainly, as he rushed forward, he was foaming
at the mouth. All that is known farther of him is this—that the mass
pressing forward, he was trampled to death.
For a moment, the power of majesty was once more asserted.
He had left the Queen, the royal children, and his noble sister,
Madame Elizabeth, in an inner room, and had ordered the door to be
closed after him. This had been done.
The king now moved to another room, larger, pretending that there
he could speak to a greater number of citizens. Suddenly, hearing
a scuffle, the King turned, to find the mob surrounding Madame
Elizabeth, who was endeavoring to reach the King’s side.
“It is the Queen!” screamed several fierce voices. And they were the
voices of women.
In a moment, they turned upon her.
The abhorred Queen was before them, as they thought. In another
moment she would have been killed.
“It is Madame Elizabeth!” cried the soldiers.
The mob fell back with reverence. Even at that point they could
respect Elizabeth, the purity and simplicity of whose life formed the
one favorable point in the united lives of the royal family, and one
to which the whole mass of the people gave implicit credence.
But she was to die with her family.
“Ah! what have you done?” she cried. “Had they been allowed to take
me for the Queen, and have killed me, I had perhaps saved the Queen’s
life!”
By this time, about twenty of the King’s friends stood about him,
their swords drawn.
“Put up your swords,” said the King; “this multitude’s more excited
than guilty.”
“Where is the Austrian?” now resounded upon all sides.
The question which excited the multitude was against the priesthood,
whose members, known to favor royalty, were abhorred by the people.
The king had refused to sign an act by virtue of which the priesthood
would have been annihilated.
A butcher, named Legendre, cried to the King, “The people are weary
of being your plaything and your victim!”
Meanwhile, those who could not gain an entrance to the besieged
palace called loudly to those within, “Are they dead? Show us, then,
their heads!”
“Let him put it on!” cried the butcher, thrusting a coarse red cap of
liberty towards the King on the end of a pike.
The King smiled, and put the symbol of liberty upon his head.
“Long live the King!” now cried some voices.
The people now called upon the King to restore Roland—Madame Roland’s
husband—to power, from which he had been dismissed.
The King was inflexible.
“This is not the moment for deliberation,” said the King.
“Do not be afraid!” whispered a grenadier to Louis.
“My friend,” said the King, “does my heart beat rapidly?”
And he placed the man’s left hand upon his breast.
The pulsation of the King’s heart was perfectly equable.
“If you love the people, drink their health!” cried a man in rags,
pushing forward a common bottle.
The King smiled and took the bottle, saying, “To the nation!”
And now the cries of “Long live the King!” were so strong that they
floated out upon the crowd waiting to see the King’s body cast
amongst them; and, instead, they learnt that once more the King
had—if only for a time—reconciled himself to his people.
Meanwhile the Queen was undergoing her agony.
Only the conviction that she was more immeasurable hated than the
King, prevented her from joining him before the people. She feared
her presence might exasperate the people beyond all control.
She remained in her bed-room, pressing her two children to her heart.
Suddenly, a beating at the door, and the screams of many fierce
women, upon hearing the words, “The Austrian is there!”
But they had to call masculine help before they forced the door.
They found the Queen unprotected, except by her children, whose
presence probably saved their mother from assassination.
Only a few ladies were with her, one of whom was that unhappy
Princess de Lamballe, who would not remain in England, who returned
to France, and who was one of the first to fall a victim to the Reign
of Terror.
The Queen was found by the screaming crowd of women standing as I
have described, in a bay window, while between her and the mob, a
long, heavy table had been placed across the window.
By the Queen stood her daughter—near fourteen years of age.
The Dauphin—then seven years of age, and extremely handsome—was
placed upon the table before her.
The men in the crowd were for the greater part silent; the women were
implacable: one of these thrust forward a republican red cap, and
told the Austrian to put it on Louis’s head. This she did.
The child took it for a plaything, and smiled.
And now a pretty, rosy, youthful girl came forward, and using the
coarsest possible language, upbraided the Queen savagely.
“Pray what harm have I done you?”
“Me?—perhaps not. But what harm have you not done the nation?”
“Poor child!” the Queen replied. “You but repeat what you have been
told. Why should I make the people miserable? Though not born a
Frenchwoman, my children are French, and I shall never see my native
land again. I was happy when you loved me!”
The girl’s head fell.
“I did not know you,” she said; “and I see now that you are good!”
And now Santerre—good name for a leader of the people—approached.
“Take the cap off the child!” he cried; “don’t you see that he is
stifling?”
The crowd was tremendous.
And approaching the Queen he whispered, “You have some awkward
friends here. I know of some who would serve you better.”
This was the first intimation the Queen really had that there was a
party amongst the people actually willing to raise the royal family
they had so utterly degraded.
Five hours that torture lasted before the palace was cleared. The
King and Queen had also been forced to put the national cockades upon
their heads. When once more the royal house was free, the unhappy
people could scarcely find strength with which to embrace.
Several of the members of the National Assembly wept.
To one, Merlin, the Queen said, “You weep, sir.”
“Yes, madame,” he replied, gravely; “I weep over the misfortunes of
the woman, the wife, and the mother; but, beyond this, my heart is
stone. I hate kings and queens.”
These words were the key-stone to French feeling. Louis XVI and his
wife were driven to the block, not as a man and a wife, as father and
mother—but as _King_ and _Queen_.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE KING QUITS THE TUILERIES.
The National Assembly had ordered the provinces to send 20,000
troops to Paris. With them they brought the revolutionary hymn, the
“Marseillaise.” It was written and composed by a young artillery
officer, named De Lisle. It was completed at the piano, after a
night’s bout. He fell asleep over the instrument, and at length
awakening, gradually recalled the air and words of a song, the
fierceness of which sent more French men and women to the block than
did any other motive.
That song drove revolutionary France mad, and took from the royal
family all hope of mercy.
The royal family, however, were still at the Palace of the Tuileries;
and while they remained there, the semblance of royalty was kept
up—albeit, in fact, they were utterly prisoners.
The Queen, early in August, still utterly relied upon Lafayette,
who did not disguise his desire to retain the monarchy, under a
protectorate—he himself to be the Protector.
“Mistrust Lafayette,” had said Mirabeau; but the Queen’s faith was
strong, and her confidence hastened events.
However, one Gaudet, only twenty years of age, was rising to power
amongst the Girondists; and he having intimated that he felt great
interest in the royal family, matters were so managed that he had
an interview with Marie Antoinette, who, poor lady, took him by the
hand, and led him to the little cot in which her child was sleeping.
“Educate him to liberty, madame,” said the orator. “It is the one
condition of his life.”
He kissed the child. Nine months afterwards he was one of those who
sent the King and Queen to the scaffold.
The royal family were now prohibited from shutting a door, and so
much did they dread poison, that they only pretended to eat of the
dishes prepared and set before them, and really subsisted upon cakes,
and other food brought to them in the pockets of their attendants,
who purchased the eatables at obscure shops.
The Queen made the King wear as a breastplate fifteen-fold silk; but
while the poor man complied, he said, “They will not assassinate me,
but put me to death like a King, in open daylight.”
He never appears to have thought of the possible execution of the
Queen herself.
“He is no coward,” she said of the King; “but he is calm in the
presence of danger. His courage is in his heart, only it does not
show itself—he is so timid.”
The family now only showed themselves when going to church on Sunday,
and then they were assailed with cries of “No King!” Louis said it
was as though God himself had turned against him.
One night, a chamber-valet, who slept at the Queen’s door, was
awakened, to find an assassin, dagger in hand, stealing into the
Queen’s room.
Murders now became quite common. One D’Epremesnil, who had been a
great favorite with the people, showed signs of moderation. Suddenly
turned upon by the mob, he was cut down, dragged through the gutters,
and was about to be thrown into a common sewer, when he was rescued
by a squad of the National Guard. As he lay dying, Pétion, the Mayor
of Paris, looked upon him, and fainted. Recovering his senses, the
victim said to the Mayor, “And _I_—I, too, was once the idol of the
people! May you meet with a better fate!”
The sound of the soul-stirring “Marseillaise” had maddened Paris.
The hourly news of the march of the Prussians upon France fatally
intensified that hatred of all who were favorable to royalty—a hatred
which was now about utterly to burst all bounds.
An almost complete insurrection was adjourned to August 10.
It was said by the people that Marie Antoinette daily cursed the
people; that she had offered a pistol to the King, and prayed him
to destroy himself: that she had vowed, sooner than leave the royal
palace, she would be nailed to its walls.
In truth, she was battling with her natural royalty—defending the
unemotional King, and endeavoring to take his place without intruding
on his prerogative.
Meanwhile, the principal movers in the drama were being thinned by
murder. Mandat, the commandant general, suspected of treachery rather
than of duty, was shot down before his son’s eyes, and his body was
cast into the Seine.
On the morning of that terrible 10th of August, Madame Elizabeth, the
King’s sister, who had been watching through the night, listening to
the ringing of that bell which all the Royalists knew was the tocsin
of murder,—this pure-hearted Elizabeth called to the Queen.
“Sister,” she said, “come and see the sun rise.”
And Marie Antoinette looked for the last time upon a sunrise (it was
typically blood-red) which she was to see through the palace windows.
To Rœderer, the deputy, was due the first suggestion of that act
which was really the King’s abdication—that of abandoning the royal
palace, and asking hospitality of the Parliament.
“Place yourselves, madame,” he said, “in the care of the National
Assembly. Your persons will then be as sacred as the constitution.”
The constitution itself was to be a thing of the past in a few weeks.
At five in the morning, the Queen had her children dressed and
brought to her. The King himself, by his appearance, should have
steeped the guard in confidence. He should have appeared in uniform.
On the contrary, he appeared in a suit of violet silk—court mourning,
in fact, without boots or spurs, in white silk stockings and pumps;
while his hair presented an absurd spectacle, for it had not been
dressed since the previous day; and while one side was still rounded
and curled, the other was flat and ragged. He looked about smilingly,
but with that vagueness in which no reliance can be placed. He was
simply a good, stupid, amiable man. He kept apart, all his reign,
making locks; he forgot his people, and he was weak enough to
suppose his people would forget him.
As for the Queen she was never more royal.
“Take these!” she said, seizing a couple of pistols and forcing them
into his hands; “and conquer or die with your friends.”
The King however, handed them to a gentleman by his side, saying,
“No; if I wore arms, the people might be angry.”
A royal progress was made in the court-yard of the Tuileries, even in
the palace-garden beyond. At first received with faint applause, the
cries of hate soon overwhelmed the King, and it was with difficulty
he gained the palace alone.
The tocsin had now been calling to arms through many hours.
Meanwhile, Danton, the man of blood, was maddening the people.
“To arms!” he cried. “Do you not hear the call?”
The infuriated people were now upon the palace.
They attempted once more to burst the doors, while the artillerymen
refused to fire upon the insurgents.
And now the fatal, but inevitable, mistake was made.
“Sire,” cried Rœderer to the King, “time presses. It is no longer
entreaty we use, and only one means is left us. We ask your
permission to use violence towards you; and, by force, to place you
under the safety of the National Assembly.”
The King still did not wish to leave the palace. He turned to the
Queen.
“Let us go.”
Never again did the royal couple step beneath the roof of that
palace. They left it for a barred prison—that barred prison for the
scaffold.
The King and the royal family were taken to the Assembly, and put in
the reporters’ box, amidst the reporters themselves.
There were few members present when the King entered the house, but
it soon filled up. The heat was intense, and the King perspired
frightfully. This box was supposed to be not in the Assembly, because
a grating was placed before it. As the day went on, it was feared
the people might break in from behind, and catch the King in this
dungeon. It was, therefore, ordered that the grating should be
removed; and the workers being unskilful, the King’s knowledge in
metal-work prevailing, he came forward, and helped at its removal; so
that in the event of an attack by the people, whose menaces could be
heard, the members of parliament might shelter the royal family by
forming a living rampart around them.
This agony lasted fourteen hours; but it did not tell upon the King’s
heavy nature. At his usual hour, he was hungry, asked for food, and
he ate a hearty meal as calmly as though he had passed some hours at
lock-making. The Queen, who suffered dreadfully at the sight of this
evidence of callousness on the part of the King, ate nothing, but
drank a glass or two of iced water with much eagerness.
The people, learning that the King had left the palace, turned upon
this building to destroy it—not to sack it. The Revolutionists were
greedy for blood—not wealth. “Death to thieves!” was their implacable
motto. The Tuileries were chiefly defended by seven hundred Swiss,
two hundred badly-armed gentlemen, and one hundred National Guard. At
the end of the day, not one-tenth of them remained alive.
The palace was forced. There stood a Swiss on guard, many files of
comrades behind him. He had orders not to fire. The people hooked
his belt with a pike, dragged him forward, and disarmed him. Another
took his place; he, also, was disarmed. Five times was this episode
repeated.
A shot was fired—some say, by a Swiss; others, by an insurgent; and
this appears to have been the signal.
The people turned upon the five disarmed Swiss, and beat them to
death. One man of huge stature and strength killed four. The Swiss
were now ordered to fire. Many aimed at the huge man, and he fell
with many more. In a moment, the hall was strewn with the dead and
the dying. From that moment, the Swiss were doomed; though, for a
short time, they were victorious; for the people were driven back.
Meanwhile, the rattle of the musketry echoed through the building in
which the National Assembly were deliberating; and its cause soon
became known.
“Long live the nation!” cried the parliamentarians, glaring at the
King, who, unhappy man, now helped on the massacre of his Swiss
guards by sending a written order to their commander to cease firing,
whatever happened. This was really their death-warrant; for fidelity
keeping them near the King’s person, fidelity would compel them to
obey his last command—for this order was the last Louis XVI ever gave.
Suddenly, shots sounded close at hand. The members thought it was the
Swiss guard, about to fire upon and massacre the National Assembly.
In truth, it was the National Guard firing upon that division of the
Swiss which had accompanied the King to the National Assembly.
“Now,” cried the President, “is the time to prove ourselves worthy of
the people, and of the position they have given us, by dying at our
posts.”
It was a false alarm; it was royalty dying.
The people now rallied, broke into the palace, and, maddened by the
sight of the dead citizens in the great hall, charged the Swiss, who
were serried on the grand staircase.
Upon those stairs they were driven, leaving comrades upon every step.
The incline afforded good shooting to the people, who, when they had
forced their way to the top of the stairs, had slain every soldier
who had faced them. The Swiss guard died bravely to the very last man.
After that it was massacre, not fighting. Wherever a Swiss was found
on guard throughout the palace, he was hacked to pieces. Many were
thrown alive from the windows to the people below. Some few of these
solitary Swiss sentinels showed fight; many threw down their arms,
and either faced death unarmed, or uselessly asked for mercy.
Seventeen were found kneeling in the palace chapel. In vain did they
show their fire-arms, which, clear and bright, proved they had not
fired upon the people. They were foreigners; the news came hourly
that all Europe was about to pour upon France, and they were killed
before the very altar.
It is said the people had, to stimulate their bloodthirstiness,
dissolved gunpowder in the wine and brandy they drank.
Not a Swiss escaped.
The Queen’s women remained trembling in the palace.
One man alone defended their door, and fell—generous sentinel!
Danton was the very king of the massacre; and publicly he thanked the
people for their day’s work.
Meanwhile, calm, patient, implacable, Robespierre—he who was to
conquer Danton—waited quietly abiding his time, but always feeling
his way.
The Assembly soon learnt the true state of affairs; and, by their
orders, a few Swiss were saved, by being hidden in the passages and
cellars of the House of Assembly.
And now, the Revolutionists, eager for blood, but not for riches,
brought before the National Assembly the spoils of the Tuileries.
Sacks upon sacks of gold, plate, precious stones, costly ornaments,
and even heaps of letters—even the money found upon the dead Swiss
was set out in a separate pile.
The Girondists now felt that the time was come to abandon the throne.
Vergniaud drew up an act for the _provisional suspension of royalty_.
This was at once passed.
The King’s fall was signed. A few hours before, he abandoned his
palace. Now, by this Act, the King’s authority was revoked; payment
of money to royalty was stopped; and the National Assembly declared
to hold possession of the persons of the royal family until happier
times arrived.
This was virtually dethroning the King, and taking him prisoner.
And how did the King accept this news?
He smiled, and said jocosely, “This is not too constitutional!”
He was the only human being that smiled in that place upon that fatal
day—he whose heart should have felt the heaviest weight of grief.
But the people around the building shouted for the King’s life.
The people, however, must not be looked upon harshly. They had not
stolen; and though many hundreds had been slain by them, they had
lost three thousand six hundred men. The Swiss did not die unavenged.
Then the people went back to their work, tired of bloodshed, for a
few days.
And the royal family were taken to the prison of the Temple, which
three of them quitted only for the scaffold.
CHAPTER L.
THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.
The wretched Queen’s head and eyelids drooped for a moment as she
heard the words which dethroned her husband; then, once again, her
head was high and defiant. Together with the misfortune of the
Austrian Hapsburg, she inherited their pride and courage. From that
hour to the moment of her death, her courage never failed her. She
appears to have equally forgiven and despised.
Events now followed with terrible rapidity. The Prussians entered
France and the town of Verdun fell into their power. That humiliation
brought about the massacres of September. The town council purposed
their capitulation. Then Colonel Beaupaire, the commandant, opposed
it; and refusing to sign the capitulation, he blew out his brains
at the council. His body was removed, the capitulation signed, the
Prussians marched in, and the daughters of the principal inhabitants,
strewed flowers before the foreign troops.
All of those girls—to be excused, by reason of their youth—were,
during the Reign of Terror, sent to the guillotine.
Beaupaire’s body was carried away by his men, who marched out of
Verdun with all the honors of war, and to it was accorded a state
funeral, while the heart was placed in the Pantheon.
Every day, Danton was rising into power.
Every day, Robespierre was following him, and marking him down with
the vigor of a sleuth hound.
It was he who organised the September massacres. On the 28th of
August, a grave-digger, who knew the plan of certain catacombs, was
awakened at six in the morning by a Government agent, and told to
prepare this place, within ten days, for receiving a large number of
bodies. He was ordered to be silent, on pain of death.
On this same day, organised bands of fierce-looking men, springing
no one knew whence, patrolled the streets. The gates of Paris were
closed, so that no one could escape, though thousands had fled
between the day of the King’s first fall and this one, the 28th of
August.
Every house was visited. Five thousand persons, suspected of leaning
towards royalty, were seized during the following night. Every
court-house, convent, prison, was overflowing with prisoners.
Robespierre still remained quiet and watchful—still lived in hiding
in the house of good Duplay, the joiner.
On that night, Robespierre went to the apartments of St. Just, in the
Rue St. Anne, and found him calmly going to bed.
“Why not?” asked St. Just. “Murder will be done to-night, but I
cannot prevent it. And again, those who will die are our enemies.
Good night.”
He fell asleep. Awaking, hours after, he marked Robespierre, pale,
haggard.
“Have you returned?”
“_Returned!_”
“What! have you not slept?”
“Slept!” cried Robespierre; “when the blood of thousands is being
shed by hundreds of assassins—when pure or impure blood runs down the
streets like water! Oh, no,” he continued, with a sardonic smile; “I
have not slept—I have watched, like remorse or crime; I have had the
weakness not to close my eyes. But _Danton—he has slept_!”
On Sunday (of all days in the week), it being the 2nd of September,
at three in the afternoon, the signal for the massacre was given,
by one of those strange accidents with which we are all acquainted.
Five coaches, filled with prisoners, were passing. These prisoners
happened, by chance, to be all priests.
“See the friends of the Prussians!” cried one in the crowd. It was
enough. The rage of knowing that the Prussians had conquered Verdun
made them mad in a moment.
From that hour until four days were passed, murder was unceasing all
over Paris. It was enough to look like a Royalist, and death followed.
Half the priests were killed in the carriages, before they reached
the prison gates.
Inside those gates, as inside the gates of all the other ordinary or
improvised prisons, sat the revolutionary tribunes, twelve fierce
men, who decided rapidly the fate of the prisoner, while they drank
and smoked.
They were chiefly in shirt-sleeves. However, here and there might be
seen white-handed men, who evidently were the master spirits of those
terrible juries, which, in their way, were merciful, for they did
not condemn a prisoner to death. If acquitted, the decree was “Set
this gentleman at liberty;” if guilty, “To the Force,”—a decree which
was a pun, for there was a prison called La Force, while the word
“force” may be said to be “death;” therefore, “à la force” conveyed
to the prisoner the idea that he was to be conveyed to the prison of
La Force. In this belief, when approaching the prison gate, he had no
idea death was at hand. The gate opened, and he was delivered to the
force of an organised band, who quickly despatched him. Each band of
executioners was controlled by a hidden chief. They moved from prison
to prison as the revolutionary juries sat, and they did their work
with the steadiness of actual business.
The prison massacres began with the Swiss, at the Abbaye. They knew
what was coming. They were one hundred and fifty. A young officer
led the way. He was very young and beautiful, and the murderers
fell back. He folded his arms. The bayonets came nearer. He rushed
forward, grasped five or six of the bayonets in his arms, and fell
upon their points.
They all died—their commander, one Major Redding being the last. He
said he would see his men out. There were not enough wagons to carry
the bodies to the catacombs, so they were heaped up until the return
of the tumbrils.
Benches were set for women to see these massacres, and they and their
children danced round the dead bodies.
At the “Abbey” prison the prisoners were shot down in the chapel, and
while two priests, eighty and white-haired, were preparing them for
death.
Some anticipated execution by suicide.
One Sombreuil, a prisoner, was condemned to death, and he was loosed
to the mob. Bayonets were at his breast, when his daughter, who was
waiting in the midst of the murderers, flung herself before him and
asked for his life.
The crowd accorded it upon one condition—that she should drink a
glass of blood, then flowing from one of the dying.
This she did, and saved him.
Another father and daughter, the Cazottes, left the prison
together—he condemned, she free. But the daughter cried that she
would die with him. So they spared both lives. So far, the national
madness had not destroyed pity for women.
The King’s first gentleman, one Thierri, being pierced by a pike,
cried, “God save the King!” and died, waving his hat as he was
transfixed to the woodwork to which he clung.
A deputy of the National Assembly came to one of the prisons, to
claim two prisoners; whom obtaining, as he passed from the prison,
the murderers, eating as they sat on the bodies of their victims,
asked him, “Are you tired of life?”
“No.”
“Then see the heart of an aristocrat!”
The speaker tore the heart from the gaping breast of the dead man
upon which he was coolly seated.
Yet these murderers refused all recompense. The first bands were men
of comparative education; but, not being bred butchers, they soon
sickened at the task, and left it to be continued by men of more iron
nerves than theirs.
Blood had by this time, drenched nine prisons. From one alone, the
tumbrils had removed one hundred and ninety bodies.
Sixty assassins; this was the number to be seen at each prison door,
waiting for the blood of the aristocrats.
Meanwhile, one hundred and sixty heads fell upon the scaffold, some
being those of women. The poor Princess de Lamballe, the Queen’s
devoted friend, was not one of those saved. She had followed the
royal family to the Temple prison, but she was torn from them after
a few days. She was a very young widow, passionately loved by her
father-in-law, who lived far away in the country. He forwarded
12,000_l._ to save her life, if possible. It was her want of
courage, or, perhaps, ability to dissemble, which cost this poor
lady her life. On September 3rd, she appeared before the tribunal.
She had passed two days continually fainting; and when ordered,
with feigned brutality, by two National Guards to follow them, she
asked permission to die where she was. One of them leant down, and
whispered, “It is to save you.”
Upon coming before the tribunal, the sight of the blood all about
deprived her of consciousness. It was long before she comprehended
what was required of her.
“Swear the love of liberty and equality, and hatred of kings!”
“I swear the first,” she said, “but not the second. It is not in my
heart.”
One of the judges whispered to her—“Swear everything, or you are
lost.”
She remained silent.
“Well—when you go out, cry ‘Long live the nation!’”
She nodded; but upon being led out by two men, one of them a leader
in the massacres—one Grand Nicholas,—upon sight of the dead bodies,
she cried, “Good God! how horrible!”
Nicholas put his hand over her mouth. They had traversed half the
street in safety, when a drunken barber, trying to strike off her cap
with his knife, wounded her in the forehead. The men about believed
her condemned, and in a few moments she was dead, her head cut off,
and set amongst the glasses on the counter of a wine-shop, where they
drank to her death. The barber then set the head upon a pole, and
carried it in procession to the Temple. There the crowd forced an
entrance, and insisted upon shewing the head to the ex-Queen.
The King was called upon to show himself to the people; and though
an unknown friend endeavored to prevent Louis from seeing the head,
the kind intention was foiled, and the King recognised the features.
Marie Antoinette was now demanded, and she presented herself to the
people; but the King, active for once, saved his wife from the sight
of poor Lamballe’s head. She only learnt what had happened in the
evening.
Three days’ murders! At two other prisons, five hundred and
seventy-five victims awaited burial. At the end of the three days,
the murder of women was common. A beautiful girl, one of the people,
having wounded her lover from jealousy, and he being a national
soldier, she was burnt alive, under circumstances of peculiar
atrocity, suggested by the wretched woman, “La Belle Heleise,” whose
advancing madness was her excuse. Her own time, when she was to be
lashed by her own sex, was fast approaching.
A negro—a huge giant—was especially famous during these three days.
He, it is said, killed over two hundred. He gave himself no rest;
stopped only to drink wine, and, naked to the waist, was a fearful
sight, seen, as he habitually was, with the fair head of a slain
woman swinging in his left hand. At last, he himself was slain, but
not for two years, during which, where blood flowed, he was ever to
be seen. At the end, he said he had revenged himself, not upon the
enemies of France, but upon the enemies of his race—_the whites_.
It is said ten thousand fell in those three days and nights.
The murderers began at last to turn upon one another. Especially was
this the case with the bands who adopted death by burning.
A weaver—one Laurent—drew up a list of those it was intended to kill,
and placed upon it the name of a tradesman, who refused to give him
credit. The tradesman, having a friend in a member of the National
Assembly, threw himself upon his protection. The name was erased, and
Laurent’s written above it; and when Laurent pointed to the tradesman
at the place of execution, he was himself seized, and cast into the
flames.
Meanwhile, the Prussians on the frontier were preparing to advance.
This threat of invasion gave the public sentiment an impetus towards
panic, which there was no resisting.
The National Assembly, which was composed, for the greater part, of
men of ripe age, was practically abolished by the constitution of a
“Convocation,” in which the majority of the men of power were under
thirty, while amongst them, several were scarcely more than of age.
The King, once in prison, it has been seen how the fact was followed
by the fearful massacres of September 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Scarcely
were they complete, than the men in power began to protest against
their enormity, and it was endeavored to be shown, with some
success, that these wholesale murders were perpetrated by a fierce
organization of but comparatively few men, who cast this great shame
upon France.
Certainly, the same men were at the doors of the various prisons,
while the rough order established amongst them, far more clearly
pointed to the operation of a secret society, than to the sudden
unorganized rage of a maddened people.
The Convention was really divided into Girondists and Jacobins—the
former led by Roland and Vergniaud, their party being distinguished
by moderation; the latter, led by Robespierre (now rapidly becoming
the leading man in the Revolution), Danton, and the miserable savage,
Marat, who even condescended to attract the approbation of the lowest
rabble, by wearing rags, as clothes, offensive from very want of
cleanliness—a shape of vanity fortunately rarely to be found.
The life or death of the King was really the question of the
Convention; it was the test of Royalty or Republicanism, and no man
knew this better than Robespierre. It was by the exercise of this
knowledge that he rose to power—to that power, by the exercise of
which almost all the men who had formed a portion of the National
Assembly, who were members of the Convention which superseded the
Assembly, were sent to the scaffold before he himself mounted the
fatal ladder.
