Александр Дюма
The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI
At this the shouting was renewed, and a man with a lance tried to stab the king; but Billet seized the weapon, tore it from the wielder's grip, and snapped it across his knee.
"No foul play," he said; "only one kind of steel has the right to touch this man: the ax of the executioner! I hear that a King of England had his head cut off by the people whom he betrayed – you ought to know his name, Louis. Don't you forget it."
"'Sh, Billet!" muttered Gilbert.
"Oh, you may say what you like," returned Billet, shaking his head; "this man is going to be tried and doomed as a traitor."
"Yes, a traitor!" yelled a hundred voices; "traitor, traitor!"
Gilbert threw himself in between.
"Fear nothing, sire, and try by some material token to give satisfaction to these mad men."
Taking the physician's hand, the king laid it on his heart.
"You see that I fear nothing," he said; "I received the sacraments this morning. Let them do what they like with me. As for the material sign which you suggest I should display – are you satisfied?"
Taking the red cap from a by-stander, he set it on his own head. The multitude burst into applause.
"Hurrah for the king!" shouted all the voices.
A fellow broke through the crowd and held up a bottle.
"If fat old Veto loves the people as much as he says, prove it by drinking our health."
"Do not drink," whispered a voice. "It may be poisoned."
"Drink, sire, I answer for the honesty," said Gilbert.
The king took the bottle, and saying, "To the health of the people," he drank. Fresh cheers for the king resounded.
"Sire, you have nothing to fear," said Gilbert; "allow me to return to the queen."
"Go," said the other, gripping his hand.
More tranquil, the doctor hastened to the Council Hall, where he breathed still easier after one glance. The queen stood in the same spot; the little prince, like his father, was wearing the red cap.
In the next room was a great hubbub; it was the reception of Santerre, who rolled into the hall.
"Where is this Austrian wench?" demanded he.
Gilbert cut slanting across the hall to intercept him.
"Halloo, Doctor Gilbert!" said he, quite joyfully.
"Who has not forgotten that you were one of those who opened the Bastile doors to me," replied the doctor. "Let me present you to the queen."
"Present me to the queen?" growled the brewer.
"You will not refuse, will you?"
"Faith, I'll not. I was going to introduce myself; but as you are in the way – "
"Monsieur Santerre needs no introduction," interposed the queen. "I know how at the famine time he fed at his sole expense half the St. Antoine suburb."
Santerre stopped, astonished; then, his glance happening to fall, embarrassed, on the dauphin, whose perspiration was running down his cheeks, he roared:
"Here, take that sweater off the boy – don't you see he is smothering?"
The queen thanked him with a look. He leaned on the table, and bending toward her, he said in an under-tone:
"You have a lot of clumsy friends, madame. I could tell you of some who would serve you better."
An hour afterward all the mob had flowed away, and the king, accompanied by his sister, entered the room where the queen and his children awaited him.
She ran to him and threw herself at his feet, while the children seized his hands, and all acted as though they had been saved from a shipwreck. It was only then that the king noticed that he was wearing the red cap.
"Faugh!" he said; "I had forgotten!"
Snatching it off with both hands, he flung it far from him with disgust.
The evacuation of the palace was as dull and dumb as the taking had been gleeful and noisy. Astonished at the little result, the mob said:
"We have not made anything; we shall have to come again."
In fact, it was too much for a threat, and not enough for an attempt on the king's life.
Louis had been judged on his reputation, and recalling his flight to Varennes, disguised as a serving-man, they had thought that he would hide under a table at the first noise, and might be done to death in the scuffle, like Polonius behind the arras.
Things had happened otherwise; never had the monarch been calmer, never so grand. In the height of the threats and the insults he had not ceased to say: "Behold your king!"
The Royalists were delighted, for, to tell the truth, they had carried the day.
CHAPTER VI.
"THE COUNTRY IS IN DANGER!"
The king wrote to the Assembly to complain of the violation of his residence, and he issued a proclamation to "his people." So it appeared there were two peoples – the king's, and those he complained of.
On the twenty-fourth, the king and queen were cheered by the National Guards, whom they were reviewing, and on this same day, the Paris Directory suspended Mayor Petion, who had told the king to his face that the city was not riotous.
Whence sprung such audacity?
Three days after, the murder was out.