It was evident how things lay when the question of lodging the
President of the Convention was mooted. It being proposed that he
should lodge in the Tuileries, then called the National Palace,
Tallien cried, “Why, out of this chamber, your President is but a
plain citizen; therefore, if he is wanted, let him be sought for in
the garrets where, in general, only truth and virtue are to be found.”
Danton and Robespierre were now mortal, although concealed, enemies.
They knew that one must destroy the other—which?
The theory of a republic was now declared; it was the first step to
the beheading of the King, to whom I will now return.
The Temple, to which the royal family had been taken, was an old
building, half monastery, half castle, which had once been one of the
strong-holds of those monk-soldiers, the Knights Templars. It was
composed of a couple of towers, one seventy feet high, the other much
smaller, and a large space of ground, surrounded by a comparatively
low wall. This enclosure contained many houses, and especially a
very fine building, once the palace of the Templars themselves. Many
of the windows of the surrounding houses, which formed part of the
lowest quarter of Paris, overlooked these grounds, in which there was
an avenue of chestnut trees, and a pretty garden.
The towers had not been used for almost hundreds of years, and
the contents of their several floors were of the most wretched
description. The rooms themselves, built round a central staircase,
were desolate in the extreme; while the walls being nine feet deep,
the windows loopholes, and even these barred, it need not be said
that the interior was never wholesomely light.
The royal prisoners were taken to the old palatial building upon
their arrival, and the poor King at once expressed a sense of relief
at the serenity his wife and children now enjoyed, compared with the
dangers they ran at the royal palace.
The family supped together, and the King, as usual, ate heartily. The
municipals told off to watch the prisoners, stood during the meal,
but this slight semblance of respect was soon to disappear.
Louis chatted cheerfully as to what their life should be—how he
would be his son’s school-master—how the garden was large enough for
exercise—how they should live, and employ the day. He even inspected
the rooms, the beds, the linen; in a word, was once more the man he
had always been—a rather quiet spirited, inquisitive, active, dull
man.
But this respite lasted only during a few hours. The King had
appointed the various bed-rooms, but before the Dauphin could be
put to bed in the one set down as his, an order came from the
authorities, ordering that the royal family should be lodged in the
smaller tower.
They waited until after midnight before their new place of
imprisonment was ready, and then themselves carried what was wanting
to the tower. The King’s servant asking where his master was to be
lodged, the municipal officer replied, “Your master has been living
under gilded roofs; he will find none here, and learn at the same
time how we lodge the murderers of the people.”
Madame Elizabeth was lodged in the kitchen, on the ground floor; the
so-called Court on the second; the King, Queen, and children, on the
floors above. The walls and the floors were bare, except for some
obscene pictures on the walls, which the King took down, turning them
to the wall.
The King went to bed, and fell asleep. Not so the Queen, who remained
awake the whole night.
The next day, adapting himself to even these fallen circumstances,
the King ordered the day’s plans; and pushing about the room, came
upon a small collection of books, chiefly Latin—a discovery which
once more brought a smile of pleasure to his face.
Ten days afterwards, 20th August, and when the royal family had
retired for the night, the noise of many advancing feet awakened
them. The authorities of the prison came armed with orders from
Parliament, to deprive the royal family of every attendant who had
hitherto followed their fortunes. The agony the Queen experienced
upon parting with the Princess de Lamballe was intense.
“From this night,” cried Marie Antoinette, “I do date my captivity.”
Within a fortnight, as I have related, the poor Princess de
Lamballe’s head was raised on a pike to the window of the Queen’s
prison. One Tison’s wife was appointed to look after the Queen; while
Simon, afterwards celebrated for his cruelty to the Dauphin, and
Rocher, a mere brute, were the gaolers-in-chief.
It was Rocher who never passed by the Queen without blowing clouds of
tobacco-smoke in her Majesty’s face.
The walls of the Temple were ablaze with comments upon the royal
family. Here might be read an attack upon Louis’s stoutness, there a
savage comment upon the Queen. Even the children were not spared. For
instance, this sentence was scrawled upon the walls: “What are King’s
children? Whelps who ought to be strangled before they are old enough
to devour the people.”
The unfortunate captives at last dreaded to take the air; the guard
saluted whenever a municipal passed by, but they reversed arms as the
King went by.
At last, they limited the number of steps the royal family might take
when exercising.
The upper windows of the house overlooking the prison were now
the only consolation left to the unhappy royal captives. But that
comprehensive freemasonry of misery with which we are all somewhat
acquainted, the friends of the fallen family, who were still at
liberty, took the upper rooms, from which they could see their King
and his family. The captives soon learnt, by almost indescribable
signs, the windows which were friendly to them. This one would show a
white flower; from another, a hand would be waved; and now and again
a placard would be raised for a moment.
On the 24th of September, the King, having fallen asleep after
dinner, was aroused by a great tumult in the street, below his window.
It was the people declaring the abolition of royalty, and the
declaration of a republic.
“My kingdom,” he said to the Queen, “has passed away like a dream,
and it has not been a happy dream. God gave it me, and the people
take it away. I pray that France may be happy.”
On the evening of the same day, one of his gaolers asked the King
brutally, if he knew that he was living in a republic.
“I have heard it,” he replied; “and I have prayed that the republic
may deal justly with my country. I have never placed myself between
the people and their happiness.”
So far, the King had been allowed to wear his sword and his heraldic
orders.
“You must know,” said his gaoler, “that the republic has suppressed
these baubles; so take them off. You are now but a citizen, as we
are, and must be as we are; yet, what you want, ask the republic for,
and you shall not be denied.”
“I thank you,” said the King calmly. “I want for nothing.”
Very calmly, he continued his interrupted reading.
Amongst the books he read at this time were “The Life and death
of Charles I, of England,” and the “Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.”
The Convention, however, had not behaved illiberally to the captives.
The members assigned twenty thousand pounds to their use; but very
little was really expended in the direction it was intended to go.
The royal family were wretchedly off for clothes. They had borrowed
here and there; and the Queen herself employed many hours daily in
mending and patching the clothes of the family, which had been much
torn during the day which ended in the imprisonment of Louis and his
family in the Temple.
The English ambassador, in fact, was the chief donor of the clothes
which enabled the royal family to be the possessors of a mere change
of linen.
It is said that the wretched gaolers vied with each other in making
the fallen captives shed tears. That man who succeeded was envied by
his comrades. Well has it been said that the success of a revolution
which was the result of generations of misgovernment, had fallen
heavily upon those royal personages who had least helped to produce
the national hate of royalty, while that victory had of itself driven
the vanquishing people into madness.
But the last degradations had not been put upon the Bourbons. Soon
there came an order from the Convention, to the effect that the King
was to be utterly separated from his family.
They were now to be debarred that last consolation of the
unfortunate—to suffer together.
The despair which ensued even moved the wretch, Rocher. But the order
was imperative, and that night the King was removed from the small
tower, and was imprisoned in the larger. He was now quite alone.
This occurred before the termination of September; and, as though
to make the desolation still more complete, the whole family were
utterly deprived of the means of writing, even to each other. Not a
scrap of paper was allowed—not a pencil—not even a fragment of chalk.
The great tower was being repaired. All the accommodation offered
to Louis was a bed and a chair, set in heaps of brick and plaster
rubbish, which overspread the floor.
Poor man! nature compelled him to be active; and, therefore, being
deprived of reading and writing materials, he passed this first
excruciating night of his acutest misery in counting the steps of the
sentinel as he passed up and down in the corridor outside the King’s
cell.
This night, the King, for the first time, shed tears. His only
companion was a valet, named Cléry, who had been appointed by the
municipal authorities when the King’s servants were removed. He was a
Revolutionist; but his heart was in the right place.
The one fragment of hope to which the king clung on this wretched
night was the suggestion made by this valet, that as he had, since
his appointment, dressed daily the hair of the ladies of the family,
that he should be able to carry messages between them and the King.
Daylight dispelled this hope. It was intimated that Cléry was not
to leave the tower—that the isolation of the King from all exterior
communication must be complete.
When the man made application to this effect, the answer he
scoffingly received was, “Your master will never see even his
children again.”
“’Tis an outrage upon nature!” urged the King, when he was visited by
the authorities. “You murder five hearts in one—you do that, indeed,
which is worse than murder!”
The authorities turned their backs upon the King, not deigning to
answer him.
All that was brought him as food on that first morning of the
separation from his family, was a piece of bread, and a pot of water,
into which a lemon had been squeezed.
“They have forgotten we are two,” said the King, advancing to Cléry,
and breaking the bit of bread in half; “but I do not forget. Take
this; the remainder is enough for me.”
The servant refused, but the King insisted; and so the valet took
it, and wept as he ate. The King also wept. What a picture to
contemplate!—a king and a valet eating a fragment of bread between
them, and tears falling upon the wretched meal!
The King again asked for news of his family, and a reply not
forthcoming, he entreated that he might have some books given him to
drive away the hours.
The Queen had passed the night in a series of fainting-fits; but,
even at that pass, that far higher spirit than the King’s, which
had begotten her so much of the popular hate, still supported her.
The King, though weeping, could eat half the morsel of bread—she
resolutely refused to touch food.
This determination startled the municipals. They were answerable to
the Convention for the prisoners. What if the Queen should starve
herself to death?
“Well, they shall dine together to-day,” said a municipal officer;
“and to-morrow the Commune must decide.”
The Queen, holding her children in her arms, flung herself upon her
knees, and began rapidly praying—so also did Elizabeth.
“I believe,” said the brutal Simon, “that these confounded women are
even making _me_ weep! Bah!” he added, turning to the Queen; “you did
not let tears fall when you caused the people to be assassinated, on
the 10th of August!”
“I never harmed a human being,” said the Queen.
The Commune decreed that the family should take their meals together.
The members knew somewhat of Marie Antoinette’s determination, and
they found that, if separated from her husband, she really would die
from inanition, it has to be recorded that the reunion of the King
and Queen, during the last four months of their lives, was due, not
to the pity, but the fear, of their gaolers.
But they only met at meals, and then they were compelled to speak
French only, and in a loud voice. The children were never again
allowed play about their father. This family was killed by inches.
Their hearts were dead before the knife of the guillotine mercifully
released them.
Cléry took pity upon them, and, at the risk of his own liberty and
life, forwarded, by his wife, who was allowed to come and see him
once a week, a line of farewell to this or that friend, from the King
and Queen. These adieux, some of which still exist, are written with
the stump of a pencil, upon the margins of printed pages, and which
were torn from books.
The King’s cell was, in a few days, set in something like order; but,
with a refinement of cruelty beyond description, the walls were hung
with a paper representing the interior life of prisons.
Now quite desolate, this is how the King spent his time. He rose at
daybreak, and, kneeling, prayed for a long time. Then, the light
quickening, he went to the window, and read the psalms for the day.
After this, the King read what books he could obtain—he read many
scores during his captivity—and this reading appeared entirely to
occupy his mind. At nine, the family met, when he kissed them all on
the forehead. After breakfast, he taught his son in various branches
of knowledge. The Dauphin, precocious in misery, had by this time
tested the dispositions of most of the sentinels; and when one he
knew to be less brutal than the majority mounted guard, the poor
child ran with the news to his mother, and he was happy for the day.
At two, the family again met, and dined. But the King dared not give
way to the fine appetite which never deserted him at any period of
his life, for he knew not only that the quantity of food he ate
was recorded, and the amount spread over Paris, but that the Queen
herself was exceedingly desirous that this weak point in the King’s
prison-life should not give cause to enable it to be said that the
King’s appetite in prison was so great that necessarily he must be
hardened and callous to a degree.
After dinner, the King and Queen were allowed to remain for a brief
time together—nay, they were allowed a pack of cards and a set of
chessmen; but they were forbidden to speak in a low tone to each
other, and a sentinel always kept the unhappy couple within view.
At four, the King generally fell asleep, when the family remained
religiously silent.
At six, the lessons were re-commenced with the Dauphin, and these
went on until supper-time, when the Queen herself undressed the
Dauphin, who said, in a low tone, the following prayer: “Almighty
God, who has created and redeemed me, I love you. Watch the days of
my father and my family, and save us from our enemies, and give my
mamma, and my aunt, and sister strength to bear all their trouble.”
The Dauphin put to bed, the Queen read aloud to the King, her
daughter, and Madame Elizabeth.
At nine, the king was conducted back to his prison, where he read
until midnight, when he went to bed, and slept until daybreak. He,
however, did not retire until he had learnt who was master of the
guard for the following day. If the name was one associated with
kindness, the King’s heart was light, and he fell asleep with utter
serenity.
The prison was very damp, and, after a time, the King fell ill.
Cléry watched him, and himself fell ill as Louis became convalescent.
This valet, long after all was over, recounted some beautiful
particulars of this illness.
The Dauphin would nurse him, and passed day after day in the man’s
sick-room; while the King himself would often come in the night,
bare-footed, and merely in his night-dress, to see how the valet was
progressing, or to give him medicine.
It being ordered that more bolts should be placed upon the doors of
the tower in which the King was imprisoned, the mason employed to
sink the holes in the stone-work into which the bolts were to run,
going to a meal, and leaving his work tools upon the ground, the King
took up a chisel, and began laboring at the means taken to strengthen
his prison. The mason recognised the King at this labor.
“Ah,” said he “when you leave this place, you will be able to say you
worked at your own prison.”
“And how shall I leave it?” asked the King, who suddenly drew his son
towards him, and retired to his cell, where he paced up and down a
long while.
The watch was intense. Every loaf of bread sent to the royal table
was searched and broken, the fruit—the very kernel of a peach, upon
one occasion split to find a letter.
A deputation arriving, asked the King whether he lacked anything.
“Yes,” he said; “my wife and family want clothes—you see we are in
rags.”
Meanwhile, the King’s cousin, the Duke of Orleans, who had become a
Republican under the name of Citizen Philip Equality, uttered no word
in favor of his royal cousin languishing in the Temple.
Another misfortune now fell upon the King. It will be remembered
how fond the King was of lock-making. His master in the art, one
Gamain, had loved the King dearly, but he turned upon the fallen
monarch. It appears that prior to quitting the Tuileries, the King,
being desirous of hiding certain treasures, and especially certain
papers received from abroad, relative to the schemes in progress for
helping the King by the invasion of France, he had worked with this
blacksmith at the formation of a hiding-place in the walls of the
palace for the iron box, which contained these papers and valuables.
After the arrest of the King, Gamain fell ill of a slow consuming
illness, probably low fever, when gradually he convinced himself
that a certain glass of water the King had himself handed the
locksmith, while they were both putting the finishing strokes to
the hiding-place, was poisoned, and that the King’s motive was a
conviction that the secret of these State papers could only be safe
through his, the blacksmith’s, death. This man must surely have been
overpowered by delirium when such a conviction took possession of
him. His illness continuing, the thought of revenge took possession
of him; and finally, he denounced the whole affair to the Convention.
This act did more to send the King to the scaffold than any other
process executed against Louis XVI. In the first place, the theory
of the poison was at once accepted, and it appeared necessarily
very feasible to a multitude ignorant of the question of poisons;
and, in the second, no proof could be brought against Louis of
conspiring with a foreign Power to invade France; an act which was
treason—therefore one which, proved, called for the penalty of death.
Gamain led the way to the spot where lay concealed the hidden
treasure, and upon papers found in that box Louis XVI was put upon
his trial.
The King became accustomed to captivity—found it almost rest—rest
which was disturbed only on December 11 (1792), when the noise of
an approaching procession drew the attention of the royal family to
their windows.
The King learnt that he was to be put upon his trial. Two hours
afterwards, he was on his way to the Convention.
To him, the city appeared as though besieged. Every soldier around
the royal carriage had had served out to him sixteen cartridges.
The King looked wretched. His razors had been taken from him, and his
hair was rough and scrubby about his face. He had grown thin, and his
clothes hung miserably about him. But he was quite unmoved.
He took his seat quietly before the Convention.
“Citizens,” cried the President, “Louis Capet is at the bar. You are
about to give a lesson to kings.”
The accusation was then read. It accused him of high treason in
calling upon the foreigner to enter France.
He listened quite unmovedly until he was accused of “shedding the
blood of the people.” He raised his eyes to heaven. It was clear he
had not anticipated being called a sanguinary prince.
At the close of the first day’s examination, the King’s fatal
appetite failed him, and he refused an offer to obtain refreshments;
but almost immediately afterwards, seeing a soldier gnawing a piece
of bread, he asked for a part, and ate it with relish.
Upon the return-ride to the Temple, he counted the number of streets.
It was the King’s sister, Elizabeth—a veritable angel,—who foresaw
what was to happen.
“Was the Queen mentioned in the indictment?” she asked.
“No,” replied the King.
“Thank heaven!” said the good Princess; “for if the Queen were taken,
who, then, should look after these children?”
These very words foretell what the Princess foresaw—that if the
Queen’s blood was demanded, her own would follow.
CHAPTER LI.
THE KING’S TRIAL PROCEEDED WITH.
The King had scarcely quitted the Convention upon the occasion of
his first appearance there, than he was accorded the privilege of
even the commonest prisoner on his trial—that of choosing two counsel
for his defence. The King chose two—one named Trouchet; the other,
Target. The former willingly accepted the office; the second dreaded
to appear as the accomplice of the King; and wrote a cowardly letter,
saying, to defend Louis Capet would be to outrage his own principles.
But this precaution, so far from saving him, marked him out to the
terrorists as a man who was a coward, and, in his turn, he was
drafted to the scaffold, undefended and unlamented.
An old man, and a great one, of a family notorious for their wisdom
and their justice—one Malsherbes, aged seventy-four, and who had
served twice as a Minister during Louis XVI’s reign—took the position
offered to the wretched man, Target, and refused by him.
Indeed, he asked for it. The act is well worth admiration. At
seventy-four, when most men are weary of life, this good man asked
for a position which he knew was one which might involve the
forfeiture of his own existence. Said he, “I was twice summoned to
the council of him who was my master at a time when everybody was
ambitious of the post, and I owe him this service now that this
office is, in the eyes of most persons, one of danger; and had I the
means of acquainting him with my wishes, I should not seek another
mode of striving to serve him” (he was speaking to the President of
the Convention); “but I think, seeing the position you hold, that you
can most safely convey to Louis XVI my desire to serve him.”
The Convention, violent as were its members, reverenced this devotion
of friendship, and honest Malsherbes was appointed to the task of
defending the fallen King.
“Malsherbes,” said a friend to him, as he was leaving the Convention,
“you are the friend of Louis XVI; how can you bring him papers in
which he will read the expressions of the wrath of the people against
him?”
“The King is not like other men,” returned M. de Malsherbes. “He
possesses a great mind, and such faith as raises him above all
things.”
“You are an honest man,” replied the friend. “But if you were not,
what is to prevent you from bringing him poison, as a weapon, or
advising him to commit suicide?”
Malsherbes hesitated for a moment, and then he replied, “If the
King were of the religion of the philosophers—were he a Cato or a
Brutus—he might kill himself. But he is pious—he is a Christian—he
knows that religion forbids him to lay violent hands upon himself,
and he will not commit suicide.”
Malsherbes went daily after this to see the King, to commune with him
upon the defence which was to be set up.
But of what avail was any defence? The question was not whether or
not the King was guilty, but whether or not his death would be of
advantage to the establishment of the republic.
During these final days of his life, the King was entirely deprived
of the consolation of seeing his family. He was now kept completely
isolated. However, by the mercy of Cléry, his servant, on the one
hand, and that of Turgy, the Queen’s attendant, on the other, the
desolate couple communicated. A few words were written on a morsel of
thin paper, which, being folded, a needle was run through it, and it
was in this condition concealed in a hank of sewing-thread, which was
put in the Queen’s work-box by Turgy, who placed the thread, and its
answering line, in Cléry’s way, who conveyed it to a place where the
King would look for it.
Louis XVI never had any doubt that he would be executed. On the
other hand, he does not appear, up to the time of his trial, to have
assumed for one moment that the Queen would suffer.
Before his sentence was pronounced, he made his will. It is a long
document. Here are some of the chief lines in this testament:—“I,
Louis XVI of that name, and King of France, confined for four months
in the Tower of the Temple, at Paris, by those who were my subjects,
and deprived during eleven days of all communication with even my
family, and, moreover, implicated in a trial, the outcome of which
no man can with certainty foresee—for who can measure the passions
of men?—having no one, save God, as a witness of my thoughts, or to
whom I can address myself, do here declare, in His presence, this my
last will and testament. I bequeath my soul to God, my creator, and
pray that, in all his mercy he will accept it. I die in the faith
of the Church, and bow to its laws. I pray the good Lord to forgive
me as I have forgiven. I have striven hard to remember some of my
sins, and to abominate them. I bow before God. I beg all that I have
accidentally injured—for by my will I never hurt human being—to
forgive me the harm they may believe I have caused them.
“I pray all men of charity to add their prayers to mine. I pardon,
from the bottom of my heart, all those who are my enemies, without
that I have given them cause to be other than my friends; and I ask
God to pardon them also, for they know not what they do. I also
pray pardon for those whose zeal in my cause has done me so much
harm. I recommend to God my wife and children, my sister, my aunts
and brothers, and all those belonging to me through blood, or by
any other way. I pray heaven to look pityingly upon my wife, and
children, and sister, all of whom have too long suffered with me, and
to strengthen them if they lose me, so long as they shall remain in
this world. To my wife I recommend my children, whom she has never
ceased to love; and I pray my wife to teach her children to look upon
the pomps and vanities of this world—if they should be so unfortunate
as to suffer them—only as dangerous and vanished possessions, and to
turn their thoughts to eternity. And I pray my sister to be gentle as
ever to my children, should they have the misfortune to lose her.”
This is the first time, in sooth, the King betrays the least
intimation of his fears that his blood will not suffice to appease
the national rage. And even here it may be doubted whether Louis does
not rather refer to natural than violent death, for the Princess
Elizabeth was younger than the Queen. It will be seen that, even at
this pass, and solemn moment, the King has not the least thought
that the Princess herself will be despatched below the knife of the
guillotine.
The King’s will continued:—
“I pray my wife to pardon me all she has suffered, and will suffer,
on my account, and all the sorrow I may have caused her in my life,
as she may be certain I forgive her if she can possibly suppose that
she has ever caused me a grief.
“I pray my children, after their love to God, which is above all, to
love one another, and to live in peace; to be grateful and obedient
to their mother; and in memory of me, I pray them to look upon my
sister as their second mother.
“I pray my son, should he be so luckless as to become King, to forget
the troubles I shall have passed through, and to forgive the people,
who know not what they do, that which they will accomplish. Let him
not forget that he was born for the happiness of his subjects; that
he can only reign safely by upholding the laws; and that he can
only do this while his power lasts. Once let him lose power, and he
becomes more injurious than ever he was useful; and, above all, let
him remember the load of debt I owe to the children of the men who
have already fallen in defending my cause.”
[These words are obviously the result of Louis’s study of the history
of England, of the stigma that rests upon the memory of Charles II,
through persistently ignoring the just claims of the children of the
men who had died in the cause of his beheaded father, Charles I.]
The King concludes his will by recommending Cléry to the Convention,
and asking that the sword, purse, jewels, and other ornaments taken
from him may be given to that person after the writer shall be dead.
He signed the will “LOUIS,” as though he still reigned.
This will is sublime in its simplicity; its Christianity, pity,
regret, and massive setting aside of his life as passed away, are
all very beautiful points; while the belief that his death would
compensate all, and that the country would not visit his faults upon
the heads of his family, shows still an amount of faith in his people
which is truly touching.
Upon the defence being read, the King found it opened with an appeal
to the people, and a description of the wretched condition of the
royal family. The two counsel and the King, who were the only people
who heard this defence read, and which had been put into form by the
reader, Desèze, were all moved at the beauty of the language.
But the King was inflexible.
“All that must be struck out,” he said.
And he insisted—for was he not a dying man? The wishes of the dying
are obeyed.
After the reading of the defence, the King, being left alone with
Malsherbes, he was tormented by the thought that he could not
compensate his counsel for their labors.
“Desèze and Trouchet,” he said, “owe me nothing. They gave me their
time, exertions, and, perhaps, their lives, and I cannot pay them.
Even if I leave a legacy, it will not be paid. Again, what could pay
such work as theirs?”
“Sire, you have the power of repaying them.”
“How?”
“Take them, for one mere moment, to your heart.”
So, next day, when the two gentlemen came, he held open his arms, and
pressed these brave men, one after the other, to his heart.
This was all that he had to bestow—a royal accolade, the peaceful
kiss of a dying man.
At this second examination, they gave the King a suit of clothing,
in which he looked at worst passable. But another shape of indignity
was put upon him: he was kept waiting in a cold waiting-room during a
whole hour.
The King was advised not to shave, that the savagery of his gaolers
in even depriving him of so common a necessary as a razor should move
his judges. But the King refused to avail himself of this theatrical
effect. He was rather fitted to fall with dignity into the repose of
death, than to war, fight, battle for life.
Louis XVI forgave the men who were to condemn him before they tried
him; but his very pardon became his most perfect revenge in the eyes
of posterity.
The King’s counsel spoke logically, but with no power of words.
Having finished, Louis XVI, who had followed his advocate as though
rather interested for this gentleman than for himself, rose and
uttered these words:—
“You have now heard the grounds of my defence, and I shall not repeat
them. In speaking to you for the first, and perhaps the last, time,
I declare that I can accuse myself of nothing; that my advocate has
spoken the truth, and nothing but the truth. I never feared that
all I did should be made public, but I grieve that you accuse me of
spilling the blood of the people. And that the misfortunes of the
10th of August are attributed to me. I had thought that the numerous
evidences of love for my people which I have shown would have placed
me above such an accusation. This is not the case, and I must bear
with what has happened. I declare that I exposed my life to save the
shedding of one drop of the blood of my people.”
He turned, and left the chamber.
“Let him be judged!” cried Bazere.
“’Tis time the nation learns if she is right in wishing to be free,
and if this is a crime!”
“I ask,” cried Languinais, “that the sentence be declared by a ballot
of all France!”
“To prison with Languinais!” cried many voices.
“You are too openly a Royalist,” cried Thuriot.
“Why,” cried another, “he wills to try us, and make Louis himself
judge.”
“And I say,” replied Languinais, fearlessly, “that you constitute
yourselves accusers, judges, jury, and executioners. Let the people
declare themselves! Let there be liberty of speech, to declare
whether the King shall live or die.”
“Down with him!” cried a voice.
“You shall hear me,” cried Languinais.
“Put him upon his trial! place him in the dock, and let him instantly
be tried!”
“To prison with him!”
Silence was at last restored; but when Languinais sat down, he knew
he was a condemned man—he knew nothing could save him.
Meanwhile, in an ante-chamber, where the murmurs of his judges were
audible, the King’s counsel were endeavoring to cheer him with a
little hope. The people had demonstrated with somewhat of kindly
feeling in favor of the King at various theatres.
On his return to the Temple, the King having nothing of value with
which he could partially repay his counsel, took off his laced cravat
and gave it to Desèze.
On the 1st of January, after the French fashion of wishing friends
a happy new year, Cléry approached his master’s bed and offered him
best wishes for the continuance of his life.
The King put his hands together and prayed, for he remembered that
this was the day in the year when his thousand courtiers flocked to
his palace to congratulate him.
Rising, he sent to ask if his daughter was better (for the Princess
was ill), and to wish the Queen _a happy new year_.
From the first to the 16th of January, he was kept immured in the
great tower of the Temple, perfectly isolated. No one was allowed to
see him, not even one of his family. The fallen King passed his time
reading the history of England, especially the volumes of the life
and execution of Charles I—history which appeared to fascinate him.
Meanwhile, the members of the Convention were daily disputing the
question of the King’s life or death.
St. Just now rose to the surface. Unpityingly he cried, “If the
King is innocent, the people are guilty. You have declared martial
law against the tyrants of the whole world, and spare your own. The
Revolution only begins where the tyrant ends.”
Another cried, “If with this, my hand, I alone could strangle all
tyrants, I would not hesitate to rid the world of them.”
But the rising party in the house lived by favor of the eager
revolutionists, whom they dared not oppose. With them it was
necessary that the King should die.
Another, upon another day, cried, “We have lost three hours this day
talking of a thing they call a King. Are we, then, revolutionists?
No; we are vile slaves.”
Camille Desmoulins stuttered, “Let him be killed, with this word on
his brow—‘Traitor!’ and this on his back—‘King!’”
Another cried, “Henceforth, let murderers and thieves be buried in
the royal vaults!”
At length the Convention agreed to the plan of every member of the
Convention voting upon these three questions:—
1. Is Louis guilty?
2. Shall the decision of the Convention be submitted to the
ratification of the people.
3. What shall be the sentence?
To the first question, nearly seven hundred as against about a dozen,
voted “Yes.”
On the second, two hundred and eighty voices voted for the appeal to
the people; four hundred and twenty-three against it.
It was now (January 16) that Danton first betrayed his insatiable
thirst for blood.
“I thought,” cried he, “we were assembled for other purposes than
those of the drama.”
“’Tis a question of liberty!” cried several voices.
“Question of liberty?” cried Danton. “’Tis a question of a
comedy—that taking off the head of a tyrant with the axe of a King!
I demand that we do not separate before we have pronounced sentence
upon Louis! His accomplices have fallen without delay, therefore let
him fall at once!”
Everything declared in favor of Louis’s death by this same January
16. On this day itself, a poor fellow named Louvain, who had been one
at the taking of the Bastille, venturing to say that the republic
ought to be established without the death of Louis XVI, a friend and
companion near him plunged his sword into his breast.
In the evening, a book-pedlar, suspected of royalism, leaving a
public reading-room, was accused by the people of distributing
pamphlets in favor of the King’s cause. He was assassinated with
thirty dagger-thrusts.
Upon this day the soldiery swept over Paris, brandishing their
swords, singing patriotic songs, and looking eagerly for the least
signs of opponents.
In a certain church in Paris, the hearts of passed-away kings were
kept in silver vases. These were seized and broken open, and the
contents cast into the common sewer.
At the Hall of the Convention a fearful scene was progressing—the
voting upon the sentence. It is night-time, and the hurriedly raised
black hangings suggest more an execution than a place of justice. The
Convention is held in an old monastery—dark, drear, and wretched. A
few scattered lanterns make the darkness visible, and throw a pale
light upon the faces of passers-by. At the two principal entrances
are cannon, the attendant artillerymen with the continuously lighted
fuse in hand. The cannon is there rather to be turned upon the
members of the Convention than to intimidate the people.
“_His death—or thine!_”
These were the words each Conventionist heard as he passed into the
Hall—words uttered in whispers, but which shook the hearers as though
they were thunder.
Persons who knew the various members were present, who received them
and commented upon their opinions. As Danton, Marat, Robespierre
and Camille Desmoulins passed, the ranks showed all the signs of
respect. Others were threatened. Languinais passed through a forest
of thrusting pikes to reach the voting table.
The Hall itself was very dark, the benches being filled with young
and beautiful women of the people class. Before them were a number of
butchers, reeking from their slaughter-houses.
Fifteen hours had the deputies sat—few remained. Of those present,
some were in little groups—others had fallen asleep.
The first votes left everything in uncertainty. _Death_ and _Exile_
were voted alternately.
Vergniaud, the leader of the Girondists, who had sworn to save the
King’s life, whose vote would control that of all the Girondists,
voted “_Death!_”
The King was doomed, because the Jacobins were all certain to vote
“Death” to a man.
Robespierre started, and Danton said, in a low, scoffing voice,
“These are your orators!”
The last man but one called to vote was the King’s cousin, the Duc
d’Orleans, Philip Equality. It was thought the ties of nature and of
blood would compel him to vote for exile.
He said these words:—
“My thoughts being fixed wholly upon duty, convinced that whoever
shall now or hereafter attempt to establish monarchy in this land is
worthy death—I vote _death_!”
This man, this monster to his own blood, had in early youth been so
abject a coward, that, during a naval engagement between the French
and English, he had gone down into the cock-pit, whence no one could
induce him to remove until the action was over. The cowardice of his
youth was well supplemented by his voting the King’s death.
Even Robespierre condemned him. Returning to Duplay’s house in the
evening, he said, “The miserable man! He was expected to listen to
the pleadings of his own heart, and vote exile; but he would not, or
dared not. The nation despises him henceforth!”
The monstrous act did not save him from the Reign of Terror. He died
on the scaffold—the most guilty wretch who there ended life.
Followed the man Orleans, a deputy, lying on a hand-bed. He was
dying, and he voted _death_!
A herald arrived from the King of Spain, interceding for the King’s
life.
Danton rose to speak, without the Speaker’s permission.
“Thou art not yet King, Danton!” cried a voice.
“I am astounded at Spain’s insolence!” cried Danton. “I desire that
war against Spain be immediately declared!”
The intercession damaged, rather than benefited, the royal cause.
The scrutiny of the votes now commenced.
Three hundred and thirty-four voted for exile or imprisonment.
Three hundred and eighty-seven voted for death. Thus _death_ was in
a majority of fifty-three; but, by subtracting from this number the
forty-six voices which had also voted a suspension of the execution
of death, the majority in favor of _immediate death_ was _seven_!
The Girondists, who did not wish for the King’s death, had voted his
execution, and thereby favored their enemies, the Jacobins, whose
thirst for death was unquenchable.
On the morning of the 19th January, Louis, who had been by this time
restored to his family, saw Malsherbes approaching him. The old man
fell on his knees.
“I see,” said the King; “Death!”
CHAPTER LII.
NEAR THE BLOCK.
The King, learning that he was to die at once, became a man almost
heroic.
With calm curiosity, and as though making inquiries concerning the
affairs of another man, and not of his own, he learnt the particulars
of the voting; and he made special inquiries concerning the votes of
various members of the Convention.
“Pétion and Manuel,” he said,—“I am sure they did not vote my death?”
No answer returned.
“And my cousin, the Duc d’Orleans,—how voted he?”
Malsherbes bowed his head.
The King now exhibited the first signs of pain—of agony.
“That vote affects me more than all the rest.”
This was as the words of Cæsar, falling, “And _you_, too, Brutus?”
Here a posse of authorities arrived, to announce his sentence to the
King, with all the pomp and display of circumstance.
The King stood up, his head erect, his eyes upon his judges, and
he listened to his fate—_death within twenty-four hours_—with the
intrepidity of a brave man. One look towards heaven, as he heard the
words which curtailed his life, and then he was once more facing his
enemies.
The communication read, the King advanced, and, taking it, put the
document very calmly into a little portfolio.
“Sir,” he said to the officiating minister of the Convention and
speaking half royally, half supplicatingly, “I request you to deliver
this letter to the Convention.”
The secretary hesitated to take the paper.
“I will read it to you,” said the King; and he commenced. “I demand
from the Convention three days, in which to prepare my soul for God,
I require freely to see the priest, whom I am about to name, and
that he be protected while extending to me the charity of his holy
office. I demand to be freed from the shameful watchfulness which has
surrounded me now for many days past. I ask, during these my last
moments, leave to see my family when I will, and without witnesses.
And I pray most earnestly that the Convention will at once take into
consideration the fate of my family; and that they may, after my
death, at once be allowed to go whither they will. I recommend to
the love of the nation all persons who in any way have claims on me.
These are, many of them, old men, and women, and children. Many of
them must be in want.”
These words show that even at this point the King had not the least
thought of the popular vengeance going beyond himself, and falling
on the Queen. He cannot comprehend that they will kill women and
children—his faith in loyalty and manhood is too strong to admit of
any such suspicion in his breast. The faults of Louis, those rather
of apathy than action, were many; but he was a brave and loyal
gentleman, who certainly could not comprehend cowardice.
The name of the minister for whose holy office the King asked,
and which was written upon the separate piece of paper, was Abbé
Edgeworth de Fermont—a gentleman descended from a good Irish family.
The secretary took the two papers; whereupon the King bowed, as
though dismissing his ministers at Court, thereby intimating his
desire to be left alone.
The minister retired.
When they were gone, the King walked up and down his prison with a
firm, steady step. Suddenly he looked up—his fatal appetite, that
scourge of the Bourbons, was upon him—and asked for his dinner.
It was served without a knife—a spoon replacing that utensil. He
was far more indignant at these precautions than at hearing his
death-warrant read.
“Do they think me such a coward,” he cried, “as to deprive my
enemies of my life? Do they think if a knife is given me to feed
with, I shall save the guillotine the trouble of destroying me? Poor
creatures! I am accused of public crimes—I have committed no crimes;
and, therefore, why should I so much fear death as to anticipate its
terrors. I die innocent, and therefore, fearlessly. I would that my
blood might atone for France, and that thereby the troubles I foresee
coming be averted.”
At six o’clock, Garat, the reader of the sentence, and Santerre, had
an interview with the King, to bring the answer of the Convention to
his commands.
The Convention had decided that no farther time should be given
to the King. A few members had shown some sentiment of mercy. The
reply was the exhibition of half a dozen sabres on the part of the
fiercer deputies, who declared that if these men who pleaded for the
concession of the King’s request were not silent living, they should
be mute dead.
These courageous men, however, fought the good fight of pity through
five hours.
A majority of thirty-four refused all delay.
One man, Kersaint, protested with a reckless nobleness of courage,
which has placed him in the rank of great heroes.
He gave in this written protest:—
“CITIZENS,—
“It is impossible for me any longer to support the disgrace of
sitting in the Convention with bloodthirsty men, when their
opinion, aided by terror, prevails over that of good men. If the
love of my country has forced me to endure the misfortune of being
one in a body of men amongst whom there is a section who applaud
the murders of September, I will at least defend my memory from
the charge of having been their accomplice. I have but the present
moment in which to do this act; to-morrow it will be too late.”
The Convention was angered, not confounded, by this language. The
Minister of Justice was charged to inform the Citizen Louis that
he could see the priest whom he had named, and that he could see
his family without any interference by his gaolers,—but that on the
morrow he must die.
The King accepted the decision without a murmur; for he did not so
much battle for those days’ longer life, as ask for a few hours’
pause between life and eternity.
He asked Malsherbes to seek the priest.
“’Tis a strange request to make to one of the school of
philosophers,” he said, with a smile; “but I have always preserved
my faith as a curb on my power as a King. As a consolation in mine
adversity, I have proved it in the depths of my prison; and if ever
you should be sentenced to a death similar to mine, I trust you may
find the same solace in your last moments.”
The Abbé Edgeworth and the ex-King were old and fast friends. The
priest did not hesitate a moment, and at once hastened to the prison,
albeit he knew that the probability was that he would never be free
again.
Abbot Edgeworth was taken from his obscure lodging, in the first
place, to the Convention, where many of the members made a
demonstration in admiration of his courage; for, by this time, to be
a priest was to be in danger of death.
With the fall of the King’s head, the utter Reign of Terror was to
commence.
Garat, while in his carriage, conveying the Abbot to the Temple,
broke out into admiration of the King.
“Great heavens!” he cried, “with what a terrible mission am I not
charged! What a man is this Louis XVI—what resignation he shows, and
what courage! No mere human strength could give such force; in this
there is something of the supernatural.”
The priest remained silent; he hesitated to betray himself.
Not a word more was said up to the moment when the carriage stopped
at the Temple.
The Abbé remarked that the first room through which they passed was
filled with armed men. Thence they passed to a larger apartment,
which the Abbé saw had been a chapel; but the signs of religion had
been swept away—the altar was broken in pieces.
Here the Abbé was searched for weapons by a number of rough men,
while the minister passed up into the King’s cell.
When the Abbé followed him, the old man fell at the King’s feet, and
burst into tears, with which the King mingled his own.
“Pardon me,” said Louis, raising him, “this is indeed weakness! I
have so long lived amongst my enemies, that I have grown to think
little of their hatred, and my heart has grown hard and callous. But
the sight of an old friend restores to me that tenderness which I
thought was long since dead, and I weep in spite of my will to be
unmoved.”
Then, taking the priest by the hand, he drew him into the little
turret which served him for a studio. In this room, all that was to
be found consisted of a couple of chairs, a small earthenware stove,
a few books, and an ivory crucifix.
“I have,” said he to the Abbé, “arrived at that moment in my life
when I must earnestly seek to make my peace with heaven, so that
I may humbly hope to pass from a weary life to one of peace and
quietude.”
With these words, he produced his will, and read it over twice to the
Abbé, electing him as his judge in this final act of life. He feared
that, in the very act of pardoning his enemies, he might accuse them,
and he was specially desirous that any appearance of this nature
should be avoided.
His voice only faltered when he spoke of the Queen, his sister, and
his children. He lived now only in the love he had for his family;
apart from them, he had resigned all thoughts of life.
A calm conversation ensued. The King inquired after many old friends;
speaking, not with the air of a man who is vanishing into death, but
with the appearance of a man who, after absence, asks eagerly for
those he loved and left behind.
Hour after hour passed away, and still the Abbé waited for the King
to give an intimation that he wished to pray with the minister.
At seven, he was to have his last interview with his family; and as
this moment approached, he appeared to dread it far more than the
thought of the scaffold.
He was unwilling that so great an agony as this parting must
necessarily be, should trouble the calmness of his death, which,
obviously, he looked upon in the light of a sacrifice.
The Queen and princesses had the news by this time, for the street
criers bawled the fact of the next day’s execution of the King under
the very windows of the Temple tower. All hope was dead; and the only
sentiment which swayed them was this: would the King be prevented
from taking a last good-bye—would he be prevented from kissing them,
and blessing them, before he went forth to die?
One last word—one last kiss!—this was now the boundary of the
wishes of the once brilliant Marie Antoinette, one of the proudest
princesses, and, as a wife, one of the greatest martyrs, the world
has yet seen.
At last the members of his family were told that they were to see the
King prior to his execution. And this was their joy in the midst of a
desolation from which their only relief was death itself.
The poor creatures prepared for this interview hours before it could
take place. They asked incessantly of their gaoler if it was time for
the King’s arrival, and bore patiently with the rough, rude answer
only too frequently bestowed upon them.
The King himself, though apparently more calm, was equally agitated.
He had never experienced but one affection—that for his wife; but
one friendship—his sister’s; but one joy—his children. The cares
of the throne may have hidden much of these qualities, but never
extinguished them; and, in his adversity, they had flowed back in the
shape of a wealth of consolation.
Nevertheless, the King’s calmness, almost callousness, appears
amazing in its contemplation. Re-entering the ordinary room, or cell,
in which he passed his imprisoned days, he began to set in order to
receive the Queen.
“Bring some water, and a glass.”
Cléry pointed to a caraffe standing on the table.
“No,” said the King; “it is iced; and I fear, if the Queen drinks it,
that it may disagree with her.”
The door, at last, was thrown open, and the Queen, leading her son,
threw herself into his arms, and was about to lead him to her chamber.
“No, no,” whispered the King; “I may only see you here.”
Madame Elizabeth followed, leading the Princess Royal.
Cléry closed the door upon the family; and, for the first and
last time since their return to Paris from Varennes, they were
_unwatched_. The King was almost dead, and dead men can do no harm,
even to revolutionary authorities.
The King gently forced his wife to sit on his right, while his sister
he placed on his left; and, as he sat down between them, they put
each an arm about his neck, and laid their heads above the heart
which, in a few hours, was to cease heating. The Dauphin was on his
father’s knee, while the little daughter’s head lay in her father’s
lap.
It is said that for more than half an hour not a word was spoken;
but the sudden bursts of grief, and especially the Queen’s frantic,
terrific screams, were heard not only throughout the prison, but
positively in many of the streets adjacent to the gaol.
Yet nature is very good, and enables us to bear our trials by the
force of physical weakness. But soon, indeed, the miserable family,
their eyes exhausted of tears, were able to talk in low whispers,
to console each other, and to give each other many agonized last
embraces. This dread agony lasted through an hour and a half. The
ex-royal family had been together two hours.
Of those five unhappy people, only the little Princess, aged seven or
eight, lived to tell in after years, what happened at that interview.
They confided to each other what they had thought about during their
separation; repeated promises over and over again to forget and
forgive all their enemies, should either of them ever come to power;
and, finally, sublime prayers, offered by the King, to the effect
that he trusted his death might cause the nation the loss of not one
drop of blood. The directions he gave his son (so soon to follow him
into the grave) were not royal, but, better, they were Christian.
Those who listened—miserable creatures—heard only a low, sweet murmur.
At last the King rose.
The moment had arrived.
The Queen threw herself at the King’s feet, and entreated him to
allow her and her children to remain with him all night. This
request, in mercy, he would not grant; but warded off the request
by gently intimating that he must have some hours’ tranquillity, in
which to gain strength to die fittingly.
He, however, promised his family that they should see him at eight in
the morning.
“Why not at seven?” asked the Queen.
“Very well—at seven,” he replied.
“You promise?” cried the women and children.
He then led them to the door—they uttering louder cries as he did so.
“Adieu, adieu!” he cried, in a voice equally yearning after
passing-away love, and an expression of hope in the future.
The poor little Princess here fell inanimate at her father’s feet.
The attention the Queen now gave the child ameliorated the agony of
that parting.
The King availed himself of the heart-rending event to turn away. He
closed the door, and the agony of royalty was ended.
“Ah!” he cried, entering the turret, where the Abbé Edgeworth was
awaiting him, “what a scene! Alas! why do I love so deeply—why am I
so deeply loved?”
He paused for a few moments; then he added, “But I have done with
to-day—let me prepare for eternity.”
At this point Cléry appeared, and asked the King to take some
refreshment. Louis refused at first; but even at that ghastly pass
his appetite asserted itself, and he ate and drank during five
minutes—only bread and wine; and this he did standing, after the
manner of a traveller hurrying on a journey.
The priest now asked the King if he would like early in the morning
to communicate.
The King turned, and a last look of pleasure shone upon his face.
He was essentially a religious man, but he had despaired of being
permitted to take the communion, for the Convention, amongst other
things, had abolished the theory and practice of the Lord’s Supper.
The Abbé therefore sought the commissaries on duty, and asked for the
necessary articles, without which, according to the Roman Church, the
ceremony of the communion cannot be effected.
The gaol authorities were excessively confused. On the one hand,
they were ashamed to refuse this consolation to a dying man; on the
other, the constitution of the country then held that this belief in
transubstantiation, or the passage of the bread and wine into the
actual body and blood of Christ at their raising, was a superstition.
“And if we give you permission,” cried one of the leading men, “how
do we know you will not cheat the scaffold of his blood by poisoning
him with the holy wafer? It is well known to us that certain kings
have been poisoned in the holy wafer, given to them as the very blood
of the Redeemer.”
“I can set that doubt at rest,” said the Abbé. “You can yourselves
supply me with both bread and wine.”
The hope of “communicating” elevated the dying King almost to
ecstasy. He fell upon his knees, and until far into the night recited
the simple, almost innocent, sins of which he had been guilty. A
very innocent and simple-hearted man, the list could not have been
formidable.
Then he lay down, and fell asleep, as calmly as a little child—as
though that final night was to be succeeded by a long and peaceful
morrow.
CHAPTER LIII.
THE SACRIFICE OF BLOOD.
The Abbé, meanwhile, prayed unceasingly in an outer chamber, and
separated only from the King’s by a wooden partition.
He and Cléry, the recently-appointed but faithful attendant on
the King, heard the condemned man’s breath regular and peaceful,
uninterrupted by cries or restlessness. His heart beat regularly,
with no more fear than is experienced by clockwork which has nearly
run down, and is about to stop.
At five, it was necessary to awaken the King.
“Has it struck five?” he inquired, of Cléry.
“Not yet, by the town clock,” the man replied “but several bells have
sounded the hour.”
“I have slept heartily,” remarked the King; “I suppose because,
yesterday, I was very much fatigued.”
Cléry now lighted the fire, and helped his dying master to dress.
The King “communicated,” the altar being raised in the room in which
he usually sat.
He took the substantiated, or, rather, consecrated, bread, with awful
gravity, but with utter calmness.
While the priest was disrobing, the King retired to the little
turret; and here, being joined by Cléry, the good servant knelt, and
requested the King’s blessing.
Louis XVI raised his hand, and desired him to convey that blessing,
through himself, to all who loved their King, and especially to those
of his gaolers who had shown to the royal family anything like pity
or kindness.
Then, leading the valet to the window, he gave him, so that those
watching through the glass of the doors should not see the act, a
seal, which he had detached from his watch, a small parcel, taken
from his bosom, and the wedding-ring with which, at their royal
marriage, the Queen had pledged her faith to him. This ring he took
from the hand upon which he had worn it since placed there at his
marriage.
“When I am dead,” he said, “you will give this seal to my son, and
this ring to the Queen. Tell her that I give it up with great pain,
and only because I do not will that it should share in the profanity
to which, of course, my body will be subjected. And this little
parcel has in it locks of the hair of all my family. Give it, also,
to my lady. Say to the Queen, and to my most dear children, and to my
sister, that though I promised to see them this morning, I meant to
spare them the grief of another bitter separation. It costs me more
than I can describe, to go without kissing them again!”
Here he wept, for the last time in his life, it being one of the very
few occasions when he was moved to tears.
“I give to you,” he added, in a sweet, low, suppressed voice,—“I give
to you my last farewell, to take to those I love!”
Cléry retired, weeping, though his tears were an evidence against him
which might cost him his life.
A moment passed, and the King, leaving the little room, asked one of
the gaolers for a pair of scissors.
“What for, citizen?”
“I wish the Citizen Cléry to cut off my hair; it is the only legacy I
have to leave my family.”
“’Tis well,” said the gaoler.
And Cléry performed this ghastly office.
Cléry, turning to the commissaires, said, “And now, citizens, I beg
that I may be allowed to accompany the Citizen Louis Capet”—he dared
not call him King; to do so would have terminated his own life—“to
the scaffold. I seek permission to perform this last office, and that
it may not be left to the executioner.”
“Bah! The executioner is good enough for _him_!” cried one of the
more influential commissaires.
The King turned away.
The Abbé, following him some moments afterwards, found the King
calmly warming himself near the stove, and evidently contemplating
his approaching end with a certain calm joy which was to be envied by
very many of those who had condemned him.
“Good heavens!” he cried, “how glad I am that while on the throne,
I maintained my faith in the Eternal! What now would be my
sufferings, if I had not steadfast hope in the world to come! Oh,
yes; above there is a Judge of courage, who cannot be influenced or
threatened—who will judge me honestly, and accord to me that justice
which has been denied me in this world.”
The winter day now broke, and light struggled between the bars and
planks which combined to shut out light from the royal prisoners, one
of whom was now destined soon to be free.
The roll of the drum, on one side or the other far and near,
now was heard; hurried steps passed; the click of arms could be
distinguished; and soon horses, heavily mounted, were heard beating
along the street.
A heavier sound—cannon, and strongly-built tumbrils or wagons were
heard, taking up their position in the court-yard of the prison, and
about its entrance.
The King, true to the last to his marvellous character—which his
friends describe, as one not to be swayed by passion, which his
enemies analyzed to be one of callousness and incapability of
feeling, not only with regard to others, but even for himself—the
King commented on these sounds, not as though they affected him and
his life, but as though they were an agreeable puzzle he was putting
together.
“’Tis probably the National Guard assembling,” he said, in a half
curious voice, to the still praying Abbé, when the first roll of the
drum swept through the cold morning air.
A few moments passed, and the trampling of horses’ hoofs at the foot
of the tower attracted his attention. Then followed the voices of
officers, giving military directions.
“They are come,” he said.
He spoke without impatience or fear, after the manner of a friend
quietly waiting for a friend, and at last hearing the amicable step
upon the stair.
And now the King’s last torture—not his execution, for that was in
mercy extended to him—commenced.
Through two long hours was this poor man tortured by a refinement
of cruelty for which there can be found no extenuation, to which no
parallel can be discovered.
Through these two hours came frequent summonses at the door. Upon
each occasion the King rose, ready. Upon each occasion some poor,
petty excuse was made. He himself (the King) opened the door,
answered the wretch and coward who tortured him, bowed civilly when
he learnt his presence was not required, and closing the door, waited
until a fresh summons beat upon his heart.
Ah, posterity cannot forgive those acts! Long must the question
remain unsettled whether or not Louis XVI was rightfully put to
death. Possibly he but paid the debt his ancestors had incurred.
Millions had died of starvation. Taxes annihilated industry through
generations previous to the uprising of the people. Even salt was
weighted with a tax which caused it to be sold at an enormous
rate—thirty pence a pound. Finally, Louis may have been guilty, as
a man who was false to his oaths to keep the land of France free of
enemies, of calling foreign help to France. It must be felt that
when his throne was sinking from beneath him, other kings, in the
interests of thrones, being desirous of maintaining Louis upon his,
would willingly offer that foreign aid which it is felt Louis had
been more than humanly self-denying in refusing. He fell a sacrifice
to the errors of the two Louises who had preceded him on the
throne—a blood compensation for the waste, luxury, and sensuality of
half a dozen generations of French nobles.
The measure of the people’s misery being full, they rose, and rose
successfully. Their mistake—one which ultimately suffocated all the
good it was intended they should effect—took the shape of success,
intoxicating itself with victory.
Give a lesson to kings not to exceed their duty—yes. All France knew
that the English Revolution, which sent Charles I to the block, had
resulted in a social condition in England which offered an example
for France to follow.
But having once passed upon a man the dignity of approaching death;
having thrown round him the darkness of the coming tomb—to crush his
heart—to humiliate him—to embitter his last moments—to play with his
life as a cat with a poor, palpitating mouse—to try to resuscitate
the desire to live—to seek to change the calmness of resignation back
into the whirlpool of despair—these are not the acts of men, but
demons.
Yet let not these acts be set down to the people. In times of
trouble, all the scum boils to the surface, and it is the surface we
see, not the clarified water below it. Few, very few men completed
the murders of September; seven-eighths of all France knew nothing
about these wholesale murders until they were achieved.
But the miserable attempt to torture the King’s last hour upon earth
failed utterly—he was beyond attack. His soul had already passed away.
At nine o’clock there was a tumultuous noise upon the staircase, and
now there was a summons at the door. It was thrown open.
As far as the King’s eyes could stretch were armed men—all gazing
towards Louis.
Santerre appeared, attended by twelve municipals, and ten gendarmes,
all of whom fell into two lines in the apartment.
The King turned to the little turret door, and with his hand upon it,
looked towards Santerre.
In this final moment all the reserve and imperiousness of a prince
returned to Louis XVI.
“You are come for me,” he said. “Await me—and for a mere moment.”
He paused, closed the door, and knelt at the minister’s feet.
“It is finished,” he said. “Bless me, and let me go.”
A moment, and he rose, came out, placed himself smilingly between the
double row of armed men. In his hand was a paper. It was his will.
Addressing himself to the man who appeared to be the chief of the
squad, he said, “I pray you to give this letter to the Queen.”
The Republicans started, and the act reminded the King of the error
he had committed.
“To my wife,” he said, correcting himself, to please the Republican
ears.
“It’s no affair of mine,” replied the man addressed, and in savage
tones. “I’m not here to carry messages to your wife, but to take you
to the scaffold.”
This unhappy creature, one Jacques Roux, had actually been a priest,
who had thrown off the cassock and joined the revolutionary army.
“True,” said the King, his head falling.