Lafayette came to beard the Assembly in its House, taunted by a member, who had said, when he wrote to encourage the king in his opposition and to daunt the representatives:
"He is very saucy in the midst of his army; let us see if he would talk as big if he stood among us."
He escaped censure by a nominal majority – a victory worse than a defeat.
Lafayette had again sacrificed his popularity for the Royalists.
He cherished a last hope. With the enthusiasm to be kindled among the National Guards by the king and their old commander, he proposed to march on the Assembly and put down the Opposition, while in the confusion the king should gain the camp at Maubeuge.
It was a bold scheme, but was almost sure in the state of minds.
Unfortunately, Danton ran to Petion at three in the morning with the news, and the review was countermanded.
Who had betrayed the king and the general? The queen, who had said she would rather be lost than owe safety to Lafayette.
She was helping fate, for she was doomed to be slain by Danton.
But supposing she had less spite, and the Girondists might have been crushed. They were determined not to be caught napping another time.
It was necessary to restore the revolutionary current to its old course, for it had been checked and was running up-stream.
The soul of the party, Mme. Roland, hoped to do this by rousing the Assembly. She chose the orator Vergniaud to make the appeal, and in a splendid speech, he shouted from the rostrum what was already circulating in an under-tone:
"The country is in danger!"
The effect was like a waterspout; the whole House, even to the Royalists, spectators, officials, all were enveloped and carried away by this mighty cyclone; all roared with enthusiasm.
That same evening Barbaroux wrote to his friend Rebecqui, at Marseilles:
"Send me five hundred men eager to die."
On the eleventh of July, the Assembly declared the country to be in danger, but the king withheld his authorization until the twenty-first, late at night. Indeed, this call to arms was an admission that the ruler was impotent, for the nation would not be asked to help herself unless the king could or would do nothing.
Great terror made the palace quiver in the interval, as a plot was expected to break out on the fourteenth, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile – a holiday.
Robespierre had sent an address out from the Jacobin Club which suggested regicide.
So persuaded was the Court party, that the king was induced to wear a shirt of mail to protect him against the assassin's knife, and Mme. Campan had another for the queen, who refused to don it.
"I should be only too happy if they would slay me," she observed, in a low voice. "Oh, God, they would do me a greater kindness than Thou didst in giving me life! they would relieve me of a burden!"
Mme. Campan went out, choking. The king, who was in the corridor, took her by the hand and led her into the lobby between his rooms and his son's, and stopping, groped for a secret spring; it opened a press, perfectly hidden in the wall, with the edges guarded by the moldings. A large portfolio of papers was in the closet, with gold coin on the shelves.
The case of papers was so heavy that the lady could not lift it, and the king carried it to her rooms, saying that the queen would tell her how to dispose of it. She thrust it between the bed and the mattress, and went to the queen, who said:
"Campan, those are documents fatal to the king if he were placed on trial, which the Lord forbid. Particularly – which is why, no doubt, he confides it all to you – there is a report of a council, in which the king gave his opinion against war; he made all the ministers sign it, and reckons on this document being as beneficial in event of a trial as the others may be hurtful."
The July festival arrived. The idea was to celebrate the triumph of Petion over the king – that of murdering the latter not being probably entertained.
Suspended in his functions by the Assembly, Petion was restored to them on the eve of the rejoicings.
At eleven in the morning, the king came down the grand staircase with the queen and the royal children. Three or four thousand troops, of unknown tendencies, escorted them. In vain did the queen seek on their faces some marks of sympathy; the kindest averted their faces.
There was no mistaking the feeling of the crowd, for cheers for Petion rose on all sides. As if, too, to give the ovation a more durable stamp than momentary enthusiasm, the king and the queen could read on all hats a lettered ribbon: "Petion forever!"
The queen was pale and trembling. Convinced that a plot was aimed at her husband's life, she started at every instant, fancying she saw a hand thrust out to bring down a dagger or level a pistol.
On the parade-ground, the monarch alighted, took a place on the left of the Speaker of the House, and with him walked up to the Altar of the Country. The queen had to separate from her lord here to go into the grand stand with her children; she stopped, refusing to go any further until she saw how he got on, and kept her eyes on him.
At the foot of the altar, one of those rushes came which is common to great gatherings. The king disappeared as though submerged.
The queen shrieked, and made as if to rush to him; but he rose into view anew, climbing the steps of the altar.