But the name of a man in those ranks was to be made illustrious
amongst pitying and tender-hearted men. The King, looking up, glanced
rapidly along the two lines of faces to find one pitying look.
His eyes rested upon one Gobeau, a man with a frightful name, but
possessed of a far better heart.
“I pray you give this paper to my wife.”
Gobeau hesitated, and looked from the King to his comrades, from his
comrades back to Louis.
“You may read it—if you will. ’Tis but my wishes, which I trust the
Commune may read.”
The man Gobeau asked the consent of his comrades, and then took the
paper.
The morning was very cold, and to complete the resemblance between
the fates of the two beheaded Kings, Charles I of England, and Louis
XVI of France, exactly as Charles’s valet put a cloak round his
master, so that he should not appear to tremble at the scaffold, so
Cléry, knowing nothing of the parallel, put a cloak about his master.
Both kings were beheaded towards the end of January.
“I do not require a cloak,” he said. “Give me my hat.”
As he took it, he shook the faithful Cléry’s hand. Then, turning to
Santerre, and looking him full in the face, he said, “I am ready.”
Santerre and his troop rather followed than escorted him.
The King passed down the staircase slowly, and without any signs of
tremor. Now, it is in descending a staircase that a man, convulsed by
agitation, is almost sure to stumble.
The King did not make one false step.
Reaching the foot of the steps, the King encountered one Mathey.
“Citizen Mathey,” said Louis, “you offended me very cruelly last
night, and I replied angrily. For the sake of this hour, pray pardon
me.”
Mathey, instead of replying, pretended to turn his head away, and not
see the King. However, it is only just to say, in some extenuation
of the brutality of most of those to whom the King addressed himself
during the last hour of his existence, that death was now so quickly
dealt to any man whose words could be twisted into an expression
of even pity for fallen royalty, that it was only at the risk of
exposing life that a man could be humane in an answer to any question
addressed to him by any one of the royal family.
The King was now crossing the court-yard. He had achieved half the
distance before his heart failed him; and, turning yearningly, he
looked towards the tower within which the Queen was confined. A
moment, and his face was towards the people glaring in at the gate.
Once more he looked, as he passed out of the court-yard; then he,
death, and eternity were alone!
A carriage awaited him, an armed man standing each side the door.
One of these men entered the carriage, and took a front seat; the
King followed, and took the place of honor—the right, facing the
horses. The Abbé Edgeworth followed, and sat beside Louis. The second
gendarme now entered, and slammed and fastened the door, and the
carriage was at once started.
Sixty drums lead the way, incessantly sounding, and a mass of armed
men surrounded the victim.
The reign of terror had begun, in truth. A Governmental order had
been issued, forbidding any citizen to show himself at a window;
and the infraction of such an order was, in itself, probably a
condemnation to death. The citizens were also forbidden to cross any
of the streets upon the line of march.
A strange effect was this procession.
The morning was lowering, cold, dead, and damp; and the noisy sixty
drums, purposely used to drown any cry that might be raised, led the
way for a hurried, half-disciplined, half-armed horde of armed men;
in their midst, a carriage, half-filled with two such as those who
formed the escort.
And this procession marched through a double row of steel—of pikes
and bayonets, held by silent men. At distances were squads of the
regulars, armed and prepared as for an action in the field.
A strange sight! Thousands of armed men—soldiers with cannon and
musket, prepared against a numerous foe; a swiftly passing crowd of
men, armed to the teeth, jealously guarding a carriage half-filled
with two such as they themselves were,—all against—what?
Sixty drums beating to drown—utter silence! Two hundred thousand men,
to keep order amongst—space! Armed men—and that was all!
On the line, not a human being to be seen beyond the serried lines
of armed men. Not a woman’s form for the eye to rest on—every window
blind, every street passed, a desert. Paris was a city of the dead.
Even the marketplaces were silent, and not even the voice of a child
was to be heard.
Cannon gaped at every street corner, the artillerymen holding lighted
matches; in a word, on all sides were to be seen evidences of
preparations to meet a formidable enemy—on not one was the shadow of
an enemy to be seen.
The King could scarcely be perceived though the forest of steel in
which he was lost. He wore a brown coat and a white waistcoat. His
hair was raised up already for the executioner’s hands.
So great was the noise created by the drums, that he could not hear
what the Abbé Edgeworth said, or even what he himself said to that
self-devoted gentleman.
Therefore he took the minister’s breviary, and opened it at those
particular psalms which he had learnt in his captivity, suited to
his situation. These he began to recite while the priest prayed
beside him.
It is said the expression of the two men-at-arms were those of
astonishment and admiration.
All these warlike preparations were met by the opposition of seven or
eight opponents.
The procession moved from the Temple up to the boulevards, the line
of which was kept by the procession, until it reached the place of
execution, on that spot which is now the Place de la Concorde. At
that point on the line of march which now lies between the Portes St.
Denis and St. Martin, occurred the one sign of any opposition to the
tragedy which was about to be completed.
There was a sudden stir; and, suddenly, seven or eight young men,
sword in hand, rushed from the Rue Beauregard, dashed forward through
the line of armed men, and even reached the carriage, they crying,
“Help, help, those who would save the King!”
The leader of these frantically-daring young men was one Baron de
Batz, a man of extremely adventurous tendencies. Chiefly by his
means, three thousand young men had combined to effect this diversion
in the King’s favor, and they were to respond to the call to arms led
by Batz.
The three thousand made no reply; the seven or eight devoted men
stood alone in the midst of nearly a quarter of a million of armed
enemies.
But some mercy was shown them, for those about them did not massacre
the youths,—they were all very young. They even escaped into a side
street; but here they were fallen upon by a squad of gendarmes,
rapidly told off for that purpose; and being caught sword-in-hand,
they were shot down, and left where they fell.
CHAPTER LIV.
EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.
As the Place de la Revolution, the place of execution, came in view,
a ray of sunshine fell upon the guillotine—one of those coincidences
which the superstitious and the wonder-loving remember and treasure
up.
This open space was filled with a hundred thousand of the lowest
rabble; soldiers thick about the scaffold; and high above the people
stood a something, the woodwork of which was painted a blood-color.
This was the _guillotine_!
The guillotine had only just been introduced. It had been invented in
Italy, and imported into France by a humane doctor, named Guillotin,
whose name was cruelly taken and applied to the machine, an “e” being
added to make it feminine—for, according to the custom of most men in
most times, a something terrible and merciless is always feminine.
If the women had the naming, perhaps the other gender would as
frequently be applied to things of terror.
The guillotine was essentially a humane invention. Previous to its
introduction, the condemned man knelt down and placed his head on a
block. A headsman then with an axe endeavored to sever the head from
the body. The least swaying on his part, and instead of death, a
wound was the result. Often an executioner, unnerved by the failure
of his first blow, would hack and chop many times before the victim
ceased to show signs of life, and before the head was off the body.
The guillotine exactly fell in with the views of the equallist
Republicans, for they objected to the executioner, because it was
a disgrace to a man to be an executioner. On the other hand, the
guillotine, consisting of a heavy, razor-like knife, which worked in
grooves, and fell upon a neck irrevocably placed below the knife, the
head was separated at a blow, in a moment, and death achieved with
the least possible cruelty.
But if the guillotine was merciful—and of this there can be no
doubt—on the other hand—it may be questioned if so many people would
have been condemned to death during the Reign of Terror if the old
slow mode of decapitation had remained.
By a singular fatality the head of Guillotin himself was taken off by
the very instrument he had introduced from Italy into France.
All the vagabondage of Paris was present at this execution. The
trees bent under the masses of people who had climbed into them.
There was not breathing room, while, by connivance of the most
bloodthirsty of the revolutionary leaders, the spaces immediately
round the scaffold were occupied by the men who had effected the
massacre of September.
These men were there to applaud.
But when the carriage containing the King drew up before the
scaffold, the mob was silent—even the September men, for a little
time, held their peace.
The King perceiving the carriage stop, looked up, and said to the
Abbé, “We have arrived, I think.”
The minister replied by a gesture.
One of the three brothers Sanson, the three executioners of Paris,
opened the door.
The gendarmes got out, whereupon the King, closing the door, and
placing his hand upon the minister, he said authoritatively to those
who were pressing forward, “Gentlemen, I recommend this gentleman to
your care. Be brave enough to save him from insult after I am dead. I
charge you to save him!”
No one replied.
“I charge you to save him!”
One of them, more sinister than the rest, replied.
“Yes, yes,” he said; “be at peace—we will save him, and let us hear
no more about it.”
Louis now stepped from the carriage.
Three executioners’ attendants came forward, and wished to undress
him at the foot of the scaffold.
He waved them back, took off his coat, cravat, and turned down his
shirt.
The executioners again approached him.
“What do you seek to do?” he asked, angrily.
“Bind you!” they said, seizing his hands.
“Bind _me_!” the King cried, all the passion of centuries of petted
and idolized royal blood rising in the veins which were now in a few
moments to be empty. “Never!—I will not permit it. Do your work, but
you shall not bind me—do not even dream of such a thing!”
This man, the descendant of hundreds of kings, could not, even after
recommending his soul to God, uncrown himself. The Convention might
call him a citizen—but he had, as all kings must, lived in the
belief of that half-divinity which is still in some places supposed
to surround a king.
The executioners had their duty to do. Here was a man to be
guillotined. Men who were guillotined had to be bound. Then they must
bind their man.
They again approached.
A veritable struggle was about to commence at the foot of the
scaffold.
The King saved himself from himself in time. He remembered the
dignity of his death, and he looked towards the Abbé.
“Sire,” said the man of religion, “compare yourself to One far
greater than yourself, who was bound with cords, and who will soon
welcome you as a brother.”
The King looked to heaven, appeased, but the royal pride still
lingered.
“Truly, only the Divine example enables me to bear this disgrace.”
It is probable this final demonstration, in his very extremity, of
his superiority to touch from common hands, helped to harden the
nation against the life of the widow. On the other hand, it proved
the first occasion on which he showed the least sign of impatience
with his tormentors.
“Do as you will,” he said. “I will drink the cup to the dregs.”
Supported by the help of the aged minister, he ascended the steps
of the scaffold, and, it must be admitted, with signs of physical
fear—the first he had yet shown. Possibly this condition of body
was chiefly brought about by the actual physical resistance he had
made at the foot of the ladder. But upon coming to the level, all
his natural calmness or courage, whichever it was, came to his aid;
and, stepping quickly forward across the platform without help, he
contemplated the means of his death.
Suddenly, he turned, and faced the people, and used the royal gesture
of his life. It was quite natural—a habit of his life—and testified
to no violent defiance of his position, and of those who placed him
where he stood.
The drummers mechanically obeyed.
“People,” he said, in a voice which was heard afar off, even in the
very confines of the square,—“People, I die innocent of all the
crimes of which I am declared guilty. I forgive those who send me to
death, and I pray God that the blood you are about to shed may not
fall upon France.”
The crowd trembled—murmured.
He was about to speak again, when the officer of the troop gave
orders to the drums to beat and the King’s voice was drowned.
He had said enough. Nothing could add to the majesty of those few
words. The agony was spared him of learning who the man was that gave
the order which drowned his last words. It was the Count d’Oyat, a
natural son of Louis XV; and therefore by blood, if not by marriage,
the King’s uncle—Louis XVI being the grandson of Louis XV.
What a fate! His cousin voted for his death, and the last words he
uttered were drowned by the command of his uncle.
The condemned man turned slowly away. As they fastened him to the
plank, he cast one look upon the praying minister, and the next
moment the plank was sinking forward, carrying down Louis of France,
his face towards the earth.
Another moment—the time for the passage of the heavy blade—and Louis
of France was dead!
CHAPTER LV.
WHAT FOLLOWS.
I saw Louis XVI die.
“Go,” said Robespierre, “see liberty declared, and a King proved to
be no more than a man.”
I stood amongst those at the foot of the scaffold.
I will say no more than this—Louis died bravely, and like a man. And
I think the people were sorry. Of course they had more to regret
before the Reign of Terror was over.
Robespierre changed nothing in his mode of life after he came to
Duplay’s. He drank water, he lived very temperately and frugally, was
always master of himself. By the way, another of Duplay’s daughters
coming home, Maximilian actually fell in love with her, in a grave,
calm way; and it was agreed that, when liberty was completely
obtained, and France was at peace, that they should be married, live
in a cottage, and hide away from the world.
I had frequently been at the Temple during the incarceration of the
King, and often saw various members of the unhappy family. I am
desirous that my hearers should believe that the men who surrounded
the Capets in their imprisonment, were no more good examples of the
revolutionary masses than I am an angel. A few hundred ferocious men
rose to the surface of the Revolution, and disgraced it. At heart,
its adherents sought to make France happy, and the people richer.
But let me return to the course of events.
* * * * *
There is very little known of what the widowed Queen did or said
during the night before the execution, and upon that morning itself,
beyond the fact that she passed from prayer to insensibility
continuously. The entire family seem to have been conscious, from
the first, that the separation with the King, on the eve of the
execution, was final—that his promise to see them in the morning was
a pious fraud.
As the morning progressed, after she knew by the lessening noise of
the drums that he was on the way to execution, her great anxiety
appeared to be to ascertain the exact moment when he died, so that
from praying for him, she might entreat his soul to pray and plead
for her and his children.
The loud cries of “Long Live the Republic,” and the rumbling return
of the cannon, were the first evidences she received that all was
over.
She appears from that time to have passed into a state of
half-unconscious moroseness—a condition which is one of the mercies
of nature, and which only ended in her life.
She knew, she said, that he would die like a man, and that was her
consolation, when, with a cruelty beyond measure, she was refused any
information concerning his last moments.
Cléry, the valet, now, apart from her family, the dearest being to
her in all the world, as the man who had been with the King during
his last days,—Cléry was now a prisoner, and remained one during a
whole month, during which time he had not the faintest approach to
an opportunity to give the Queen the King’s last words, or place in
her keeping the hair and ring with which the King had entrusted him.
About these relics there is a strange bit of tender history.
One Toulan concealed under the most frantic demonstrations of
Republicanism, a sacrificial devotion to the royal family. He feared
these relics would be wilfully destroyed by some drunken, ruthless
hand; and pretending that he would not allow the chance of their
being delivered to the Queen, he insisted on their being placed under
the keeping of the chief officers of the Commune.
The Queen asked very humbly permission to wear mourning for the King,
and this was granted, on condition of extreme parsimony and meanness.
There was a special debate, in order to obtain the Dauphin a few
shirts.
The more merciful men of the Revolution fully expected that the death
of the King would be followed by the liberation of the Queen, her
children, and the Princess Elizabeth. This hope being held out to the
Princess Elizabeth, she carried the grateful news to the Queen, who
heard it, without interest, and returned an answer almost stupid to
this good news. Either she knew that a nation who had not spared her
husband would not spare her, who had always been the least liked of
the two, or she did not care to live. Probably the latter surmise is
the nearer correct.
Her only expression of resolution took place when she was requested
for her health’s sake to walk in the garden of the prison. She
resolutely refused. She said she could not pass the door of the
King’s prison—could not put her feet upon the stairs down which he
had marched to death. It was only at the end of six weeks—at the
close of February—that she consented, for the sake of the children,
who never left her side, to walk on the platform at the top of the
tower. Here, between the battlements of the parapet, she could be
seen from the neighboring houses; and this tending to create pity, it
was ordered that the spaces between the battlements should be filled
up with boards—an order which pleased the Queen, for it shut out from
her sight a city which, to her, appeared a mere charnel-house. This
intended petty cruelty—which was a relief—took place towards the end
of March.
The King had now been dead ten weeks, and Marie Antoinette had yet to
live six cruel months.
Her bodily health was breaking, but she had no knowledge of this
fact. Her heart was dead. She was simply decaying. For whole nights
she would lie awake, never complaining, never showing signs of
weariness.
Her life had passed into _wailing_. She was weary almost of the love
of her children. Upon the face, and in her step, walk, in every
gesture, and at rest, at last, or awake, the woman appeared to be
pleading, “Good Lord, how long shall this endure?”
She was now more closely watched. The Princess Elizabeth, at
peace, become essentially a religious woman, contrived to obtain
intelligence of what was happening. One Huc—once valet to the King
when in prosperity—conveyed messages through the friendly Toulan
into the prison. These messages were put in the pipe of a portable
fireplace, and found by the Princess Elizabeth, who replied in
letters written with sympathetic ink, so that only those who knew how
to treat them could read their contents.
These letters contained minutes of all that was doing in Europe in
the royal cause. Many promising lines thus came to the prison. The
Queen heard them read, said a vacant word or two, and sank back into
her usual condition of partial lethargy.
She only came back to life when she heard the voices of either of her
children. Then she lived. When they were silent, she was dead, though
her heart still beat.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
The remains of Louis XVI were conveyed in a cart to the graveyard,
flung into a hole, and lime cast upon the remains, that the bones
might never be found, in order to be exalted into relics.
Paris was silent—except for the voices of the more excited of the
Revolutionists, who overran the city, announcing the death of the
tyrant, and proclaiming the advent of liberty.
The body of the people did not respond to this enthusiasm—they did
not confound punishment with victory. The body of the King was not
cold before the people began asking themselves whether or not a
righteous act had been committed. The King’s death left this problem
to be discussed by the nation. Many years have elapsed as I write,
and the problem is still discussed—had the people a right to kill
Louis XVI?
The result of the King’s death upon the more moderate Republicans,
and upon those who had agreed to the new constitution, but were
Royalists at heart, were in some cases terrible. To many, this
execution appeared a sacrilege, which must bring down upon the people
who had committed it one of those vengeances in which heaven demands
for the spilt blood of one just man the blood of an entire people.
Men died of grief when they learnt the awful facts, and many more
went mad.
Women cast themselves in panic from housetops, others from the
bridges into the River Seine.
Sisters, wives, and mothers of the Conventionalists, who had
condemned lovers to death, shrank from them as from lepers.
One of the principal judges at the trial, Michael Lepelletier,
was almost immediately stabbed in an eating-house by one Paris, a
hot-headed Royalist, who escaped only for a short time. Tracked,
he shot himself; and upon the body was found a paper bearing these
words:—
“I alone did the deed—let no other man be suspected. I did not
mean to kill the wretch, Lepelletier, but he came in my way. I was
waiting for the parricide D’Orleans, of whom I hoped to rid the
world. All Frenchmen have become cowards.”
Three days after, Lepelletier was publicly buried, after the antique
Greek mode, and thousands were squandered upon this pomp.
Meanwhile the nations were rising against France, although about this
time the Prussians had been worsted by the French on the eastern
frontiers.
In England, the horror produced was great; and one Chauvelin having
returned from London to Paris, declaring to the Convention that the
English masses were ready to rise and massacre the King (George III)
in his palace, the French ambassador at London was ordered to leave
England within twenty-four hours.
The Convention thereupon declared war against Holland and England.
Catharine II, of Russia, revoked the treaty of 1786, by which the
French were more favored in Russia, than other foreigners; and
ordered all the French in Russia to return to France, who would not
swear that they abhorred revolutionary sentiments. This Empress
joined the coalition against France.
The Convention had already declared war against Spain.
And now, England, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Spain were all at war
with France—which was at war with itself.
Even Sweden had declared against the Republic. Not a friendly
national face looked upon France beyond the boundaries.
In mercy to what was now to happen to France, let it be said that,
cast upon her own resources, the armies of other people advancing
upon her by land, and by sea, despairing of help from the United
States, which had not yet recovered the blood spilt in obtaining her
independence, France was panic-stricken at the fear of civil war, and
rashly sought, by the most unpardonable acts, to exterminate this
probability by the extermination of all those who were suspected of
favoring Royalism.
The leader of blood amongst the Conventionists, immediately after the
execution of Louis XVI, took the hideous form of Marat. Dirty, mean,
fetid, disgusting in look and action, he endeared himself to the most
foul amongst the lowest by these attributes. But, like Robespierre,
who was a very fop in appearance and action, he accepted no public
money, and lived most obscurely in three or four garret-like rooms,
most meanly furnished. This man was the idol of the commonest people,
who saluted him almost as though a God: and he must have had some
occult power of attraction, for a woman really beautiful devoted her
life and honor to this creature. Nor was he without the sentiment of
self-sacrifice; for, though dying, though every violent speech he
made, which was always prefaced by the cry “_Blood!_” brought him
nearer to the grave, he never hesitated to exert himself, and quitted
his bed or his bath, in which he passed the greater part of his time,
to go down to the Convention, and denounce men on the most frivolous
pretences.
The moderate party in the Convention—the Girondists—who in theory
desired to save the King, and in practice condemned him to death,
were by this time in danger. They were in the way of the fiercer
party, led by Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, who were to eclipse
both; and these Girondists were already in the hands of their
opponents, condemned to follow the King to the scaffold.
It was in such language as the following that Marat, who gained a
poor living as the editor of a very fierce paper, spoke, in his
_Friend of the People_:
“I pray my readers pardon me to-day if I speak of myself; not
because I am vain, or a fool, or because I wish to serve the
people, and, therefore, must justify myself in their sight; for I
am accused of being a monster, greedy of blood—a tiger, longing for
gore!
“Born with a sensitive heart, carefully nurtured, at twenty-one, I
was pure, and had long since given myself up to knowledge.
“My mother gave much in charity, and all she gave passed through my
hands. At eight, I could not endure cruelty, and the sight of it
enraged me to madness.
“As a child I was weak, and never did I know the joys of childhood.
I was so loved, that I was never punished but once, when eleven,
and then unjustly. I sprang from the window of the room in which I
was confined, and found liberty in the streets, where, even now,
only liberty is to be found.”
He concluded this article:—
“Restored to health, I only thought how I could be useful to the
cause of freedom. And yet they accuse me of having sold myself,—I,
who could amass millions by merely selling my silence,—I, who am in
poverty and want!”
Strange enough, like Robespierre, Marat firmly believed he was an
instrument in the hands of God. “The Revolution,” he would say, “is
the Gospel, and I am its apostle.”
But all the raving in the world could not hide the fact that France
had suddenly become poor. To be rich, was to run the risk of being
accused of being an aristocrat. And as all gold and silver was in the
hands of the rich, and these were flying from France, the land was
actually being drained of specie.
Paper money was issued—a currency which the people mistrusted, as the
people always mistrust the unusual; and the Girondists were popularly
accused of causing the disappearance of the precious metals.
The walls of popular hate were closing round that score of devoted
men.
The aspect of the land was horrible. People feared to go about in
anything but rags, dreading to be supposed rich, and therefore only
fit to die; land remained uncultivated, for its owners had fled; and
the half-destroyed, empty houses of the nobility began falling into
ruins. Not a carriage was to be seen, nor a jewel, nor any sign of
luxury. All was abject, wretched, debased. The bakers’ shops were
almost like prisons (to this day, bakers’ shops in Paris are often
barred); and the only prodigality was that of wine, the many years
store of which flowed in terrible abundance. It was cheaper than
bread, and steeled the heart to pity. Commerce had ceased, and not
a sail beyond that of a French fishing-smack was to be seen in the
French waters.
Marat now advocated the pillage of every store-house in the land,
and the hanging of some of the owners in their own gateways, as an
example to the rest.
And now that which was most feared occurred—civil war. La Vendée, in
the north-west of France—the Brittany of to-day—rose almost to a man,
and defied the republic.
Spain now began to pour her soldiers upon the south, while Austrians
and Prussians were gaining victory after victory in the north and
east.
So north, south, east, and west, enemies’ faces were turned upon
France, while England was preparing to sweep her navy around the
whole of the coasts of the now devoted land.
The Convention commanded that a black flag should float from the
towers of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris.
The theatres were closed.
Only one cry was heard in the streets—“To arms—to arms!”
Danton and Robespierre now quarrelled. One Legendre undertook to
reconcile them, and they met without previous warning. Danton, a
bull-dog in ferocity, and with the bull-dog’s generosity advanced,
and held out his hand. Robespierre, with the silent stealth of the
tiger, which waits and pounces, affected not to see it, ate his
dinner in silence, and went away, after the utterance of a few words,
which were the first that openly indicated his intention of betraying
Danton.
Danton was beginning to repent. His remorse was natural. He had lost
his wife, whose death had been accelerated by terror. Unable to
endure his loneliness, he sought another wife; her parents rejected
him with loathing. But, after a little, they pitied his misery, and
gave their daughter to this strangely compounded man.
Danton now contemplated what was done after Napoleon had reigned
and lived, after Louis XVIII had reigned and died, after Charles
X had been driven from the French throne—the giving of a King to
France, not belonging directly to the hated Bourbons, but to the
younger branch, the Orleanists, the leader of whom, Philip Equality,
had voted Louis XVI’s death. He was never crowned; he died on the
scaffold. His son, Louis Philippe, ultimately became King of France.
Philip Equality refused the proposal.
Meanwhile, the Convention was becoming a mere field of battle. On one
particular night, the two sides clash—a poniard is drawn, a pistol
is clapped to a breast, and murder is nearly done. It is felt that
one party must be swept away, or nothing will be done. The moderate
party, the Girondists, twenty-two in all, are to-night nearer the
scaffold by a long journey than they were in the morning.
Marat is declared a traitor by two hundred and twenty voices, against
ninety-two. Marat defies the vote, throws himself into the arms of
the people, and is borne home in triumph.
The people rise in his favor.
On the 24th of April (the Queen has been waiting death during three
months) Marat is strong enough to appear and defy Parliament. He
commands them to declare him innocent of treason. This defiance is
carried to the thousands of armed men waiting the issue outside the
House of Assembly. A cannon-like roar from the people declare their
will—and he is pronounced innocent.
The people place him on a plank, the throne of the people, and bear
him through the streets, after crowning him with flowers.
“It is you, the people,” he cries, “who crown themselves upon my
head. I am the King of Poverty. May every head, which would rear
itself above the level of the people soon fall, when I cry ‘_Kill!_’”
A few days, and, in his arrogance, he says to his brother
Conventionists, “I hold you as a little water in the palm of this
hand; and as readily as I spill it, so I can spill the blood of all
of you!”
By this time, Philip Equality, for what he had been—a Duke—had become
hated of the people. Strangely enough, he who had been so cowardly as
a youth, now, when his life was threatened, became brave. When he was
arrested, he was perfectly calm; when separated from the elder of his
two sons, he was perfectly resigned. He had turned from his family to
serve the people, and he now wore their chains.
The people now demanded the deaths of all the leaders of the more
moderate Conventionists.
“_Death to the twenty-two!_”
The people had slain a King—therefore they began to demand the lives
of those who sought, as Republicans, to govern the stricken land.
CHAPTER LVII.
WHOLESALE MASSACRE.
The twenty-two deputies were already condemned by the will of the
ensanguined mob.
On the eve of the last day in May (1793), of those twenty-two, only
one, the leader, Vergniaud, slept in his own home. The others feared
an assassination, and sought the aid of friends.
A vote being carried against the moderates, the victors proposed to
walk with the people through the city, which was illuminated. The
Girondists, as a measure of precaution, joined in the procession.
While the procession was progressing, that now organized band, the
Revolutionary Committee, sent to arrest Madame Roland’s husband.
That evening, Roland, who does not show well in this business,
fled into hiding. Madame Roland then determined to go down to the
Convention and upbraid it. So far, the French had not begun to behead
women. Starting from her home, she was surprised to find the city
had been suddenly illuminated. Making her way to the Convention,
she found it closed. And she learnt that the moderate party were
overthrown, and that they would soon be headless.
She returned home, to await her fate. She did not seek to fly.
Roland, poor man, remained in concealment—only, after a time, to be
ashamed of his cowardice, and to commit suicide.
She prepared to send away her daughter to trusted friends, made up
a packet of clothing to take with her to prison, and waited. At
midnight, they came beating at her door, and she had to be awakened;
for no fear of death deprived her of that balm of life—sleep.
“How much you are beloved!” said the leader of the sectionaries,
seeing the eagerness with which the young daughter kissed her mother.
“Because I love,” she replied, proudly.
Reaching the carriage waiting for her, she was asked if she would
have the window closed.
“No,” she replied; “I have done no harm, and I can face my enemies.”
“You are braver than many men waiting the decree of justice.”
“If in France there were justice, _I_ should not be seated with
_you_. I shall go to the scaffold as fearlessly as I go to prison. I
despise life.”
Marat now became supreme. “Rise, sovereign people!” he cried; “no man
dare oppose you.”
There was never given a more fearful impetus to murder than these
words.
What it pleased men to call a Committee of Public Safety was now
organized, and its operation was the killing of every human being who
could by any means be made to appear not utterly to sympathise with
the seething mob.
The Convention existed, but its power was completely at an end. Its
votes were laughed at. Queen Guillotine was the one power left in
France.
Every day the foreign arms directed against France obtained
successes. Meanwhile, the land was like a vessel without a rudder. No
man was strong enough to control the mob. Indeed, it was only when
Napoleon Bonaparte rose, that internal peace was established. It is
not to be wondered at that he came to be looked up to as a demigod.
Twenty thousand Royalist volunteers were now in arms against Marat,
in one department of France alone.
Marat was at this time King of Paris. Robespierre was waiting. Danton
was threatening and trembling at the same time. Another week, and the
foul Marat would have conquered both, and been proclaimed, by the
voice of the streets, President of the Republic.
But his hideous career was to be arrested by the feeble hand of a
girl—Charlotte Corday.
Just before the commencement of the Reign of Terror in France, there
might have been seen in a quiet corner of a quiet old street in Caen
(that city in Normandy so much mixed up with the early history of
English), a quiet old house, called the Grand Manor—a house around a
court-yard, in the centre of which was a mossy fountain. Near this
fountain, through the sunny hours, might frequently be seen a very
beautiful girl, the niece of an aged woman, who was the maiden’s
aunt. This was Charlotte Corday. Fair of skin, and grey of eye, her
hair was what had not inaptly been termed gilded-black. In other
words, it was black hair, golden-tipped, with golden lines veining
it. She was always dressed plainly, in brown cloth, and her voice
was sweet and lingering. No man has ever breathed a word against her
character.
By a peculiar course of study—which it is needless to analyze—she
had brought herself to that condition of mind when the sufferer
experiences the belief that a self-sacrifice of some nature must be
made, in order to appease an inexplicable, unknown longing to do some
good—a something which is supposed to be good—in the world.
She was essentially a Republican; but gradually, slowly, the
conviction enchained her, that Marat was its monster, and that he
must die. Her resolve appears to have been hastened by the departure
of her lover, who joined the Caen volunteers. This gentleman, one
Franquelin, was, it is said, accused by Marat as a conspirator
against the republic, and assassinated by villains hired for that
purpose. He did not die on the spot, as it was at first reported, but
returned home after Charlotte Corday’s execution. His last words were
an entreaty to his mother to bury with him Charlotte’s portrait, and
all the letters she had ever written to him.
Supplemental to the latter motive, Charlotte Corday believed Marat
was ruining all France. Here she believed truly.
She obtained a letter to one of the Conventionists. No one had the
slightest idea of her intentions. She retained a sweet, soft gaiety,
which was quite natural to her, and which accompanied this lady to
the scaffold. An anecdote is very characteristic of her life. Just
before she started for Paris, passing a _café_, outside of which some
men were card-playing, she said, “Cards! Do you know your country is
dying?”
Taking a sheet of drawing-paper one morning, she said, “Aunt, I am
going to sketch the hay-makers—kiss me.”
Going out, she met a child, of whom she was very fond.
“Here, Robert,” she said, giving him the drawing-paper; “kiss me, and
be a good boy. You will never see me again.”
She chattered in the coach most of the way to Paris. One young
man fell in love with her, and asked to apply to her friends. She
mirthfully repulsed him, and told him to wait, at least for some days.
It was now July. On the eleventh of that month, Charlotte Corday
reached Paris. At five in the afternoon she retired to rest in a
public-house, and slept until next day, when she presented her letter
at the house of the Conventionist, Duperret. When she saw him, she
vaguely entreated him to flee from Paris. “After to-morrow evening,”
she said, “it will be too late.”
Duperret spoke of her as a beautiful girl, slightly deranged.
Her great desire was to remain unknown by name in connection with the
death of Marat. With this view, she determined to kill him before
the people, so that she might at once be torn to pieces, and her
mutilated face be beyond recognition. But she learnt that Marat was
so ill that he could not appear in public again. He still issued,
daily, stronger and more defiant demands for men’s lives. It was said
he remained at home from fear of assassination. Charlotte Corday
resolved to seek him in his home.
She wrote this letter:—
“I have just arrived from Caen. Your patriotism allows me to be
presumptive enough to hope that you will hear privately what I
have to say concerning events in that city. I shall present myself
at your door about one o’clock. I pray you for the good of all
France—receive me!”
She went to his house, and was refused admittance. She wrote another
letter:—
“I cannot believe that it was you yourself refused me admission:
you are too good a patriot. I repeat, I have important news to tell
you; that I have just arrived from the north, and I have secrets to
disclose. I am persecuted. Will _you_, then, not aid me?”
At seven the next morning she dressed herself very carefully. She
wore a white dress, with a silk scarf crossed over the breast and
knotted behind—a white Normandy cap, bound with a green ribbon—her
hair falling over her shoulders. Her face was bright, fresh-colored,
her countenance smiling.
Thus she presented herself at the house occupied by Marat, who
happened to be in his bath, which he used, not for its cleanly
offices, but because it reduced the bodily inflammation which had now
become habitual to him.
The house, which bore all the aspects of that poverty in which Marat
was really plunged, was jealously guarded. But what men could
suspect a beautiful girl, clothed in brilliant white, her face
flushing with youth and beauty?
Charlotte Corday stepped from her coach, and approached the house.
She reached the outer door of the apartments in which Marat lived,
and there her entrance was jealously opposed by Albertine, Marat’s
mistress, and a female friend.
Marat, hearing the altercation, and associating the pleading voice
with the letters he had received, imperatively ordered the applicant
to be admitted.
Now mark what occurred. The woman Albertine, offended, walked away,
her friend followed her, and Charlotte Corday was alone with Marat.
The room was dark, close, and smelt abominably. He was wrapped in a
dirty sheet, and sitting in a bath, across which was a rough piece
of wood which he made his desk, for he passed hours in the water.
He was writing when Charlotte Corday entered. He had finished this
sentence:—“I demand that every man in France who has the blood of the
Bourbons in his veins, however little, shall be put upon his trial,
and his wife and children also.”
She approached this human monster, her eyes downcast. He spoke to her
imperiously—“What is the state of Normandy?”
“Certain deputies have taken refuge in Caen.”
“Their names?”
She gave certain names, and he wrote them down.
“Good!” he said; “before another week is past, they shall be
guillotined.”
At this moment she raised the dagger she took from the breast of her
dress, and plunged it down into his bosom.
“Help, my dear, help!” he cried, and fell back dead.
Albertine, the woman, and a man named Basse rushed forward in time
to see his last-drawn breath. By this time the water was like that
crimson stream Marat was for ever demanding. He was bathed in it
himself now.
She did not attempt to escape. She drew out the dagger, let it fall,
and took two or three steps to the window. The man Basse caught up
a chair and beat her down, whereupon the woman, Albertine, trampled
upon her.
The news spread in an incalculably short space of time, and the
seething people called up into the air, “Throw her out to us; we are
waiting.”
Soldiers rushed in, forming a hedge of steel about Charlotte Corday,
and beat back the blaspheming crowd.
Charlotte showed no fear, crossed her hands ready for the cords, and
her first words were “Poor woman!” in reference to Albertine, who was
rending the air with her cries.
She said afterwards she had not asked herself the question, “Could
this man be loved?”
“Poor people!” she said to those who endeavored to tear her to
pieces; “you desire my death, whilst you owe me an altar for
having freed you from a monster! Oh, throw me to the people,” she
said to the soldiers; “as they regret him, they are fit to be my
executioners!”
She was not cast among the people—at least, she died in peace. She
boasted of her act, and declared herself a martyr.
Paris turned pale at the news. The panic reaching the Convention,
business was arrested. One Henriot, the Commandant-General of the
National Guard, entered.
“Tremble!” he cried. “Marat has been assassinated by a girl, who
boasts of her deed! Tremble! Such a fate threatens all! Mistrust
green ribbons, and let us swear to avenge the death of this great
man.”
Charlotte Corday, accused of murder, stood beautiful and smiling in
the midst of accusers, all of whom wore fierce looks of hate and rage.
She was fearless until she reached the street, when the blaze of
shouts so terrified this young country girl, that she fainted.
Restored to consciousness, (they had bound her weak hands), she
cried, “Alas! do I still live?”
Then quite consistently, she thanked her guardians for saving her
from the crowd.
She never for one moment looked upon her act as a crime. When
interrogated at her trial, she adhered to this statement:—“I saw
civil war enveloping France. I considered Marat its chief cause, and
to save my country I sacrificed myself, and slew him.”
That her virtue was attacked at her trial, is a condition of things
which clearly proves how deeply dyed in prejudice by this time had
become the revolutionary tribunals.
One Chabot under pretence of suspecting a concealed paper, tore off
her breast kerchief. She leaped back at the outrage, the string of
her dress broke, and her fair chest was exposed to the gaze of a
number of savage men. Her hands were corded, so that she could not
save herself from degradation; and her virtue gave of itself her
best proof, for she crouched down to hide her disarranged dress.
Entreating them to untie her hands, they complied; and turning her
back to the wall, she rapidly completed her toilette. Where the cords
had been, the flesh was marked with great blue bands; and very meekly
she asked to be allowed to put on her long gloves before the knots
were again tied. Upon her dress, after her death, was found pinned a
long address to France, in which she entreated all men to destroy the
Jacobins, and save France.
She was condemned to die the following morning. An artist, during her
trial, having been remarked by her drawing her face, she requested he
might complete it, and the painter was introduced to her cell. One
man endeavored to save her by maintaining she was insane. In this
shape of pity, he nearly lost his own head.
She wrote of Marat finally:—“Pardon me, oh men! The name of Marat
dishonors your race. He was a beast of prey seeking to devour France
by war and hate. I thank Heaven that by birth he was no Frenchman.”
She was pained by the accusation made by Chabot, the wretch who had
torn away her neckerchief, who declared she had been his mistress,
far more than by the thought of approaching death. “Chabot,” she
wrote, “is a mere madman. I never even dreamed of this man. He need
not be feared—he has not intellect enough to be dangerous.”
In the same paper she said, “All Parisians are such good citizens,
they cannot comprehend how a useless woman, whose longest term of
life would be good for nothing, can calmly sacrifice herself for her
country. To-morrow, at twelve, _I shall have lived!_”
Again she said, “’Tis crime gives the shame—it is not the block.”
This is the verse of the great French poet Corneille, who was her
ancestor.
Tried at eight in the morning, and knowing she should die at mid-day,
she said, upon leaving the prison, “Madame Richard, pray let my
breakfast be ready upon my return, or we shall not have time to take
it together.”
At her trial, it being maintained that the nature of the blow which
killed Marat had been that of one accomplished in the use of the
dagger, she cried, “Miserable wretch—he takes me for an assassin!”
The counsel for her defence urged that she only pleaded that in
killing Marat she was doing a public good.
The jury directly found her guilty, and ordered her property to be
confiscated.
“Sir,” she said to her defender, “you have done well. But I cannot
pay you, for you have heard how my property has been seized. However,
I do you this honor; I pray that you will pay the few pieces of
silver I owe to the prison people—they ought to be paid.”
Going back to her prison, where the painter finished her portrait,
she conversed about painting.
A knock at the cell-door, and the executioner entered, carrying
scissors with which to cut away her hair, and the red garments worn
by the condemned on their way to execution.
“Sir,” she said to the painter, “I can only offer you a lock of hair.”
And taking the gaoler’s scissors, she cut a lock of the wonderful
hair.
A priest coming, she said, “I thank those who have been kind enough
to send you, but I do not require your services. The blood I have
spilt, and my own, which I am about to shed, are the only sacrifices
I can offer the Eternal.”
The executioner now cut off her hair, and flung over her head the red
garment.
“This,” she said, “is the toilette of death, arranged by somewhat
rude hands, but it leads to immortality.”
As she stepped upon the cart, such as carried all those condemned to
death to the place of execution, a violent storm burst over Paris.
Women danced about the death-cart, uttering imprecations; hers was
the only calm face to be seen. Strangely enough, the rain wetting the
red flannel—her only covering to the waist—it clung to her skin, and
betrayed her to be exquisitely formed, especially as her hands were
so tied behind her that she was forced to hold herself upright.
As she neared the scaffold, the sun appeared, and the gold threads in
her hair shone out magnificently.
The leaders of the rebellion, Danton, Robespierre, Camille
Desmoulins, standing at a window, saw her pass. She had preserved
them from Marat, but, at the same time, she had shown how a tyrant
could be slain. She saved their lives by her act; but she taught,
also, how they might be taken.
One Adam Lux, a German, was hopelessly stricken by love as she passed
along. He followed to the scaffold’s feet, asking to die with her.
Reaching the scaffold, she turned pale, and, for one moment, shrank;
but the next, recovering herself, ascended the steps as rapidly as
her long red dress and pinioned arms would allow.
When the executioner pulled down her dress, that her neck might be
bare, she was for the last time outraged while living. She placed
herself upon the plank, and, the next moment, her head fell.
Legros, a miserable scaffold-dog, took up the head by the remaining
hair, and struck at the cheeks. It is said the skin grew scarlet, as
though the modesty of Charlotte Corday outlasted her life.
Did her face change color? Some hold that the head has consciousness
and power after being severed from the body, and that it can see and
hear. Nay, it was urged during the Revolution that the passion of the
heads remained, because the interior of the wicker baskets in which
the heads were carried away were often found to be gnawed, as though
the teeth of the heads gnashed after separation from the body. For my
part, I believe that this gnawing was effected by rats, which at that
time, even more than now, overran Paris.
Such was the death of Marat—of his murderer, whom we cannot praise.
But who can blame her? Assuredly her death was necessary to purge her
of assassination, to some extent.
Adam Lux, wild with love, published a defence of Charlotte Corday. He
was seized, and, three days afterwards, died by the very knife which
destroyed her life.
Chénier, the patriotic poet, sang her heroism. He was soon arrested,
and therefore beheaded.
But what good had Charlotte Corday done?
She had strengthened the love of the people for desperate measures;
she had made a martyr of their most foul leader. She gave a dignity
to those who advocated the scaffold. The liberal twenty-two knew that
this last act annihilated them.
CHAPTER LVIII.
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
The Convention ordained the _worship_ of Marat, and cast his corpse
to the people as an idol.
He was called Cæsar, and his funeral was modelled upon the historical
narrative of that given by Rome to the great Julius.
The body was carried by torchlight to the garden of the house in
which he made his most inflammatory speeches; and there he was buried
under trees heavily laden with countless brilliantly-illuminated
paper lamps.
His head was placed in an urn, and hung in the centre of the
Convention. His memory was decreed an altar, and at its foot his
admirers appropriately called for blood.
The enemy was now approaching on all sides, and thousands more
Royalists were in array.
Meanwhile Danton was sinking in estimation, Robespierre rising, for
Robespierre was a patient man.
Danton, dazzled with his new wife, wished to live the life of a small
country gentleman. It was too late.
Robespierre was breaking in health, but his temperance would stand
him in good stead of health for a long while. His motto was “Wait.”
The Committee of Public Safety was meanwhile reaping a rich harvest
of death.
Money was no longer to be seen.
Bread was rare.
People were dying of starvation (especially the old) in every street.
The more cruel of the Conventionists carried by acclamation these
decrees—the true legal inauguration of the Reign of Terror:
“Six thousand soldiers and twelve hundred artillerymen to do blindly
the bidding of the Committee of Public Safety.
“All men who have been in the Government occupation during the late
King’s life, to quit Paris.
“The delivery of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Moderate
Conventionists.
“The right to search any house at any hour of the night.
“The transportation beyond the seas of every common woman in the land.
“Finally, the payment of workmen who should leave their shops to
follow up the public service.”
By these measures the mob were not only encouraged to take life, but
paid to do it. Nothing could save such a system resulting, if long
continued, in national death!
By the way, _Sunday_ was chosen as the best day for working these mob
committees.
This was followed by Merlin’s decree, which provided for the arrest
(without proof) of any suspected person, and of all those who, not
working, were enabled to live in a better condition than one of
penury. This was an attack upon all people who had hidden money. In
fact, starvation had by this time become the only mode of avoiding
the guillotine.
Prisons were not large enough to contain prisoners, and all the
confiscated churches were converted into gaols. Death was decreed for
almost every act of life—certainly for every act of pity.
A hundred men, less two, were beheaded in sixty days in Paris alone.
The Queen was too noble a victim to escape.
The Convention suddenly ordered her trial, and commanded her
separation from the two children.
Now all the lethargy which has possessed her since the King’s death
departs, and she becomes as a lioness fighting for her young.
By this time, all the beauty of Marie Antoinette had vanished, and
there remained a very broken old woman, aged about a little more
than thirty, with very scanty white hair, falling in patches from
an almost bald head. The body, as the soul, had shrunken—a skeleton
remained, covered with mere skin.
This was the Queen, who leapt into life when her dulled hearing
comprehended that she was to be separated from her children. They
had but the mercy only to remove the son.
The boy clung to his mother, who lost all dignity, dug her nails into
the child’s flesh, and called upon the men to kill them both.
For two hours this lasted, and then she became a woman again—a
mother; and dressing him to look as smart as possible, she gave him
up with her own hands to his gaoler, Simon, who took him at once to
the room where the child was destined to die. For two days and nights
the child lay upon the floor, taking neither food nor drink.
The Queen never took her son in her arms. He was to outlive her but a
little time, and then die of sheer ill-usage and neglect.
The Queen, however, still had her husband’s sister and her daughter
with her. The only consolation they had, was ascending to the
platform of their tower, to catch a glimpse of the boy on the
platform of the other tower.
Simon’s work it was to deprave the body and soul of the wretched
child. He forced him to drink strong wine, and made him answer to
the name of “Wolf.” He beat him if he wept, encouraged him to every
possible disgusting act, and compelled him to sing obscene songs,
while he (his master) smoked and drank.
Once, he nearly destroyed one of the poor Prince’s eyes; at another,
he raised a poker against him. Sometimes he was kind; and, upon one
occasion, he said, “Capet, if the soldiers come and deliver you, what
will you do?”
“Forgive you,” said the child.
The man Simon actually wept, but he cried immediately afterwards,
“There’s some of the blood of the lion in the whelp.”
In the middle of the night of the 2nd of August, the Queen was
awakened, and told she was to be removed _alone_, to another prison.
In vain the women threw themselves at the feet of the men. They had
but their duty to do.
The Queen was compelled to dress before them, while they ransacked
the room, and seized every little object the Queen still retained.
The miserable creatures left her a handkerchief.
And now, exactly as Louis XVI had told his children to forgive their
enemies, so now desolate Marie Antoinette told her daughter, in her
last words to the poor child, to forgive those who parted them.
“I give my children to you, sister. Be a second mother to them.”
For precisely as Louis appears to have had no conception of the
monstrosity of putting a woman to death, so the Queen, in leaving the
Temple, appears not to have supposed for one moment that the Princess
Elizabeth would be claimed by the scaffold,—she who had led the life
of a true woman, who had nursed and helped the people, and never
joined in the frivolities of the Court.
The Queen was taken to the prison of the Conciergerie, which is
composed of the dungeons below high water mark, to be found amongst
the foundations of the Palace of Justice.
To a wretched cell, having in one corner a straw bed, and by the
light of one candle, was the ex-Queen taken.
A woman desirous of death in the dungeon of a stronghold, and yet
they only believed her safe when two soldiers, swords drawn, stood at
the outer door watching, with orders not to lose sight of the Widow
Capet, even when asleep.
Madam Richard, that good woman who tended Charlotte Corday in her
last moments, was the Queen’s most humane gaoler. She found something
like furniture for the cell, procured wholesome food for the captive,
and often brought a low-whispered message from the royal prisoners
still in the Temple.
A little while, and the dampness of the cell rotted the Queen’s only
dresses—two very common ones; and her underclothing becoming in
tatters, she was half naked.
CHAPTER LIX.
MARIE ANTOINETTE FINDS PEACE AT LAST.
Marie Antoinette in her last prison, however, was not without pitying
friends. The fierce communists ordered that she should drink the
water of the Seine, drawn as it flowed past her prison-walls; but
an honest couple, named Bault, obtained the posts of chief gaolers
at the Conciergerie, in the full aim of assuaging the Queen’s
wretchedness. Instead of Seine water, the poor prisoner found daily
in her cell refreshing draughts of water drawn from that well at
Versailles which was the Queen’s chief cellar. She was a great water
drinker.
Madame Bault, to affect harshness, never entered the Princess’s
cell, asserting that to do so was to be contaminated. The royal
tradespeople of former days—especially the fruit-women—brought little
offerings secretly; and so it came about that the Queen, in her last
prison and days, ate such pure, simple meals as those which had been
her favorite food in the old days—a piece of melon, a handful of
figs, a little bread and a glass of water from her favorite well.
The two gowns which the Queen possessed—one white, the other
black,—and which she wore alternately, soon fell to pieces in the
damp prison. Her underclothing was always damp when put on, and often
her shoes would be completely wet; for between her and the river
there was only the part protection of a wall.
Human nature demands some work. Not allowed writing or sewing
materials (Bault’s daughter mended the Queen’s tatters, and gave away
the little fragments which she cut away in the process as relics of
the poor lady), with a pin she scratched her thoughts upon the driest
portion of the walls of her prison. After her death many of these
sentences were copied by one of the commissioners. They were mostly
German and Italian verses bearing reference to her fate, and little
Latin verses from the Psalms. No French did she use, for she had been
brought into the land where that language was spoken to be cast into
prison, and to suffer death. The drier walls were covered with these
mute appeals.
Some idea may be gained of the cruelty exercised towards the desolate
prisoner, when she, asking for a lighter coverlet, and Bault
forwarding the request to a high authority, the latter received this
reply:—
“Take care! Another sign of sympathy such as that, and you will visit
the guillotine before she does!”
Another shape of industry did the poor Queen find. She wished to
leave her daughter a memento of her last days, and she had nothing
to give; so she converted a couple of bone toothpicks into knitting
needles, pulled some worsted shreds from the heavy old coverlet
which they refused to replace with a lighter, and knitted a—garter.
This she, dropped near the friendly Bault, who, with the heart of a
father, understanding the poor little bit of workmanship, let fall
his handkerchief, and so possessed himself of the little treasure.
After her death the tribute reached the young Princess for whom it
was worked—truly a message from the grave.
A few days before her trial, an order, possessed by something
of mercy, arrived, by force of which she was relieved from the
continuous stare of the guard set to watch her. By this relief, she
was enabled to kneel, from which act she had been warned throughout
her confinement.
On October 13th, Fouquier-Tinville notified to Marie Antoinette the
fact of her having been indicted for high treason.
She listened to the reading of the indictment as though to a
death-warrant—the shape, in fact, it really took.
As a matter of form, she chose two counsel for her defence—men who
had secretly sought the appointment, and who, afterwards, of course,
paid for their pity with their lives.
On the 14th, at noon, she made as elegant a toilette as she could—hid
the rags and the patchiness of her white hair as much as possible,
and went up the stone stairs of her dungeon to the judgment-hall
above her prison. The passages were full of people, who reviled
her as she passed along. She bore her head well up, but she could
not change the fallen mouth, the pinched nose, tarnished eyes, and
shrunken, weakened body. But the black circles round those eyes
artificially increased their failing brilliancy, and they fired
glances of scorn and fearlessness at her gibing enemies. She had
never possessed the humble, religious feeling and sweet patience
which distinguished Louis. A perfectly pure woman, at heart, she was
somewhat of a Voltairean; she despised death, and feared no power. We
are as we are made; so, in her final trial, she met the scowls of the
people, chiefly of women, face to face. Some authorities say that one
girl uttered a cry of pity as the Queen passed—she was strangled.
These unsexed wretches had undertaken to accompany the Queen to the
scaffold with every possible indignity.
And she stands before her—judges.
“What is your name?”
“I am called Marie Antoinette, of Lorraine, in Austria,” she replies,
in a low, musical voice.
“Your condition?”
“Widow of Louis, formerly King of the French.”
“Your age?”
“Thirty-seven.”
Louquier-Tinville now read the indictment. It was the summing up of
all her declared crimes of high birth, condition, and rank. She was
quite guilty of all these things. The chief accusations were merely
echoes of all that had been whispered of her in the foulest places.
She was accused of prodigality, licentiousness, and treason to France.
She showed no sign of emotion, beyond an unheeded movement of the
fingers over the bar of a chair, as though they were recalling some
half-forgotten music.
She answered all questions quite patiently, showed sorrow only when
reference was made to the Princess de Lamballe, and only lost her
quietude when one Hébert was called. It is to be hoped this man was
mad. At all events, he spoke to the Queen’s acts while in the Temple;
declared that she was depraved and debauched, and that she had even
corrupted her own son, “that she might poison his body and his soul,
and so reign in his name over the ruin of his understanding.”
This man was mad—there can be no doubt upon the point: he even
included saintly Madame Elizabeth in this frantic idiotic accusation.
Heaven be thanked, those present turned upon him, and cried “Shame!”
The Queen herself shrank, raising her hand as though to guard her
from the wretch.
But one juryman was nearly as bad as Hébert.
“Why does not the accused answer?” this foul wretch asked.
“I do not answer,” she said—and once again, it is said, she looked
radiantly beautiful in her momentary indignation—“because these are
accusations to which nature refuses a reply.”
She turned to the women, with whom the court was crowded.
“I appeal from him to all mothers present.”
To the honor of these women be it said, they cried Hébert down—and so
he passes out of this history.
The Queen met questions having reference to the King with equal
calmness. It being alleged that she endeavored to obtain ascendancy
over him through his mental weakness, she replied, “I never knew
that character of him. I was but his wife, and it was my duty and my
pleasure to yield to his will.”
By not one word, tending to save herself, did she injure the memory
of her husband.
One line in the trial is enough to show what a mockery it was.
The Public Prosecutor cried, “All France bears witness against this
woman!”
For form’s sake, the jury deliberated an hour. She was recalled to
hear her sentence, but the cheering and screaming of the people told
her its terrors before the judge spoke—_death!_
Nine months since the King died, and now there was an end to her
weary waiting.
Asked if she had anything to say why the sentence of death should not
be carried out, she respected herself in her very silence, and turned
away, as though quite prepared for execution.
It was now five in the morning, and her last day was come. At
half-past five she was permitted to write a letter to the King’s
sister, Madame Elizabeth. This lady never saw it. The document was
found long afterwards amongst the papers of one Couthon.
“I write to you, my sister,” she begins, “for the last time. I
have been condemned, not to an ignominious death—that only awaits
criminals—but to go and rejoin your brother. Innocent as he, I hope
to show such firmness as the King’s in his last moments. I grieve
bitterly at leaving my poor children. You know that I lived but for
them and you—you who, in your love, have sacrificed all for us. I
learnt, at my trial, that you are separated from my little girl. In
what a position I leave you! I dare not write to her; they would
not give her my letter, and, indeed, I do not know that you will
receive this.”