Among the ordinary symbols figuring in these feasts, such as justice, power, liberty, etc., one glittered mysteriously and dreadfully under black crape, carried by a man clad in black and crowned with cypress. This weird emblem particularly caught the queen's eyes. She was riveted to the spot, and, while encouraged a little by the king's fate, she could not take her gaze from this somber apparition. Making an effort to speak, she gasped, without addressing any one specially:
"Who is that man dressed in mourning?"
"The death's-man," replied a voice which made her shudder.
"And what has he under the veil?" continued she.
"The ax which chopped off the head of King Charles I."
The queen turned round, losing color, for she thought she recognized the voice. She was not mistaken; the speaker was the magician who had shown her the awful future in a glass at Taverney, and warned her at Sèvres and on her return from Varennes – Cagliostro, in fact.
She screamed, and fell fainting into Princess Elizabeth's arms.
One week subsequently, on the twenty-second, at six in the morning, all Paris was aroused by the first of a series of minute guns. The terrible booming went on all through the day.
At day-break the six legions of the National Guards were collected at the City Hall. Two processions were formed throughout the town and suburbs to spread the proclamation that the country was in danger.
Danton had the idea of this dreadful show, and he had intrusted the details to Sergent, the engraver, an immense stage-manager.
Each party left the Hall at six o'clock.
First marched a cavalry squadron, with the mounted band playing a funeral march, specially composed. Next, six field-pieces, abreast where the road-way was wide enough, or in pairs. Then four heralds on horseback, bearing ensigns labeled "Liberty" – "Equality" – "Constitution" – "Our Country." Then came twelve city officials, with swords by the sides and their scarfs on. Then, all alone, isolated like France herself, a National Guardsman, in the saddle of a black horse, holding a large tri-color flag, on which was lettered:
"CITIZENS, THE COUNTRY IS IN DANGER!"
In the same order as the preceding, rolled six guns with weighty jolting and heavy rumbling, National Guards and cavalry at the rear.
On every bridge, crossing, and square, the party halted, and silence was commanded by the ruffling of the drums. The banners were waved, and when no sound was heard and the crowd held their peace, the grave voice of the municipal crier arose, reading the proclamation, and adding:
"The country is in danger!"
This last line was dreadful, and rang in all hearts. It was the shriek of the nation, of the motherland, of France. It was the parent calling on her offspring to help her.
And ever and anon the guns kept thundering.
On all the large open places platforms were run up for the voluntary enlistments. With the intoxication of patriotism, the men rushed to put their names down. Some were too old, but lied to be inscribed; some too young, but stood on tiptoe and swore they were full sixteen.
Those who were accepted leaped to the ground, waving their enrollment papers, and cheering or singing the "Let it go on," and kissing the cannon's mouth.
It was the betrothal of the French to war – this war of twenty odd years, which will result in the freedom of Europe, although it may not altogether be in our time.
The excitement was so great that the Assembly was appalled by its own work; it sent men through the town to cry out: "Brothers, for the sake of the country, no rioting! The court wishes disorder as an excuse for taking the king out of the city, so give it no pretext. The king should stay among us."
These dread sowers of words added in a deep voice:
"He must be punished."
They mentioned nobody by name, but all knew who was meant.
Every cannon-report had an echo in the heart of the palace. Those were the king's rooms where the queen and the rest of the family were gathered. They kept together all day, from feeling that their fate was decided this time, so grand and solemn. They did not separate until midnight, when the last cannon was fired.
On the following night Mme. Campan was aroused; she had slept in the queen's bedroom since a fellow had been caught there with a knife, who might have been a murderer.
"Is your majesty ill?" she asked, hearing a moan.
"I am always in pain, Campan, but I trust to have it over soon now. Yes," and she held out her pale hand in the moonbeam, making it seem all the whiter, "in a month this same moonlight will see us free and disengaged from our chains."
"Oh, you have accepted Lafayette's offers," said the lady, "and you will flee?"
"Lafayette's help? Thank God, no," said the queen, with repugnance there was no mistaking; "no, but in a month, my nephew, Francis, will be in Paris."
"Is your majesty quite sure?" asked the royal governess, alarmed.
"Yes, all is settled," returned the sovereign; "alliance is made between Austria and Prussia, two powers who will march upon Paris in combination. We have the route of the French princes and their allied armies, and we can surely say that on such and such a day they will be here or there."