Some words of this final letter are inexpressibly touching. “Let my
son never forget his father’s last words. _Let him never seek to
avenge our deaths!_”
She then goes on to apologize for the child’s possible conduct to
her, after the influence over him necessarily obtained by Simon, his
tutor, and meekly she urges that he is so young he is incapable of
knowing what he does.
“Think of me always,” she says, in conclusion. “Good heaven, and my
children! How heart-rending it is to leave them for ever—for ever!”
This letter being finished, she kissed each page lovingly, and folded
it.
So far, the Republic had not entirely declared against high heaven,
and priests were still recognised by those who had subscribed to the
articles of the Revolution, and one of these men was offered to Marie
Antoinette to aid her in her last moments. She refused to see him.
The Convention (still sitting) insisted upon one of these officials
accompanying her to the scaffold. There was no devotion amongst them.
All hesitated, for all feared that the Queen would be torn to pieces
on her way to the scaffold.
One proffered his help.
“Thank you,” said the Queen; “I have no need of your services, though
I am a great sinner. But I am about to receive a great sacrament.”
“Martyrdom,” said the priest, in a low voice; and he bowed and
retired.
She prayed alone.
However, she had been secretly informed that at a certain house on
her way to execution a minister would be stationed, who would give
her absolution as she passed in the cart.
She dressed herself in the white gown, put a white cap on, bound with
a black ribbon—and so came before the people.
Then she drew back—her queendom still remained. She had not thought
the people so fallen that she should be taken to the scaffold in the
common cart. The King had been taken to death at least in such a
vehicle as he had been accustomed to.
Alas! When Louis died all pity had expired; with her death, all
France was to gasp with thirst for blood.
She mounted the cart—her hands having been bound behind her, and in
the midst of a raging crowd. The cart swayed, and she could scarcely
keep her seat on the plank.
She grew red and pale by turns, as she was dragged through the mob.
The patience and pity exhibited by the King she could not imitate.
Her lips were bitter each moment; but she never took her dry, hot
eyes from the raging people.
Suddenly, her head falls humbly, and, her hands being tied, she makes
the sign of the cross by three motions of the head.
Her pride had passed with that unseen blessing from the house on her
way to execution. When the Palace of the Tuileries came in view—the
place where she had spent nearly half her life—tears fell down her
face.
A few turns of the wheels, and she was at the foot of the scaffold.
Reaching the place, accidentally she trod upon one of the
executioners’ feet.
“Pardon me,” she said, in a sweet, courtly voice.
She knelt for an instant, rose, stretched her neck towards the
distant towers of the Temple, and cried, “Good-bye, my children! I am
going to your father.”
She did not, like her husband, speed to Heaven. It was rather that
she fled from earth.
The executioner was trembling more than his victim, so that she
suffered a long agony of a few moments after she was upon the plank.
The assistant executioner took his brother’s place.
The head fell. It was taken up and carried around the scaffold.
“_Long live the Republic!_” saluted this brave display.
The Revolution thought itself avenged—it was befouled.
She came a foreigner—and they killed her.
Thus she died. Frivolous in prosperity, she died with intrepidity.
Her misfortune was her mistrust of the people in her early days—her
catastrophe, that all the sin and wickedness of the Court was laid to
her account.
Called upon to fill a throne, those who called her gave her not even
a tomb—for you may read in a parish register, “_For the coffin of the
Widow Capet, six shillings!_”
With her life, France threw away all Christian mercy. Crimson swept
over the breadth and length of the land.
CHAPTER LX.
THE TWENTY-TWO.
The twenty-two had literally been under the control of the police,
though not arrested, since May 31st. But as events progressed, their
destruction became almost necessary to the safety of those members of
the Convention, who, obtaining power wholly through the will of the
more violent, could only retain it by a perfect recognition of the
will of those who had given them the victory.
The twenty-two were therefore seized, and placed in a building
converted from a convent into a prison, and here they made full
preparations to die.
To this day, the walls of this place may be seen covered with
mementoes of the prison-days of the victims of the Revolution. They
are chiefly short verses, written in blood, the purple hues of which
many of the inscriptions still retain.
A few days after the Queen’s day of peace arrived, their trial
commenced.
Of what were they accused?
Really, nothing; but they were in the way, and a threatening division
of the masses insisted upon their death.
After four days’ mockery of justice, the twenty-two were declared
guilty of having conspired against the unity and indivisibility of
the republic, and the whole were condemned to die.
A cry of horror burst from the condemned, for many of them could not
believe that innocent men could be sent to the scaffold.
Valasé, one of the youngest, slipped from his seat to the floor.
“What, Valasé! art losing courage now?” cried his friend Brissot,
upholding him.
“No; I am dying!” returned Valasé; and his fingers quivered about
the handle of the poniard with which he had taken his own life.
Silent horror for a moment prevailed; the Girondists blushed and
bowed their heads before their dead companion, who had given them an
example of fearlessness in meeting death.
Only one, named Boileau, showed cowardice. He cast his hat into the
air and screamed, “I don’t belong to these men! I am a Jacobin!”
But instead of pity he only gained contempt.
And now a cry was heard; it came from Camille Desmoulins: “Let me
fly,” he cried; “it is my book which has killed them!”
But the crowd seized Desmoulins, and forced him to remain.
The twenty-two came down from the high seats upon which they had
heard their trial and sentence, and for a moment stood round the
dead body of their friend, who had shown them how to die. Almost
simultaneously they raised their hands and cried, “Innocent! Long
live the republic!”
Then they cast all the money they had with them amongst the crowding,
storming people, who greedily seized it. This was done, not to excite
the mob to revolt, but with the thought that, their death at hand,
they had no farther need of wealth.
There was something strangely classic and Roman-like in their
death. They left the hall singing loudly the celebrated hymn, the
“Marseillaise;” and in reference to their death, they sang with
amazing power the celebrated two lines,
“March on, march on! O children of the land,
The day, the hour of glory, is at hand!”
This terrible hymn they were still singing as they entered their
prison. It was now late in the evening, and they were to suffer on
the following morning.
The tribunal had decreed that the yet warm corpse of Valasé should
be carried back to prison, conveyed in the same cart with his
accomplices to the scaffold, and interred with their bodies. The only
sentence, perhaps, which punished the dead.
Four men-at-arms carried the body upon a litter, and thus the
procession reached the prison.
The twenty-two were to pass the night in the same room, the corpse
in one corner. The twenty-one—even Boileau, who repented of his
momentary cowardice—came, one by one, and kissed the dead man’s hand,
then covered his face, saying, “To-morrow, brother!”
One Bailleul, a Girondist and a Conventionist, but who had escaped
the proscription, yet had not left Paris, had promised that, after
the trial, he would prepare and send to the prison, either a
triumphant or a funereal supper, according to the sentence.
The promise was kept. Upon the oaken table, stretching the length of
their dungeon was set out a supper, royal in its magnificence. Every
luxury to be obtained, every delicate wine with a name, filled those
portions of the table not covered by a wealth of flowers and great
clusters of brilliantly burning wax candles.
To one Abbé Lambert, who lived fifty years after that night, we owe
all we have learnt concerning that final meal. This minister was
waiting to offer consolation to the condemned as they passed to the
scaffold.
The supper lasted from midnight until the dawn of day—at the end of
October, about half-past five. It was the feast of their marriage
with death. No sign was given of their approaching end. All ate with
sobriety, but with appetite; and it was only when the fruit and wine
alone remained on the table that the conversation became excited and
powerful.
Many, especially the younger men, who did not leave families behind
them, were very gay and witty. They had done no great wrong, and were
sacrificed to duty, therefore they met death with cheerful faces.
With solemn break of day, the conversation became graver.
Brissot cried, “now that we, the honest men amongst those who govern,
are about to die, what will become of the republic? How much blood
will it require to wash away the memory of ours?”
“Friends,” cried Vergniaud, “we have killed the tree by over-pruning
it. It was aged—Robespierre cuts it down. Will he be more fortunate
than ourselves? No; the land of France is now too weak for honest
growth. The people play with laws as children with toys; they are
too weak to govern themselves; and they will return to their kings
as children to their toys, after they are tired of having thrown
them away. We thought ourselves at Rome; we were in Paris. But, in
dying, let us leave to the whole of France—the strength of hope. Some
day—some great day—she will be able to govern herself.”
At ten o’clock the executioners arrived to prepare the victims for
the scaffold. Gensomé, picking up a lock of the black, brilliant hair
cut from his head, gave it to Abbé Lambert, and begged him to carry
it to his wife. “Tell her,” he said, “it is all I can send, and that
I die thinking of her.”
Vergniaud drew his watch from his pocket, scratched his initials and
the date in it with a pin, and sent it by the hands of one of the
executioners’ assistants to a young girl whom he loved deeply, and
whom it is said he intended to marry.
Every one sent a something to some one or more in memory of himself,
and it is pleasant to be able to state that every message and
remembrance were faithfully delivered.
When the last lock of hair had fallen, the victims were marshalled,
and they were led out to the carts waiting to receive them.
They sang the “Marseillaise” to the scaffold—they sang it when they
reached it, the song growing fainter and fainter as each head fell;
and the hymn only ceased, as the last head fell—that of their leader,
Vergniaud.
The dead body of their friend was carried with them.
Such was the end of the founders of the French republic.
With them the brightness, beauty, youth, wit, frankness of the
Convention passed away, and their places were filled by sullen,
threatening men.
CHAPTER LXI.
THE RED FLAG.
The first to fall was the Duc of Orleans (father of Louis Philippe,
King of the French). He had done nothing against the interests of the
republic, but his birth was a crime, and his death was decided on.
The Prince and his sons were at table when the fatal indictment
arrived.
“So much the better,” said he. “This must end one way or the other.
Kiss me, children. And I wonder of what they accuse me?” he said,
opening the paper. “The scoundrels!” he added; “they accuse me of
nothing. Come, boys, eat; for this summons is indeed good news.”
He was taken to Paris, where, at this time, no man of mark, being put
upon his trial, escaped the guillotine.
The one plausible accusation brought against Orleans must have
compressed his heart.
“Did you not vote the King’s death in the hope of succeeding to his
throne?”
“No; I obeyed my heart and my conscience.”
He heard his sentence calmly, despite the fact of his cowardice in
his early years; and he replied sarcastically to his judges, “Since
you were determined to condemn me, you should have found better
pretexts than you have; for, as it is, you will deceive no man into
believing that you think me guilty. I am in the way. And you too,”
he said, turning to a once Marquis d’Autonelle, an old friend,—“you
to condemn me! Finally,” he continued, “since I am to die, I demand
not to be left in gaol a whole night, but to be at once taken to the
block.”
This desire was not complied with. Returning to the gaol, his rage
was terrible.
The Abbé Lambert approached and said, “Citizen Equality, will you
accept my assistance, or, at least, the offer of my condolence?”
“Who are you?”
“The Vicar-General of the Bishop of Paris. If you will not accept my
religious help, can I be of any service to you after your death? Have
you messages to send?”
“No; I can die without help, and like a good citizen.”
He went to the place of execution at three, accompanied by three
others.
Reaching the scaffold, he looked at the knife calmly; and the
executioner offering to remove his boots, he said, “You will do it
more easily afterwards.”
He was dressed very beautifully for his death, and he died without
fear. He had followed the Revolution blindly—had thrown away fortune,
name, reputation, in its cause, and it destroyed him simply because
he had belonged to royalty.
Terror was rapidly reddening all the land.
The guillotine was not quick enough, and squads of soldiers shot down
the condemned.
Such sentences as the following, were accepted as truths:—
“The time is come when the prophecy shall be fulfilled. The wealthy
shall be despoiled, and the poor shall be enriched.
“If the people want bread, let them profit by the sight of their
misery, to seize on the possessions of the wealthy.
“Do you seek a word which furnishes all you need?—die, or cause
others to die.”
The great Terror began at Lyons.
“The great day of vengeance has arrived,” cried one Cholier. “Five
hundred men amongst us deserve to share the fate of the tyrant. I
will give you the list—be it your part to strike!”
He then seized a crucifix, dashed it upon the ground, and trampled
upon it.
Here is another theory which was applauded:—
“Any man can be an executioner—it is the guillotine which really
takes life.”
This Cholier, who had trampled upon the crucifix, clung to it when
condemned to the death he was always seeking for others. The knife
was blunt, and five times it was raised before the head fell.
“Quick—quick!” the wretch cried, when it was raised for the fifth
time.
Some time after, when the Terror was rising to its height, Cholier
was looked upon as a martyr; his body was burnt, and the ashes placed
in an urn, were carried triumphantly through the streets, and placed
upon an altar of patriotism raised to him.
The altar in question was soon thrown down.
But only after the Terror ended.
With Cholier’s after-death triumph, the “moderates” began to fall.
Ten of the municipals of Lyons (the place of Cholier’s exploits) were
beheaded in one day, and a mine was exploded which destroyed the
finest parts of the city.
Lyons was almost annihilated. At a cost of half a million of money
(English), houses worth twelve millions were destroyed. Why? France
was mad. So hurriedly was this destruction effected, that hundreds of
the workmen themselves were buried in the ruins.
Life, however, was cheap.
Rags only were to be seen—a decent dress was equivalent to
condemnation. The city was dead but for the thunder of fallen houses,
the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry mowing down suspected
people, and the shrill cry of the ragged as they marked another
head fall beneath the guillotine knife. It was now looked upon as a
distinction, and reserved only for important people.
An entire generation was destroyed in Lyons alone. Great houses were
unowned—for their owners were dead. Castles, churches, factories,
work-shops, were closed, for their heads had all passed under the
guillotine.
Starvation increased, for the land lay a-dying.
The guillotine was getting old and worn-out at Lyons.
One morning, sixty-four are marched out to death. They are bound,
and ranged in a line before an open trench. Three pieces of cannon,
loaded with bullets, sweep the ranks. Not half are touched.
“Forward!” is the word given to the dragoons, who hack and shoot down
the victims. This lasts two whole hours.
Nine hundred and thirty executioners, in the shape of an entire
regiment, were to send their victims, marshalled in a row, into
eternity at the same moment. At the order “Fire!” four bullets struck
at the life of the victims, all of whom are tied to a rope stretched
from tree to tree.
Strange—when the smoke arose, only half were found dead. The rest
remained either wounded or untouched. The unscathed stared in horror;
the wounded screamed to be despatched.
The soldiers could not fire again. Some of the prisoners had freed
themselves, and were escaping. The dragoons were ordered forward to
cut them down. The victims were killed piece-meal. One man, a mayor
of his town, reached the river, but there his bleeding hand betrayed
him, and he was cast into the river.
The soldiers protested against the use to which they were put. The
massacres lasted until night-fall. Yet when the grave-diggers came
next morning, some hearts still beat. The sextons put the martyrs out
of their misery at once by blows on the head with their pickaxes.
“We are purging the land,” wrote Collet d’Herbois to the Convention.
Every day twenty-two were regularly shot. By this time, the fear of
life rendered death sweet. Girls, men, children, prayed that they
might be shot with their parents. Sometimes they permitted this, and
little boys and girls were shot, holding their father’s hands.
Women who were seen to shed tears at executions, were shot.
Mourning was prohibited under pain of death.
One lad of fourteen, says, “Quick—quick! You have killed papa! I want
to overtake him!”
One De Rochefort[2] was accompanied by a son to the
butchering-ground, whither he went with three relatives. The men
fell—the boy, aged fifteen, remained standing.
The executioner hesitated—the people murmured.
“God save the King!” cried De Rochefort.
A moment—a report—he fell, shattered to death.
A lovely girl, fourteen, is brought before the judge for refusing to
wear the national cockade.
“Why do you refuse to wear it?” asks the judge.
“Because you _do_!” replies the child.
Her beauty, rather than justice, pleading for her, a sign was made
that a wreath should be put in her hair, the emblem of liberation.
She cast it upon the ground. She died.
A man came to the Hall of Justice.
“You have slain my father, my brothers, my wife—kill me. My religion
forbids me to destroy myself. In mercy, kill me.”
In mercy—they killed him.
A woman, who had fought bravely in the earlier and fairer time of the
Revolution, was carried to the scaffold, though about to become a
mother. She did not fear death—she pleaded for the other life.
She was laughed at—hooted—and so died.
A girl of seventeen, and much resembling Charlotte Corday, was
accused of having served as an artillerist in the trenches of the
forces opposed to the national forces.
“What is your name?”
“Mary; the name of the mother of the God for whom I am about to die.”
“Your age?”
“Seventeen; the age of Charlotte Corday.”
“How!—at seventeen, fight against your country?”
“I fought to save it.”
“Citizen—we, your judges, admire your courage. What would you do with
your life if we gave it you?”
“Use it to kill you!”
She ascended the scaffold, alarmed at the crowd of people—fearless of
death. She refused the executioner’s help—cried twice, “God save the
King!”—and lay down to die.
After her death, the executioner found amongst her clothes a note
written in blood. It was from her lover, who had been shot some days
before.
The lovers were only separated by a few days. Their history touched
the people, but the people of that day did not know how to pardon.
These awful executions were at last arrested, not because the
victims were exhausted, but because the soldiers threw down their
arms and positively refused any longer to play the shameful parts of
executioners.
Napoleon Bonaparte, the tyrant-liberator of the oppressed republic,
now rose to his first distinction.
The English were in possession of Toulon. Admiral Hood was preparing
to flood France with English red-coats.
Within a week Bonaparte had compelled the English to retire, but not
before they had destroyed the arsenal and the whole of the French
navy.
On the beach, fifteen thousand refugees from various parts of France
sought to get away to the combined English and Spanish fleets.
A storm arose in the midst of this destruction. Seven thousand were
rescued from the vengeance of the Republican arms; eight thousand
perished.
These refugees were chiefly carried to Leghorn, where their
descendants still reside.
The Convention ordered that Toulon should be razed to the ground for
having submitted to the English.
This frantic order, however, was not carried out.
Napoleon was now Emperor of Toulon. Already he disobeyed orders, and
rose daily to power.
Marat had risen over the Girondists and Liberals, Danton over him;
Robespierre was to destroy Danton, but Napoleon was to set his foot
upon them all, and command, until, in his turn, in 1815, he was to
succumb.
CHAPTER LXII.
THE BLOOD OF WOMEN.
Madame Roland who had now been imprisoned through five long months,
was the next celebrated victim demanded by the people. She had
conquered her weariness by writing her life.
At one time, she sought to avoid death by poison; but the memory of
her child prevailed, and she lived on to the end.
When the Girondists fell, she knew all hope of life for herself was
at an end. She was then removed to the prison whence Marie Antoinette
went to the scaffold—nay, she was imprisoned in the adjoining cell;
and here she passed her days, watching the fragment of sky she could
see through the bars of her prison, or admiring the little bunches
of flowers the gaoler’s good-hearted wife sent to her dungeon almost
daily.
She was tried for being the wife of Roland, and the friend of the
Girondists. She was proud of the accusation, declared herself to be
so, and she heard her condemnation to death with a calm bearing and a
smiling face.
“I thank you,” she said, “that you think me worthy to share the fate
of great and good men.”
That same day she was placed in the last of a number of carts, her
only companion being an old man. Her beauty was more than radiant,
seated so near trembling age.
She wore a white dress, and her long black hair streamed down her
back.
Near the scaffold had been erected a colossal statue of Liberty. When
she ascended the scaffold, she bowed to the statue, and cried, “Oh
Liberty, how much crime is committed in your name!”
But she had shown her woman’s tenderness at the foot of the scaffold.
She said to her companion, “Go first, that you may not see me die.
Let me save you that pain.”
She died quite fearlessly.
The next day, some peasants, driving home their flocks, found the
dead body of a man, a sword-stick blade through his heart. The
position of the remains proved suicide, effected by putting the
sword-handle against a tree, when the sufferer flung himself upon the
point. A paper found upon the dead man contained these words:—
“Whoever thou art that findest these remains, respect them as those
of a virtuous man. After my wife’s death, I will not remain another
day upon this earth, so stained with crimes.”
This was Madame Roland’s husband.
Very different from this honest woman’s death was that of Madame
Dubarry, mistress of Louis XV. Her crime was the concealment of a
treasure. As a King’s favorite, she had amassed enormous wealth.
Strangely enough, it was a favorite of her own—a negro boy she had
adopted—that denounced her. She was condemned, and she went shrieking
to the scaffold—the only instance of this kind amongst all the women
who died during the Reign of Terror.
Her beauty was her crime.
“Life!” she cried. “Life for repentance—for devotion to the Republic!
All my treasures for a little life!”
The knife only cut short these ignoble cries.
The next thing done was the abolition of the name of the days of the
weeks and months of the year, because they were idolatrous.
Finally, the Catholic faith was abolished, the church bells were cast
into money, the worship of the Goddess of Reason, was proclaimed.
The proclamation was carried into effect at the Cathedral. An
actress, one Mdlle. Maillard, beautiful, talented, and a favorite of
the late Queen’s, was compelled to play the part of the goddess.
She was borne into the church (the only one now open in all Paris)
upon a kind of litter, covered with oak branches, and followed by
girls dressed in white, singing jubilant songs. About the altar were
the opera choristers and others. The actress was now placed upon the
altar, and she was worshipped by those present. The Bishop had been
compelled to appear, and he sat motionless with fear, tears of shame
coursing down his face.
The burial places of the Kings were now invaded. The remains of a
thousand years of kings were torn from the vaults of St. Denis, and
cast into the country ditches. Nothing was spared—anything which
suggested royalty, was destroyed.
Meanwhile, Carrier, at Nantes, surpassed in outrage all that had gone
before him. It was charitable to suppose he was sheer mad.
Men, women, children, and especially priests, were shot down by
Carrier’s orders. He said trial was useless. His rivals had abandoned
the guillotine for the butchery of the soldier’s lead. Carrier
improved upon this. He said he hated blood, so he positively sank
hundreds, thousands of accused, in huge barges. They were carried
down to the bottom, and there to this day they remain.
Carrier was the deputy sent by the Convention, of which Robespierre
was now King.
These massacres lasted months. Some complaints were sent to Paris.
Carrier seized two hundred of the principal merchants of the place,
cast them into prison, tortured them, and then drowned the men.
At last, his madness becoming apparent, he was recalled. Robespierre
did not demand his punishment; and this omission of justice was one
of the accusations brought against Robespierre at _his_ trial.
A woman began the attack upon Robespierre. She was Rose Lacombe,
beautiful, eloquent, revolutionary; but pitying and hating blood. She
was seized with love for a young prisoner, tried to save him, failed,
and she devoted herself to Robespierre’s death.
Robespierre, to retain his popularity, determined to sacrifice
Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and others. They fell—all of them.
As these victims, on their way to execution, passed Duplay’s house,
the shutters of which were closed, the crowd burst into a roar of
applause. Robespierre watching, trembled.
A very short span, and his time was to come.
Herault de Sechelles was the first to alight from the cart. He turned
to embrace Danton, when the executioner pulled him away.
“Brute!” said Danton; “but you cannot prevent our lips touching in
the basket.”
Camille Desmoulins was the last but one of the four. He was quite
resigned. He looked at the knife, then turning to the people, he
said, “Look on at the end of the first apostle of liberty! He who
murders me will not survive me long!”
“Send this lock of hair to my mother,” he said to the executioner.
They were his last words.
Danton ascended last. He never looked more haughty and defiant. For
one moment he broke down. “Wife!” he screamed.
Then he added, “Come, come, Danton; no weakness. Executioner, show my
head to the people; it is worth looking at!”
The executioner caught the head as it was falling, and carried it
round the scaffold.
The mob applauded. Such is the end of favorites.
Eight thousand people were awaiting death in the prisons of Paris
alone, within a month of Danton’s death.
Robespierre was delicate and decent in his power and supreme cruelty,
but he capped all his compeers. Men and women were not shot or
drowned in Paris, but the guillotine worked unceasingly.
Certain children had, in 1791, taken part in receiving the Prussian
General at Verdun. They were all brought to Paris, and guillotined.
The nuns of Montmartre were carried, abbess, young girls, and old
women, all to the scaffold—for praying! As the Girondists sang their
hymns, so these poor women sang theirs. The last death ended the last
note of this hymn.
It was thus Robespierre—now alone of all those with whom he first
came into power—and his satellites maintained their power.
One, and only one, grown-up scion of royalty remained—Madame
Elizabeth.
It was then more than a year since the King died. She and the
Princess remained together—deprived even of cards, because of the
kings and queens in the pack.
As for the Dauphin, he was confined in a room the bed of which he
never left. His bread was thrown to him. No one ever spoke to him,
and his clothes had not been changed for nearly twelve months. His
window would not open. He was allowed no books, paper, or playthings;
in a word, he was brutalized at six years of age. His limbs
stiffened, and he became an idiot, in which state he died.
The aunt and sister could hear nothing about the child. They were
treated tolerably well, but during Lent they were only given fat meat
to eat. This their consciences would not allow them to touch, and for
forty days they only ate bread.
The summons came suddenly at night-time. The little Princess, the
only one of the five prisoners of the Temple who survived the Reign
of Terror, wept, clung to her aunt—but lost her.
Her defence was very simple:—“I am tried because I am the King’s
sister. You call him a tyrant. Had he been, you would not have been
where you are; I not be where I am!”
The people demanded her life, and they obtained it.
The very women who generally yelled around the carts were dumb, as
this serene, angelic woman was carried through the streets. She died
so peacefully, that many envied her.
CHAPTER LXIII.
ROBESPIERRE FALLS.
Atheism was now preached openly.
Robespierre pronounced in favor of an unknown deity, and in so
magnificent a speech, that it may be said he gave back religion to
France.
But his time had come.
What was his crime in the eyes of his accusers? Unpopularity.
One night he is addressing the Convention, when the uproar is so
incessant, that in endeavoring to make himself heard, his voice fails
him.
The people were already looking towards Napoleon—the man of the
sword, not of the tongue.
Robespierre fell back upon silence, but he was always to be seen at
his place at the Convention. Hour after hour, friends became enemies.
He knew he was condemned, but he waited.
Here is the final scene:—
Robespierre and his friends, St. Just, Couthon, and Lebas, seated in
a room by themselves, hear the jingle of approaching soldiers. Lebas
takes one of a couple of pistols, and presents it—“Robespierre, let
us die.”
“No; I await the executioner,” says Robespierre, and the other two
murmur in assent.
The sounds come nearer.
A report—and Lebas falls. He has shot himself through the heart.
The soldier-insurgents swarm into the room.
“Down with the tyrant! Where is he?”
These were the cries Robespierre heard.
He did not quail.
“Which is the man?” asks a soldier of Léonard Bourdon, who did not
face his fallen enemy.
He pointed the questioner’s pistol at Robespierre, and he said, “That
is the man.”
The report was heard, and the next moment Robespierre’s head fell
upon the proclamation he was signing at the instant.
The ball had entered the left side of the face, and carried away part
of the cheek and several teeth.
Couthon tried to rise, and fell to the ground.
St. Just sat calmly glancing from his fallen friend to his enemies.
The procession to the Convention was horrible enough. It was now
daybreak.
First was carried Robespierre, on a litter, his face tied up in a
handkerchief; then came his brother, insensible, in the arms of two
men; then followed the dead body of Lebas, over which they had thrown
a table-cover.
Couthon, who had rolled in the mud, followed; and the procession was
closed by St. Just, walking bare-headed.
“The recreant Robespierre is here!” said the President of the
Convention, a man just chosen. “Shall he be brought in?”
“No, no!” cried the Conventionists. “The corpse of a tyrant can carry
nothing but contagion along with it. To the scaffold!”
Robespierre was put aside in a room, and hundreds of people pushed in
to assure themselves the tyrant was dead.
He heard and saw all; but could not speak.
At three, he and his friends were tried. At six, they were being
conveyed in carts to execution.
There was no lack of people to see Robespierre die; women dressed as
for a ball, believing that with Robespierre the Reign of Terror was
at an end.
Children huddled around the carts—orphans of his victims—crying,
“Kill him! kill him!”
His procession to the scaffold was a line of loud-spoken imprecations.
He never spoke or uttered a cry, except when the bandage was taken
from his face; then a scream, heard many hundred yards away, burst
from him.
His head fell—he and the Terror ended together.
France fell into the hands of Napoleon.
* * * * *
My tale is done. I have said very little about myself—I, Réné Besson,
found in my old age by Alexander Dumas, seated in the sunlight. I
married Estelle Duplay (the furies broke into the house of Duplay,
the day after Robespierre’s death, and killed his poor wife), and
found peace and happiness. One last word! I have never regretted
saving Sophie Gerbaut, and the Viscount de Malmy, from the Terror.
That I did. I am now an old man. My very last words are these. The
Revolution was terrible, but it did the world more good in the long
run than the world has yet found out.
RÉNÉ BESSON.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A name the Queen gave to Pitt.
[2] Grandfather of the Henri de Rochefort who writes the _Lanterne_.
* * * * *
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_Reduced in price from $2.50 to $1.50 a volume._
_This edition is printed on fine paper, from large, clear type,
leaded, that all can read, containing One Hundred and Eighty
Illustrations on tinted paper, and each book is complete in one
large duodecimo volume._
Our Mutual Friend, Cloth, $1.50
Pickwick Papers, Cloth, 1.50
Nicholas Nickleby, Cloth, 1.50
Great Expectations, Cloth, 1.50
David Copperfield, Cloth, 1.50
Oliver Twist, Cloth, 1.50
Bleak House, Cloth, 1.50
A Tale of Two Cities, Cloth, 1.50
Little Dorrit, Cloth, 1.50
Dombey and Son, Cloth, 1.50
Christmas Stories, Cloth, 1.50
Sketches by “Boz,” Cloth, 1.50
Barnaby Rudge, Cloth, 1.50
Martin Chuzzlewit, Cloth, 1.50
Old Curiosity Shop, Cloth, 1.50
Dickens’ New Stories, Cloth, 1.50
American Notes; and The Uncommercial Traveler, Cloth, 1.50
Hunted Down; and other Reprinted Pieces, Cloth, 1.50
The Holly-Tree Inn; and other Stories, Cloth, 1.50
Price of a set, in Black cloth, in nineteen volumes, $28.00
” ” Full sheep, Library style, 38.00
” ” Half calf, sprinkled edges, 47.00
” ” Half calf, marbled edges, 53.00
” ” Half calf, antique, 57.00
” ” Half calf, full gilt backs, etc., 57.00
ILLUSTRATED DUODECIMO EDITION.
_Reduced in price from $2.00 to $1.50 a volume._
_This edition is printed on the finest paper, from large, clear
type, leaded, Long Primer in size, that all can read, the whole
containing near Six Hundred full page Illustrations, printed on
tinted paper, from designs by Cruikshank, Phiz, Browne, Maclise,
McLenan, and other artists. The following books are each contained
in two volumes._
Our Mutual Friend, Cloth, $3.00
Pickwick Papers, Cloth, 3.00
Tale of Two Cities, Cloth, 3.00
Nicholas Nickleby, Cloth, 3.00
David Copperfield, Cloth, 3.00
Oliver Twist, Cloth, 3.00
Christmas Stories, Cloth, 3.00
Bleak House, Cloth, 3.00
Sketches by “Boz,” Cloth, 3.00
Barnaby Rudge, Cloth, 3.00
Martin Chuzzlewit, Cloth, 3.00
Old Curiosity Shop, Cloth, 3.00
Little Dorrit, Cloth, 3.00
Dombey and Son, Cloth, 3.00
_The following are each complete in one volume, and are reduced in
price from $2.50 to $1.50 a volume._
Great Expectations, Cloth, $1.50
Dickens’ New Stories, Cloth, 1.50
American Notes; and The Uncommercial Traveler, Cloth, 1.50
Hunted Down; and other Reprinted Pieces, Cloth, 1.50
The Holly-Tree Inn; and other Stories, Cloth, 1.50
Price of a set, in thirty-three volumes, bound in cloth, $49.00
” ” Full sheep, Library style, 66.00
” ” Half calf, antique, 99.00
” ” Half calf, full gilt backs, etc., 99.00
CHARLES DICKENS’ WORKS.
ILLUSTRATED OCTAVO EDITION.
_Reduced in price from $2.50 to $2.00 a volume._
_This edition is printed from large type, double column, octavo
page, each book being complete in one volume, the whole containing
near Six Hundred Illustrations, by Cruikshank, Phiz, Browne,
Maclise, and other artists._
Our Mutual Friend, Cloth, $2.00
Pickwick Papers, Cloth, 2.00
Nicholas Nickleby, Cloth, 2.00
Great Expectations, Cloth, 2.00
Lamplighter’s Story, Cloth, 2.00
Oliver Twist, Cloth, 2.00
Bleak House, Cloth, 2.00
Little Dorrit, Cloth, 2.00
Dombey and Son, Cloth, 2.00
Sketches by “Boz,” Cloth, 2.00
David Copperfield, Cloth, 2.00
Barnaby Rudge, Cloth, 2.00
Martin Chuzzlewit, Cloth, 2.00
Old Curiosity Shop, Cloth, 2.00
Christmas Stories, Cloth, 2.00
Dickens’ New Stories, Cloth, 2.00
A Tale of Two Cities, Cloth, 2.00
American Notes and Pic-Nic Papers, Cloth, 2.00
Price of a set, in Black cloth, in eighteen volumes, $36.00
” ” Full sheep, Library style, 45.00
” ” Half calf, sprinkled edges, 55.00
” ” Half calf, marbled edges, 62.00
” ” Half calf, antique, 70.00
” ” Half calf, full gilt backs, etc., 70.00
“NEW NATIONAL EDITION” OF DICKENS’ WORKS.
This is the cheapest complete edition of the works of Charles
Dickens, “Boz,” published in the world, being contained in _seven
large octavo volumes_, with a portrait of Charles Dickens, and
other illustrations, the whole making nearly _six thousand very
large double columned pages_, in large, clear type, and handsomely
printed on fine white paper, and bound in the strongest and most
substantial manner.
Price of a set, in Black cloth, in seven volumes, $20.00
” ” Full sheep, Library style, 25.00
” ” Half calf, antique, 30.00
” ” Half calf, full gilt back, etc., 30.00
CHEAP SALMON PAPER COVER EDITION.
_Each book being complete in one large octavo volume._
Pickwick Papers, 35
Nicholas Nickleby, 35
Dombey and Son, 35
David Copperfield, 25
Martin Chuzzlewit, 35
Old Curiosity Shop, 25
Oliver Twist, 25
American Notes, 25
Great Expectations, 25
Hard Times, 25
A Tale of Two Cities, 25
Somebody’s Luggage, 25
Message from the Sea, 25
Barnaby Rudge, 25
Sketches by “Boz,” 25
Christmas Stories, 25
The Haunted House, 25
Uncommercial Traveler, 25
A House to Let, 25
Perils of English Prisoners, 25
Wreck of the Golden Mary, 25
Tom Tiddler’s Ground, 25
Our Mutual Friend, 35
Bleak House, 35
Little Dorrit, 35
Joseph Grimaldi, 50
The Pic-Nic Papers, 50
No Thoroughfare, 10
Hunted Down, 25
The Holly-Tree Inn, 25
Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings and Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy, 25
Mugby Junction and Dr. Marigold’s Prescriptions, 25
CHARLES LEVER’S BEST WORKS.
Charles O’Malley, 75
Harry Lorrequer, 75
Jack Hinton, 75
Tom Burke of Ours, 75
Knight of Gwynne, 75
Arthur O’Leary, 75
Con Cregan, 75
Davenport Dunn, 75
Above are each in paper, or finer edition in cloth, price $2.00 each.
Horace Templeton, 75
Kate O’Donoghue, 75
MADAME GEORGE SAND’S WORKS.
Consuelo, 75
Countess of Rudolstadt, 75
First and True Love, 75
The Corsair, 50
Jealousy, paper, 1 50
Do. cloth, 1 75
Fanchon, the Cricket, paper, 1 00
Do. do. cloth, 1 50
Indiana, a Love Story, paper, 1 50
Do. do. cloth, 1 75
Consuelo and Rudolstadt, both
in one volume, cloth, 2 00
WILKIE COLLINS’ BEST WORKS.
The Crossed Path, or Basil, 1 50
The Dead Secret, 12 mo. 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
Hide and Seek, 75
After Dark, 75
The Dead Secret. 8vo. 75
Above in cloth at $1.00 each.
The Queen’s Revenge, 75
Mad Monkton, 50
Sights a-Foot, 50
The Stolen Mask, 25
The Yellow Mask, 25
Sister Rose, 25
MISS PARDOE’S WORKS.
Confessions of a Pretty Woman, 75
The Wife’s Trials, 75
The Jealous Wife, 50
Rival Beauties, 75
Romance of the Harem, 75
The five above books are also bound in one volume, cloth, for $4.00.
The Adopted Heir. One volume, paper, $1.50; or in cloth, $1 75
The Earl’s Secret. One volume, paper, $1.50; or in cloth, 1 75
MRS. HENRY WOOD’S BOOKS.
Red Court Farm, 1 50
Elster’s Folly, 1 50
St. Martin’s Eve, 1 50
Mildred Arkell, 1 50
Shadow of Ashlydyat, 1 50
Oswald Cray, 1 50
Verner’s Pride, 1 50
Lord Oakburn’s Daughters; or, the Earl’s Heirs, 1 50
Squire Trevlyn’s Heir; or, Trevlyn Hold, 1 50
The Castle’s Heir; or, Lady Adelaide’s Oath, 1 50
Above are each in paper cover, or each one in cloth, for $1.75 each.
The Mystery, 75
A Life’s Secret, 50
Above are each in paper cover, or each one in cloth, for $1.00 each.
The Channings, 1 00
Aurora Floyd, 75
Above are each in paper cover, or each one in cloth, for $1.50 each.
Orville College, 50
The Runaway Match, 50
The Lost Will, 50
The Haunted Tower, 50
The Lost Bank Note, 75
Better for Worse, 75
Foggy Night at Offord, 25
The Lawyer’s Secret, 25
William Allair, 25
A Light and a Dark Christmas, 25
GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS’ WORKS.
Mysteries of Court of London, 1 00
Rose Foster. Sequel to it, 1 50
Carolina of Brunswick, 1 00
Venetia Trelawney, 1 00
Lord Saxondale, 1 00
Count Christoval, 1 00
Rosa Lambert, 1 00
Mary Price, 1 00
Eustace Quentin, 1 00
Joseph Wilmot, 1 00
Banker’s Daughter, 1 00
Kenneth, 1 00
The Rye-House Plot, 1 00
The Necromancer, 1 00
The above are each in paper or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
The Opera Dancer, 75
Child of Waterloo, 75
Robert Bruce, 75
Discarded Queen, 75
The Gipsy Chief, 75
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, 75
Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, 1 00
Isabella Vincent, 75
Vivian Bertram, 75
Countess of Lascelles, 75
Loves of the Harem, 75
Ellen Percy, 75
Agnes Evelyn, 75
The Soldier’s Wife, 75
May Middleton, 75
Duke of Marchmont, 75
Massacre of Glencoe, 75
Queen Joanna; Court Naples, 75
Pickwick Abroad, 75
Parricide, 75
The Ruined Gamester, 50
Ciprina; or, the Secrets of a Picture Gallery, 50
Life in Paris, 50
Countess and the Page, 50
Edgar Montrose, 50
WAVERLEY NOVELS. BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.
CHEAPEST EDITION IN THE WORLD.
Ivanhoe, 20
Rob Roy, 20
Guy Mannering, 20
The Antiquary, 20
Old Mortality, 20
Heart of Mid Lothian, 20
Bride of Lammermoor, 20
Waverley, 20
St. Ronan’s Well, 20
Kenilworth, 20
The Pirate, 20
The Monastery, 20
The Abbot, 20
The Fortunes of Nigel, 20
The Betrothed, 20
Peveril of the Peak, 20
Quentin Durward, 20
Red Gauntlet, 20
The Talisman, 20
Woodstock, 20
Highland Widow, etc., 20
The Fair Maid of Perth, 20
Anne of Geierstein, 20
Count Robert of Paris, 20
The Black Dwarf and Legend of Montrose, 20
Castle Dangerous, and Surgeon’s Daughter, 20
Above edition is the cheapest in the world, and is complete in
twenty-six volumes, price Twenty cents each, or Five Dollars for the
complete set.
A finer edition is also published of each of the above, complete in
twenty-six volumes, price Fifty cents each, or Ten Dollars for the
complete set.
Moredun. A Tale of 1210, 50
Tales of a Grandfather, 25
Scott’s Poetical Works, 5 00
Life of Scott, cloth, 2 50
“NEW NATIONAL EDITION” OF “WAVERLEY NOVELS.”
This edition of the Waverley Novels is contained in _five large
octavo volumes_, with a portrait of Sir Walter Scott, making _four
thousand very large double columned pages_, in good type, and
handsomely printed on the finest of white paper, and bound in the
strongest and most substantial manner.
Price of a set, in Black cloth, in five volumes, $15 00
” ” Full sheep, Library style, 17 50
” ” Half calf, antique, or Half calf, gilt, 25 00
The Complete Prose and Poetical Work of Sir Walter Scott,
are also published in ten volumes, bound in half calf, for $60.00
HUMOROUS AMERICAN WORKS.
_Beautifully Illustrated by Felix O. C. Darley._
Major Jones’ Courtship, 75
Major Jones’ Travels, 75
Simon Suggs’ Adventures and Travels, 75
Major Jones’ Chronicles of Pineville, 75
Polly Peablossom’s Wedding, 75
Mysteries of the Backwoods, 75
Widow Rugby’s Husband, 75
Big Bear of Arkansas, 75
Western Scenes; or, Life on the Prairie, 75
Streaks of Squatter Life, 75
Pickings from the Picayune, 75
Stray Subjects, Arrested and Bound Over, 75
Louisiana Swamp Doctor, 75
Charcoal Sketches, 75
Misfortunes of Peter Faber, 75
Yankee among the Mermaids, 75
New Orleans Sketch Book, 75
Drama in Pokerville, 75
The Querndon Hounds, 75
My Shooting Box, 75
Warwick Woodlands, 75
The Deer Stalkers, 75
Peter Ploddy, 75
Adventures of Captain Farrago, 75
Major O’Regan’s Adventures, 75
Sol. Smith’s Theatrical Apprenticeship, 75
Sol. Smith’s Theatrical Journey-Work, 75
The Quarter Race in Kentucky, 75
Aunt Patty’s Scrap Bag, 75
Percival Mayberry’s Adventures and Travels, 75
Sam Slick’s Yankee Yarns and Yankee Letters, 75
Adventures of Fudge Fumble, 75
American Joe Miller, 50
Following the Drum, 50
DISRAELI’S WORKS.
Henrietta Temple, 50
Vivian Grey, 75
Venetia, 50
Young Duke, 50
Miriam Alroy, 50
Contarina Fleming, 50
FRANK FAIRLEGH’S WORKS.
Frank Fairlegh, 75
Lewis Arundel, 75
Harry Racket Scapegrace, 75
Tom Racquet, 75
Finer editions of above are also issued in cloth, at $1.75 each.
Harry Coverdale’s Courtship, 1 50
Lorrimer Littlegood, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
C. J. PETERSON’S WORKS.
The Old Stone Mansion, 1 50
Kate Aylesford, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
Cruising in the Last War, 75
Valley Farm, 25
Grace Dudley; or, Arnold at Saratoga, 50
JAMES A. MAITLAND’S WORKS.
The Old Patroon, 1 50
The Watchman, 1 50
The Wanderer, 1 50
The Lawyer’s Story, 1 50
Diary of an Old Doctor, 1 50
Sartaroe, 1 50
The Three Cousins, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
WILLIAM H. MAXWELL’S WORKS.
Wild Sports of the West, 75
Stories of Waterloo, 75
Brian O’Lynn, 75
WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH’S WORKS.
Life of Jack Sheppard, 50
Life of Guy Fawkes, 75
Above in 1 vol., cloth, $1.75.
Court of the Stuarts, 75
Windsor Castle, 75
The Star Chamber, 75
Old St. Paul’s, 75
Court of Queen Anne, 50
Life of Dick Turpin, 50
Life of Davy Crockett, 50
Tower of London, 1 50
Miser’s Daughter, 1 00
Above in cloth $1.75 each.
Life of Grace O’Malley, 50
Life of Henry Thomas, 25
Desperadoes of the New World, 25
Life of Ninon De L’Enclos, 25
Life of Arthur Spring, 25
Life of Mrs. Whipple and Jesse Strang, 25
G. P. R. JAMES’S BEST BOOKS.
Lord Montague’s Page, 1 50
The Cavalier, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
The Man in Black, 75
Mary of Burgundy, 75
Arrah Neil, 75
Eva St. Clair, 50
DOW’S PATENT SERMONS.
Dow’s Patent Sermons, 1st Series, $1.00; cloth, 1 50
Dow’s Patent Sermons, 2d Series, $1.00; cloth, 1 50
Dow’s Patent Sermons, 3d Series, $1.00; cloth, 1 50
Dow’s Patent Sermons, 4th Series, $1.00; cloth, 1 50
SAMUEL C. WARREN’S BEST BOOKS.
Ten Thousand a Year, paper, 1 50
Do. do. cloth, 2 00
Diary of a Medical Student, 75
Q. K. PHILANDER DOESTICKS’ WORKS.
Doesticks’ Letters, 1 50
Plu-Ri-Bus-Tah, 1 50
The Elephant Club, 1 50
Witches of New York, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
GREEN’S WORKS ON GAMBLING.
Gambling Exposed, 1 50
The Gambler’s Life, 1 50
The Reformed Gambler, 1 50
Secret Band of Brothers, 1 50
Above are each in paper cover, or each one in cloth, for $1.75 each.
MISS ELLEN PICKERING’S WORKS.
The Grumbler, 75
Marrying for Money, 75
Poor Cousin, 50
Kate Walsingham, 50
Orphan Niece, 50
Who Shall be Heir? 38
The Squire, 38
Ellen Wareham, 38
Nan Darrel, 38
CAPTAIN MARRYATT’S WORKS.
Jacob Faithful, 50
Japhet in Search of a Father, 50
Phantom Ship, 50
Midshipman Easy, 50
Pacha of Many Tales, 50
Frank Mildmay, Naval Officer, 50
Snarleyow, 50
Newton Forster, 50
King’s Own, 50
Pirate and Three Cutters, 50
Peter Simple, 50
Percival Keene, 50
Poor Jack, 50
Sea King, 50
EUGENE SUE’S GREAT WORKS.
Wandering Jew, 1 50
Mysteries of Paris, 1 50
Martin, the Foundling, 1 50
Above in cloth at $2.00 each.
First Love, 50
Woman’s Love, 50
Female Bluebeard, 50
Man-of-War’s-Man, 50
Life and Adventures of Raoul De Surville, 25
MRS. GREY’S WORKS.
Cousin Harry, 1 50
The Little Beauty, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
Gipsy’s Daughter, 50
Old Dower House, 50
Belle of the Family, 50
Duke and Cousin, 50
The Little Wife, 50
Lena Cameron, 50
Sybil Lennard, 50
Manœuvring Mother, 50
Baronet’s Daughters, 50
Young Prima Donna, 50
Hyacinthe, 25
Alice Seymour, 25
Mary Seaham, 75
Passion and Principle, 75
The Flirt, 75
Good Society, 75
Lion-Hearted, 75
J. F. SMITH’S WORKS.
The Usurer’s Victim; or, Thomas Balscombe, 75
Adelaide Waldegrave; or, the Trials of a Governess, 75
REVOLUTIONARY TALES.
The Brigand, 50
Ralph Rannion, 50
Seven Brothers of Wyoming, 50
The Rebel Bride, 50
The Flying Artillerist, 50
Wau-nan-gee, 50
Old Put: or, Days of 1776, 50
Legends of Mexico, 50
Grace Dudley, 50
The Guerilla Chief, 75
The Quaker Soldier, paper, 1 50
do. do. cloth, 1 75
EMERSON BENNETT’S WORKS.
The Border Rover, 1 50
Clara Moreland, 1 50
Viola; or Adventures in the Far South-West, 1 50
Bride of the Wilderness, 1 50
Ellen Norbury, 1 50
The Forged Will, 1 50
Kate Clarendon, 1 50
The above are each in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.75 each.
The Heiress of Bellefonte, and Walde-Warren, 75
Pioneer’s Daughter and the Unknown Countess, 75
T. S. ARTHUR’S HOUSEHOLD NOVELS.
The Lost Bride, 50
The Two Brides, 50
Love in a Cottage, 50
Love in High Life, 50
Year after Marriage, 50
The Lady at Home, 50
Cecelia Howard, 50
Orphan Children, 50
Debtor’s Daughter, 50
Mary Moreton, 50
The Divorced Wife, 50
Pride and Prudence, 50
Agnes; or, the Possessed, 50
Lucy Sandford, 50
The Banker’s Wife, 50
The Two Merchants, 50
Trial and Triumph, 50
The Iron Rule, 50
Insubordination: or, the Shoemaker’s Daughters, 50
Six Nights with the Washingtonians. With nine original
Illustrations. By Cruikshank. One volume, cloth $1 75;
or in paper $ 1.50
Lizzy Glenn; or, the Trials of a Seamstress. Cloth $1.75;
or paper, 1.50
EXCITING SEA TALES.
Adventures of Ben Brace, 75
Jack Adams, the Mutineer, 75
Jack Ariel’s Adventures, 75
Petrel; or, Life on the Ocean, 75
Life of Paul Periwinkle, 75
Life of Tom Bowling, 75
Percy Effingham, 75
Cruising in the Last War, 75
Red King, 50
The Corsair, 50
The Doomed Ship, 50
The Three Pirates, 50
The Flying Dutchman, 50
The Flying Yankee, 50
The Yankee Middy, 50
The Gold Seekers, 50
The King’s Cruisers, 50
Life of Alexander Tardy, 50
Red Wing, 50
Yankee Jack, 50
Yankees in Japan, 50
Morgan, the Buccaneer, 50
Jack Junk, 50
Davis, the Pirate, 50
Valdez, the Pirate, 50
Gallant Tom, 50
Harry Helm, 50
Hurry Tempest, 50
Rebel and Rover, 50
Man-of-War’s-Man, 50
Dark Shades of City Life, 25
The Rats of the Seine, 25
Charles Ransford, 25
The Iron Cross, 25
The River Pirates, 25
The Pirate’s Son, 25
Jacob Faithful, 50
Phantom Ship, 50
Midshipman Easy, 50
Pacha of Many Tales, 50
Naval Officer, 50
Snarleyow, 50
Newton Forster, 50
King’s Own, 50
Japhet, 50
Pirate and Three Cutters, 50
Peter Simple, 50
Percival Keene, 50
Poor Jack, 50
Sea King, 50
GEORGE LIPPARD’S GREAT BOOKS.
The Quaker City, 1 50
Paul Ardenheim, 1 50
Blanche of Brandywine, 1 50
Washington and his Generals; or,
Legends of the American Revolution, 1 50
Mysteries of Florence 1 00
Above in cloth at $2.00 each.
The Empire City, 75
Memoirs of a Preacher, 75
The Nazarene, 75
Washington and his Men, 75
Legends of Mexico, 50
The Entranced, 25
The Robbers, 25
The Bank Director’s Son, 25
MILITARY NOVELS. BY BEST AUTHORS.
With Illuminated Military Covers, in five Colors.
Charles O’Malley, 75
Jack Hinton, the Guardsman, 75
The Knight of Gwynne, 75
Harry Lorrequer, 75
Tom Burke of Ours, 75
Arthur O’Leary, 75
Con Cregan, 75
Kate O’Donoghue, 75
Horace Templeton, 75
Davenport Dunn, 75
Jack Adams’ Adventures, 75
Valentine Vox, 75
Twin Lieutenants, 75
Stories of Waterloo, 75
The Soldier’s Wife, 75
Guerilla Chief, 75
The Three Guardsmen, 75
Twenty Years After, 75
Bragelonne, Son of Athos, 75
Forty-five Guardsmen, 75
Tom Bowling’s Adventures, 75
Life of Robert Bruce, 75
The Gipsy Chief, 75
Massacre of Glencoe, 75
Life of Guy Fawkes, 75
Child of Waterloo, 75
Adventures of Ben Brace, 75
Life of Jack Ariel, 75
Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, 1 00
Following the Drum, 50
The Conscript, a Tale of War.
By Alexander Dumas, 1 50
GUSTAVE AIMARD’S WORKS.
The White Scalper, 50
The Freebooters, 50
The Prairie Flower, 75
The Indian Scout, 75
The Trail Hunter, 75
The Indian Chief, 75
The Red Track, 75
Trapper’s Daughter, 75
The Tiger Slayer, 75
The Gold Seekers, 75
The Rebel Chief, 75
The Smuggler Chief, 75
The Border Rifles, 75
Pirates of the Prairies, 75
LANGUAGES WITHOUT A MASTER.
French without a Master, 40
Spanish without a Master, 40
Latin without a Master, 40
German without a Master, 40
Italian without a Master, 40
The above five works on the French, German, Spanish, Latin, and
Italian Languages, whereby any one or all of these Languages can be
learned by any one without a Teacher, with the aid of this book,
by A. H. Monteith, Esq., is also published in finer style, in one
volume, bound, price, $1.75.
HARRY COCKTON’S WORKS.
Sylvester Sound, 75
Valentine Vox, in paper, 75
do. finer edition, cloth, 2 00
The Sisters, 75
The Steward, 75
Percy Effingham, 75
WAR NOVELS. BY HENRY MORFORD.
Shoulder Straps, 1 50
The Coward, 1 50
The Days of Shoddy. A History of the late War, 1 50
Above are each in paper cover, or each one in cloth, for $1.75 each.
LIVES OF HIGHWAYMEN.
Life of John A. Murrel, 50
Life of Joseph T. Hare, 50
Life of Col. Monroe Edwards, 50
Life of Jack Sheppard, 50
Life of Jack Rann, 50
Life of Dick Turpin, 50
Life of Helen Jewett, 50
Desperadoes of the New World, 50
Mysteries of New Orleans, 50
The Robber’s Wife, 50
Obi; or, Three Fingered Jack, 50
Kit Clayton, 50
Life of Tom Waters, 50
Nat Blake, 50
Bill Horton, 50
Galloping Gus, 50
Life & Trial of Antoine Probst, 50
Ned Hastings, 50
Eveleen Wilson, 50
Diary of a Pawnbroker, 50
Silver and Pewter, 50
Sweeney Todd, 50
Life of Grace O’Malley, 50
Life of Davy Crockett, 50
Life of Sybil Grey, 50
Life of Jonathan Wild, 25
Life of Henry Thomas, 25
Life of Arthur Spring, 25
Life of Jack Ketch, 25
Life of Ninon De L’Enclos, 25
Life of the Felons, 25
Life of Mrs. Whipple, 25
Life of Biddy Woodhull, 25
Life of Mother Brownrigg, 25
Dick Parker, the Pirate, 25
Life of Mary Bateman, 25
Life of Captain Blood, 25
Capt. Blood and the Beagles, 25
Sixteen-Stringed Jack’s Fight for Life, 25
Highwayman’s Avenger, 25
Life of Raoul De Surville, 25
Life of Rody the Rover, 25
Life of Galloping Dick, 25
Life of Guy Fawkes, 75
Life and Adventures of Vidocq, 1 50
MILITARY AND ARMY BOOKS.
Ellsworth’s Zouave Drill, 25
U. S. Government Infantry & Rifle Tactics, 25
U. S. Light Infantry Drill, 25
The Soldier’s Companion, 25
The Soldier’s Guide, 25
WORKS AT 75 CENTS. BY BEST AUTHORS.
Hans Breitman’s Party. With other Ballads. New and Enlarged
Edition, printed on Tinted paper. By Charles G. Leland, 75
Webster and Hayne’s Speeches in Reply to Colonel Foote, 75
The Brigand; or, the Demon of the North. By Victor Hugo, 75
Roanoke; or, Where is Utopia? By C. H. Wiley. Illustrated, 75
Banditti of the Prairie, 75
Tom Racquet, 75
Red Indians of Newfoundland, 75
Salathiel, by Croly, 75
Corinne; or, Italy, 75
Ned Musgrave, 75
Aristocracy, 75
Inquisition in Spain, 75
Elsie’s Married Life, 75
Leyton Hall. By Mark Lemon, 75
Flirtations in America, 75
The Coquette, 75
Thackeray’s Irish Sketch Book, 75
Whitehall, 75
The Beautiful Nun, 75
Mysteries of Three Cities, 75
Genevra. By Miss Fairfield, 75
New Hope; or, the Rescue, 75
Crock of Gold. By Tupper, 75
Twins and Heart. By Tupper, 75
WORKS AT 50 CENTS. BY BEST AUTHORS.
The Woman in Red. A Companion to the “Woman in Black,” 50
Twelve Months of Matrimony. By Emelie F. Carlen, 50
Leah; or the Forsaken, 50
The Greatest Plague of Life, 50
Clifford and the Actress, 50
Two Lovers, 50
Ryan’s Mysteries of Marriage, 50
The Orphans and Caleb Field, 50
Moreton Hall, 50
Bell Brandon, 50
Sybil Grey, 50
Female Life in New York, 50
Agnes Grey, 50
Diary of a Physician, 50
The Emigrant Squire, 50
The Monk, by Lewis, 50
The Beautiful French Girl, 50
Father Clement, paper, 50
do. do. cloth, 75
Miser’s Heir, paper, 50
do. do. cloth, 75
The Admiral’s Daughter, 50
The American Joe Miller, 50
Ella Stratford, 50
Josephine, by Grace Aguilar, 50
The Fortune Hunter, 50
The Orphan Sisters, 50
Robert Oaklands; or, the Outcast Orphan, 50
Abednego, the Money Lender, 50
Jenny Ambrose, 50
Father Tom and the Pope,
in cloth gilt, 75 cents, or paper, 50
The Romish Confessional, 50
Victims of Amusements, 50
Violet, 50
Alieford, a Family History, 50
General Scott’s $5 Portrait, 1 00
Henry Clay’s $5 Portrait, 1 00
Tangarua, a Poem, 1 00
WORKS AT 25 CENTS. BY BEST AUTHORS.
Aunt Margaret’s Trouble, 25
The Woman in Grey, 25
The Deformed, 25
Two Prima Donnas, 25
The Mysterious Marriage, 25
Jack Downing’s Letters, 25
The Mysteries of a Convent, 25
Rose Warrington, 25
The Iron Cross, 25
Charles Ransford, 25
The Mysteries of Bedlam, 25
The Nobleman’s Daughter, 25
Madison’s Exposition of Odd Fellowship, 25
Ghost Stories. Illustrated, 25
Ladies’ Science of Etiquette, 25
The Abbey of Innismoyle, 25
Gliddon’s Ancient Egypt, 25
Philip in Search of a Wife, 25
Rifle Shots, 25
THE SHAKSPEARE NOVELS.
The Secret Passion, 1 00
The Youth of Shakspeare, 1 00
Shakspeare and his Friends, 1 00
The three above Books are also published complete in one large octavo
volume, bound in cloth. Price Four Dollars.
PETERSONS’ ILLUMINATED STORIES.
Each Book being in an “ILLUMINATED COVER,” in five colors, full of
Illustrations. This is the most saleable series of 25 cent books ever
printed.
Rebel and Rover, 25
First Love, 25
The Two Merchants, 25
A Year After Marriage, 25
Love in High Life, 25
The Divorced Wife, 25
The Debtor’s Daughter, 25
The Lady at Home, 25
Mary Moreton, 25
The Two Brides, 25
Dick Parker, 25
Jack Ketch, 25
Mother Brownrigg, 25
Galloping Dick, 25
Mary Bateman, 25
Raoul de Surville, 25
Life of Harry Thomas, 25
Mrs. Whipple & Jesse Strang’s Adventures, 25
Jonathan Wild’s Adventures, 25
Ninon De L’Enclos’ Life, 25
The Iron Cross, 25
Biddy Woodhull the Beautiful Haymaker, 25
Tho River Pirates, 25
Dark Shades of City Life, 25
The Rats of the Seine, 25
Mysteries of Bedlam, 25
Charles Ransford, 25
Mysteries of a Convent, 25
The Mysterious Marriage, 25
Capt. Blood, the Highwayman, 25
Capt. Blood and the Beagles, 25
Highwayman’s Avenger, 25
Rody the Rover’s Adventures, 25
Sixteen-Stringed Jack’s Fight for Life, 25
Ghost Stories. Illustrated, 25
Arthur Spring, 25
The Valley Farm, 25
USEFUL BOOKS FOR ALL.
Lady’s and Gentleman’s Science of Etiquette. By Count
D’Orsay and Countess de Calabrella, with their portraits, 50
Lardner’s One Thousand and Ten Things Worth Knowing, 50
Knowlson’s Complete Farrier and Horse Doctor, 25
Knowlson’s Complete Cow and Cattle Doctor, 25
The Complete Kitchen and Fruit Gardener, 25
The Complete Florist and Flower Gardener, 25
Arthur’s Receipts for Preserving Fruits, etc., 12
LIVES OF GENERALS AND OTHER NOTED MEN.
Moore’s Life of Hon. Schuyler Colfax. By Rev. A. Y. Moore, of
South Bend. With a Fine Steel Portrait. One vol. cloth. Price 1 50
The Lives of Grant and Colfax. With life-like portraits of each,
and other engravings. Cloth, $1.00; or in paper cover, 75
Illustrated Life, Speeches, Martyrdom and Funeral of President
Abraham Lincoln. Cloth, $1.75; or in paper cover, 1 50
Life and Services of General Sheridan. Cloth, $1.00; or in paper, 75
Life, Battles, Reports, and Public Services of General George B.
McClellan. Price in paper 50 cents, or in cloth, 75
Life and Public Services of General George G. Meade, the Hero of
Gettysburg, 25
Life and Public Services of General Benjamin F. Butler, the Hero
of New Orleans, 25
Life of President Andrew Johnson. Cloth, $1.00; or in paper, 75
The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, cheap paper cover
edition, price 50 cents, or a finer edition, bound in cloth,
price, 1 50
Trial of the Assassins and Conspirators for the murder of
President Abraham Lincoln. Cloth, $1.50; or cheap edition in
paper cover, 50
Lives of Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair, Jr. Complete in
one duodecimo volume. Price 50 cents in paper, or in cloth, 75
Life of Archbishop Hughes, first Archbishop of New York, 25
LIEBIG’S WORKS ON CHEMISTRY.
Agricultural Chemistry, 25
Animal Chemistry, 25
Liebig’s celebrated Letters on the Potato Disease, 25
Liebig’s Complete Works on Chemistry, is also issued in one largo
octavo volume, bound in cloth. Price Two Dollars.
SIR E. L. BULWER’S NOVELS.
The Roue, 50
The Oxonians, 50
The Courtier, 25
Falkland, 25
DR. HOLLICK’S WORKS.
Dr. Hollick’s great work on the Anatomy and Physiology of the
Human Figure, with colored dissected plates of the Human
Figure, 1 25
Dr. Hollick’s Family Physician, a Pocket Guide for Everybody, 25
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN’S SPEECHES.
Union Speeches. In 2 vols., each 25
Speech to the Fenians, 25
Downfall of England, 10
Slavery and Emancipation 10
REV. CHAS. WADSWORTH’S SERMONS.
America’s Mission, 25
Thankfulness and Character, 25
A Thanksgiving Sermon, 15
Politics in Religion, 12
Henry Ward Beecher on War and Emancipation, 15
Rev. William T. Brantley’s Union Sermon, 15
EXPOSITIONS OF SECRET ORDERS, ETC.
Odd Fellowship Exposed, 13
Sons of Malta Exposed 13
Life of Rev. John N. Maffit, 13
Dr. Berg’s Answer to Archbishop Hughes, 13
Dr. Berg on the Jesuits, 13
RIDDELL’S MODEL ARCHITECT.
Architectural Designs of Model Country Residences. By John Riddell,
Practical Architect. Illustrated with twenty-two full page Front
Elevations, colored, with forty-four Plates of Ground Plans,
including the First and Second Stories, with plans of the stories,
full specifications of all the articles used, and estimate of price.
Price Fifteen Dollars a copy.
GOOD BOOKS FOR EVERYBODY.
Southern Life; or, Inside Views of Slavery, 1 00
The Rich Men of Philadelphia, Income Tax List of Residents, 1 00
Childbirth. Its pains lessened and its perils obviated. Showing
that the pains of childbirth may be mitigated, if not entirely
prevented, 1 00
Peterson’s Complete Coin Book, containing fac-similes of all the
Coins in the World, with the U. S. Mint value of each coin, 1 00
New Card of Stamp Duties, approved by the last Acts of Congress, 15
Political Lyrics. New Hampshire and Nebraska. Illustrated, 12
CHRISTY & WHITE’S SONG BOOKS.
Christy & Wood’s Song Book, 10
Melodeon Song Book, 10
Plantation Melodies, 10
Ethiopian Song Book, 10
Serenader’s Song Book, 10
Budworth’s Songs, 10
Christy and White’s Complete Ethiopian Melodies. Cloth, 1 00
CURVED-POINT STEEL PENS.
The Slip Pen, per dozen .25, per gross, $2.50
The Barrel Pen, per ” .50, ” 5.00
Magnum Bonum Pen, per ” .75, ” 8.00
☞ Books sent, postage paid, on receipt of the Retail Price, by
T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, Pa.
T. B. PETERSON AND BROTHERS,
PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS,
PHILADELPHIA, PA.,
Take pleasure in calling the attention of the public to their
Choice and Extensive Stock of Books, comprising a collection
of the most popular and choice, in all styles
of binding, by all the favorite and standard
American and English Authors.
To Collectors of Libraries, or those desiring to form them.
Many who have the taste, and wish to form a Library, are deterred
by fear of the cost. To all such we would say, that a large number
of books may be furnished for even One Hundred Dollars—which, by
a yearly increase of a small amount, will before long place the
purchaser in possession of a Library in almost every branch of
knowledge, and afford satisfaction not only to the collector, but to
all those who are so fortunate as to possess his acquaintance.
For the convenience of Book buyers, and those seeking suitable Works
for Presentation, great care is taken in having a large and varied
collection, and all the current works of the day. Show counters
and shelves, with an excellent selection of Standard, Illustrated,
and Illuminated works, varying in price to suit all buyers, are
available to those visiting our establishment, where purchases may be
made with facility, and the time of the visitor greatly economized.
Here may be seen not only books of the simplest kind for children,
but also exquisite works of art, of the most sumptuous character,
suitable alike to adorn the drawing-room table and the study of the
connoisseur.
Our arrangements for supplying STANDARD AMERICAN BOOKS, suitable for
Public Libraries and Private Families, are complete, and our stock
second to none in the country.
☞ Catalogues are sent, on application, and great attention is paid
to communications from the country, and the goods ordered carefully
packed and forwarded with expedition on receipt of orders accompanied
with the cash.
To Booksellers and Librarians.
T. B. Peterson & Brothers issue New Books every month, comprising the
most entertaining and absorbing works published, suitable for the
Parlor, Library, Sitting Room, Railroad or Steamboat reading, by the
best and most popular writers in the world.
Any person wanting books will find it to their advantage to send
their orders to the “PUBLISHING HOUSE” OF T. B. PETERSON & BROS.,
306 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, who have the largest stock in the
country, and will supply them at very low prices for cash. We have
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Enclose ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred dollars, or more, to us in a
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Address all cash orders, retail or wholesale, to meet with prompt
attention, to
T. B. PETERSON AND BROTHERS,
306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Penna.
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All the NEW BOOKS are for sale at PETERSONS’ Book Store, as soon as
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☞ Publishers of “PETERSONS’ DETECTOR and BANK NOTE LIST,” a Business
Journal and valuable Advertising medium. Price $1.50 a year, monthly;
or $3.00 a year, semi-monthly. Every Business man should subscribe at
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PETERSON’S MAGAZINE
THE CHEAPEST AND BEST IN THE WORLD
☞ Splendid Offers for 1869 ☜
This popular Monthly Magazine _gives more for the money than any in
the world_. For 1869, it will be greatly improved. It will contain
=ONE THOUSAND PAGES!
FOURTEEN SPLENDID STEEL PLATES!
TWELVE MAMMOTH FASHION PLATES!
TWELVE COLORED BERLIN PATTERNS!
NINE HUNDRED WOOD CUTS!
TWENTY-FOUR PAGES OF MUSIC!=
All this will be given for only TWO DOLLARS a year, or a dollar less
than Magazines of the class of “Peterson.” Its
THRILLING TALES AND NOVELETTES
Are the best published anywhere. _All the most popular writers are
employed to write originally for “Peterson.”_ In 1869, in addition to
its usual quantity of short stories. FOUR ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT NOVELETS
will be given, viz: “Mary Antoinette’s Talisman,” by Mrs. Ann S.
Stephens; “The Mystery of Blackwood Grange,” by the author of “Sir
Noel’s Heir;” “Katie’s Winter in Washington,” by Frank Lee Benedict;
and “The Story of Maggie,” by the author of “Susy L’s Diary.”
MAMMOTH COLORED FASHION PLATES
Ahead of all others. These plates are engraved on steel, TWICE THE
USUAL SIZE, and contain six figures. They will be superbly colored.
Also, a pattern, from which a Dress, Mantilla, or Child’s Dress can
be cut out, without the aid of a mantua-maker. Also, several pages
of Household and other receipts: in short, everything interesting to
Ladies.
SUPERB PREMIUM ENGRAVING!
To every person getting up a Club for 1869 will be sent GRATIS, a
copy of our new and splendid Mezzotint for framing, (size 24 inches
by 16,) “The Star of Bethlehem,” after the celebrated master-piece,
by Gerome, the famous French artist. This is the most desirable
premium ever offered. For large clubs, as will be seen below, an
extra copy will be sent in addition.
TERMS—Always in Advance:
One Copy, for one year $ 2 00
Three Copies, for one year 5 00
Four Copies, for one year 6 00
Five Copies, for one year, (and one to getter up of club) 8 00
Eight Copies, for one year, (and one to getter up of club) 12 00
Fourteen Copies, for one year, (and one to getter up of club) 20 00
_Address, Post-paid_,
=CHARLES J. PETERSON=,
No. 306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
☞ Specimens sent to those wishing to get up clubs.
NEW BOOKS BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
THE CURSE OF GOLD.
BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
Price $1.75 in Cloth; or, $1.50 in Paper Cover.
_Read what the Editors of the New York Weekly say of it, in their
paper, editorially_:
“Mrs. Ann S. Stephens has thrown into ‘The Curse of Gold’ all that
graphic delineation of passion and character, beauty and strength of
style, reality of description, sweep of imagination, brilliancy of
fashion, power over the fount of tears and laughter, and trenchant
sarcasm which have male her writings the source of great pleasure to
readers of fiction wherever the English language is known.
“‘The Curse of Gold’ will be found to be one of the most thrilling,
intensely absorbing, unfailingly interesting, and delightfully
romantic stories which Mrs. Stephens has ever penned.
“‘The Curse of Gold’ never drags, but from the first chapter to
the last the intense interest is maintained, and incident follows
incident, action follows action with such rapidity that the reader
is hurried along, fascinated in the various windings and unwindings
of the plot. The characters are so naturally portrayed that they
appear to have been drawn from real life. The situations are never
overstrained, nor yet commonplace, but of a nature to excite the
attention and elicit the admiration of the reader at the fertility of
invention of the author.”
_Fourth Edition Now Ready._
MABEL’S MISTAKE.
BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
Price $1.75 in Cloth; or, $1.50 in Paper Cover.
T. B. Peterson & Brothers have just issued a new and uniform edition
of all the popular works written by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens. Their names
are as follows. Price of each, $1.75 in cloth; or $1.50 in paper
cover.
ANN S. STEPHENS’ COMPLETE WORKS.
The Curse of Gold, $1 75
Mabel’s Mistake, 1 75
Doubly False, 1 75
The Soldiers Orphans, 1 75
Silent Struggles, 1 75
The Wife’s Secret, 1 75
The Rejected Wife, 1 75
Mary Derwent, 1 75
The Gold Brick, 1 75
Fashion and Famine, 1 75
The Old Homestead, 1 75
The Heiress, 1 75
Each of the above books are published in one large duodecimo volume,
bound in cloth, at $1.75 each, or in paper cover, at $1.50 each.
For sale by all Booksellers. Copies of any of the above books will
be sent to any one, free of postage, on receipt of price by the
Publishers,
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
No. 306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
BY MRS. EMMA D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH.
Price $1.75 in Cloth; or $1.50 in Paper Cover.
HOW HE WON HER.
A SEQUEL TO “FAIR PLAY.”
BY MRS. EMMA D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH.
Price $1.75 in Cloth; or $1.50 in Paper Cover.
FAIR PLAY.
BY MRS. EMMA D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH.
Price $1.75 in Cloth; or $1.50 in Paper Cover.
T. B. Peterson & Brothers have just issued a new and uniform edition
of the popular works written by Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. Their
names are as follows. Price of each, $1.75 in cloth; or $1.50 in
paper cover.
MRS. SOUTHWORTH’S COMPLETE WORKS.
The Changed Brides, $1 75
How He Won Her, 1 75
Fair Play, 1 75
Fallen Pride, 1 75
The Widow’s Son, 1 75
Bride of Llewellyn, 1 75
The Fortune Seeker, 1 75
Allworth Abbey, 1 75
The Bridal Eve, 1 75
The Fatal Marriage, 1 75
Love’s Labor Won, 1 75
Deserted Wife, 1 75
The Gipsy’s Prophecy, 1 75
The Lost Heiress, 1 75
The Two Sisters, 1 75
The Three Beauties, 1 75
Vivia; or, the Secret of Power, 1 75
Lady of the Isle, 1 75
The Missing Bride, 1 75
Wife’s Victory, 1 75
The Mother-in-Law, 1 75
Haunted Homestead, 1 75
Retribution, 1 75
India; Pearl of Pearl River, 1 75
Curse of Clifton, 1 75
Discarded Daughter, 1 75
Each of the above books are published in one large duodecimo volume,
bound in cloth, at $1.75 each, or in paper cover, at $1.50 each.
For sale by all Booksellers. Copies of any of the above books will
be sent to any one, free of postage, on receipt of price by the
Publishers,
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
No. 306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 31: ‘an unforseen bolt’ replaced by ‘an unforeseen bolt’.
Pg 34: ‘STRANGER OF INFUENCE’ replaced by ‘STRANGER OF INFLUENCE’.
Pg 41: ‘I fact, I began’ replaced by ‘In fact, I began’.
Pg 44: ‘was estemated at’ replaced by ‘was estimated at’.
Pg 46: ‘put a detatchment’ replaced by ‘put a detachment’.
Pg 52: ‘he was arrainged’ replaced by ‘he was arraigned’.
Pg 53: ‘been apprized of’ replaced by ‘been apprised of’.
Pg 56: ‘command of M. Matthieu’ replaced by ‘command of M. Mathieu’.
Pg 58: ‘of St. Ugengoulf’ replaced by ‘of St. Gengoulf’.
Pg 58: ‘of a harpischord’ replaced by ‘of a harpsichord’.
Pg 58: ‘to the harpischord’ replaced by ‘to the harpsichord’.
Pg 60: ‘Mdle. Sophie’ replaced by ‘Mdlle. Sophie’.
Pg 60: ‘a grevious wrong’ replaced by ‘a grievous wrong’.
Pg 61: ‘temple of Terpischore’ replaced by ‘temple of Terpsichore’.
Pg 66: ‘Rue de la Basse. Cour’ replaced by ‘Rue de la Basse Cour.’.
Pg 67: ‘eat but little’ replaced by ‘ate but little’.
Pg 69: ‘the tall teees’ replaced by ‘the tall trees’.
Pg 71: ‘they did hesitate’ replaced by ‘they did not hesitate’.
Pg 81: ‘did the _bourgeosie_’ replaced by ‘did the _bourgeoisie_’.
Pg 87: ‘too long or him’ replaced by ‘too long for him’.
Pg 101: ‘admirers of Maret’ replaced by ‘admirers of Marat’.
Pg 102: ‘Camille Desmouslins’ replaced by ‘Camille Desmoulins’.
Pg 104: ‘ninteen thousand’ replaced by ‘nineteen thousand’.
Pg 116: ‘drove off to to St.’ replaced by ‘drove off to St.’.
Pg 119: ‘where in the bloom’ replaced by ‘were in the bloom’.
Pg 123: ‘nothwithstanding the’ replaced by ‘notwithstanding the’.
Pg 123: ‘Gillaume, and had’ replaced by ‘Guillaume, and had’.
Pg 125: ‘M. Goguelet’ replaced by ‘M. Goguelot’ (twice).
Pg 126: ‘M. Goguelet’ replaced by ‘M. Goguelot’ (twice).
Pg 129: ‘the whearabouts of’ replaced by ‘the whereabouts of’.
Pg 129: ‘and proceded to’ replaced by ‘and proceeded to’.
Pg 129: ‘Place de Latray’ replaced by ‘Place de Latry’.
Pg 141: ‘Baroness de Koff’ replaced by ‘Baroness de Korff’.
Pg 142: ‘consdering that France’ replaced by ‘considering that France’.
Pg 148: ‘Pont-de-Somne-Vesles’ replaced by ‘Pont-de-Somme-Vesles’.
Pg 149: ‘Ponte-de-Somme-Vesles’ replaced by ‘Pont-de-Somme-Vesles’.
Pg 153: ‘M. de Layfayette’ replaced by ‘M. de Lafayette’.
Pg 153: ‘MM. de Gouvin and’ replaced by ‘MM. de Gouvion and’.
Pg 154: ‘English diligencies’ replaced by ‘English diligences’.
Pg 160: ‘Vallory approached’ replaced by ‘Valory approached’.
Pg 161: ‘the consequencee of’ replaced by ‘the consequences of’.
Pg 164: ‘Madame d’Eblœuf, had’ replaced by ‘Madame d’Elbœuf, had’.
Pg 171: ‘Gillaume and Drouet’ replaced by ‘Guillaume and Drouet’.
Pg 172: ‘the postillion and’ replaced by ‘the postilion and’.
Pg 175: ‘inqui around’ replaced by ‘inquiry around’.
Pg 176: ‘It is is our’ replaced by ‘It is our’.
Pg 182: ‘Rue de l’Hospital’ replaced by ‘Rue de l’Hôpital’.
Pg 194: ‘not to capcure’ replaced by ‘not to capture’.
Pg 195: ‘A bas les Captes’ replaced by ‘A bas les Capets’.
Pg 197: ‘they set out out, mass’ replaced by ‘they set out, mass’.
Pg 198: ‘Madame de Tourzal’ replaced by ‘Madame de Tourzel’.
Pg 199: ‘Duc d’Enghein took’ replaced by ‘Duc d’Enghien took’.
Pg 200: ‘M. Latour-Manbourg’ replaced by ‘M. Latour-Maubourg’.
Pg 201: ‘M. Latour-Manbourg’ replaced by ‘M. Latour-Maubourg’.
Pg 201: ‘also, to Bernave’ replaced by ‘also, to Barnave’.
Pg 203: ‘of the represenative’ replaced by ‘of the representative’.
Pg 203: ‘sdddenly a noise’ replaced by ‘suddenly a noise’.214
Pg 214: ‘gave me Dmuont’ replaced by ‘gave me Dumont’.
Pg 224: ‘were oposed to each’ replaced by ‘were opposed to each’.
Pg 225: ‘manner, underminded’ replaced by ‘manner, undermined’.
Pg 226: ‘Voltaire’s corse’ replaced by ‘Voltaire’s corpse’.
Pg 231: ‘Liasions Dangereuses’ replaced by ‘Liaisons Dangereuses’.
Pg 232: ‘had asssembled’ replaced by ‘had assembled’.
Pg 238: ‘exort the people’ replaced by ‘exhort the people’.
Pg 240: ‘by Benneville and’ replaced by ‘by Bonneville and’.
Pg 244: ‘and one one day’ replaced by ‘and one day’.
Pg 246: ‘the aid-de-camp of’ replaced by ‘the aide-de-camp of’.
Pg 248: ‘summony to disperse’ replaced by ‘summons to disperse’.
Pg 250: ‘of the Assomption’ replaced by ‘of the Assumption’.
Pg 257: ‘his eyes ever the’ replaced by ‘his eyes over the’.
Pg 268: ‘at once offerered to’ replaced by ‘at once offered to’.
Pg 276: ‘on his prerogrative’ replaced by ‘on his prerogative’.
Pg 278: ‘to have beeen’ replaced by ‘to have been’.
Pg 278: ‘the parliamenterians’ replaced by ‘the parliamentarians’.
Pg 286: ‘age, was practially’ replaced by ‘age, was practically’.
Pg 290: ‘freemasonary of’ replaced by ‘freemasonry of’.
Pg 293: ‘never harmed human’ replaced by ‘never harmed a human’.
Pg 294: ‘amount spead over’ replaced by ‘amount spread over’.
Pg 299: ‘seeeing his family’ replaced by ‘seeing his family’.
Pg 300: ‘to appeased the’ replaced by ‘to appease the’.
Pg 301: ‘his life as past away’ replaced by ‘of his life as passed
away’.
Pg 301: ‘after the the other’ replaced by ‘after the other’.
Pg 301: ‘a royal accolate’ replaced by ‘a royal accolade’.
Pg 302: ‘be make public’ replaced by ‘be made public’.
Pg 304: ‘Tratior!’ replaced by ‘Traitor!’.
Pg 305: ‘past-away kings’ replaced by ‘passed-away kings’.
Pg 308: ‘The commuication’ replaced by ‘The communication’.
Pg 311: ‘was seached for’ replaced by ‘was searched for’.
Pg 317: ‘have termined his’ replaced by ‘have terminated his’.
Pg 322: ‘pslams which he’ replaced by ‘psalms which he’.
Pg 323: ‘place of execucion’ replaced by ‘place of execution’.
Pg 328: ‘am desirious that’ replaced by ‘am desirous that’.
Pg 330: ‘overrun the city’ replaced by ‘overran the city’.
Pg 345: ‘and pinoned arms’ replaced by ‘and pinioned arms’.
Pg 346: ‘cast his corse’ replaced by ‘cast his corpse’.
Pg 356: ‘coverted from a’ replaced by ‘converted from a’.
Pg 361: ‘day of vengance’ replaced by ‘day of vengeance’.
Pg 369: ‘and his statellites’ replaced by ‘and his satellites’.
Catalog:
Pg c3: ‘Hary Coverdale’ replaced by ‘Harry Coverdale’.
Pg c3: ‘Lord Montagu’s Page’ replaced by ‘Lord Montague’s Page’.
Pg c10: ‘Jessee Strang’ replaced by ‘Jesse Strang’.
Pg c13: ‘Biddy Woodhall’ replaced by ‘Biddy Woodhull’.
Pg c13: ‘and the Bengles’ replaced by ‘and the Beagles’.
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