"But do you not fear – "
"Murder?" The queen finished the phrase. "I know that might befall; but they may hold us as hostages for their necks when vengeance impends. However, nothing venture, nothing win."
"And when do the allied sovereigns expect to be in Paris?" inquired Mme. Campan.
"Between the fifteenth and twentieth of August," was the reply.
"God grant it!" said the lady.
But the prayer was not granted; or, if heard, Heaven sent France the succor she had not dreamed of – the Marseillaise Hymn of Liberty.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MEN FROM MARSEILLES
We have said that Barbaroux had written to a friend in the south to send him five hundred men willing to die.
Who was the man who could write such lines? and what influence had he over his friends?
Charles Barbaroux was a very handsome young man of barely twenty-five, who was reproached for his beauty, and considered by Mme. Roland as frivolous and too generally amorous. On the contrary, he loved his country alone, or must have loved her best, for he died for her.
Son of a hardy sea-faring man, he was a poet and orator when quite young – at the breaking out of trouble in his native town during the election of Mirabeau. He was then appointed secretary to the Marseilles town board. Riots at Arles drew him into them; but the seething caldron of Paris claimed him; the immense furnace which needed perfume, the huge crucible hissing for purest metal.
He was Roland's correspondent at the south, and Mme. Roland had pictured from his regular, precise, and wise letters, a man of forty, with his head bald from much thinking, and his forehead wrinkled with vigils. The reality of her dream was a young man, gay, merry, light, fond of her sex, the type of the rich and brilliant generation flourishing in '92, to be cut down in '93.
It was in this head, esteemed too frivolous by Mme. Roland, that the first thought of the tenth of August was conceived, perhaps.
The storm was in the air, but the clouds were tossing about in all directions for Barbaroux to give them a direction and pile them up over the Tuileries.
When nobody had a settled plan, he wrote for five hundred determined men.
The true ruler of France was the man who could write for such men and be sure of their coming.
Rebecqui chose them himself out of the revolutionists who had fought in the last two years' popular affrays, in Avignon and the other fiery towns; they were used to blood; they did not know what fatigue was by name.
On the appointed day they set out on the two hundred league tramp, as if it were a day's strolling. Why not? They were hardy seamen, rugged peasants, sunburned by the African simoom or the mountain gale, with hands callous from the spade or tough with tar.
Wherever they passed along they were hailed as brigands.
In a halt they received the words and music of Rouget de l'Isle's "Hymn to Liberty," sent as a viaticum by Barbaroux to shorten the road. The lips of the Marseilles men made it change in character, while the words were altered by their new emphasis. The song of brotherhood became one of death and extermination – forever "the Marseillaise."
Barbaroux had planned to head with the Marseilles men some forty thousand volunteers Santerre was to have ready to meet them, overwhelm the City Hall and the House, and then storm the palace. But Santerre went to greet them with only two hundred men, not liking to let the strangers have the glory of such a rush.
With ardent eyes, swart visages, and shrill voices, the little band strode through all Paris to the Champs Elysées, singing the thrilling song. They camped there, awaiting the banquet on the morrow.
It took place, but some grenadiers were arrayed close to the spot, a Royalist guard set as a rampart between them and the palace.
They divined they were enemies, and commencing by insults, they went on to exchanging fisticuffs. At the first blood the Marseillaise shouted "To arms!" raided the stacks of muskets, and sent the grenadiers flying with their own bayonets. Luckily, they had the Tuileries at their backs and got over the draw-bridge, finding shelter in the royal apartments. There is a legend that the queen bound up the wounds of one soldier.
The Federals numbered five thousand – Marseilles men, Bretons, and Dauphinois. They were a power, not from their number, but their faith. The spirit of the revolution was in them.
They had fire-arms but no ammunition; they called for cartridges, but none were supplied. Two of them went to the mayor and demanded powder, or they would kill themselves in the office.
Two municipal officers were on duty – Sergent, Danton's man, and Panis, Robespierre's.
Sergent had artistic imagination and a French heart; he felt that the young men spoke with the voice of the country.
"Look out, Panis," he said; "if these youths kill themselves, the blood will fall on our heads."
"But if we deliver the powder without authorization, we risk our necks."
"Never mind. I believe the time has come to risk our necks. In that case, everybody for himself," replied Sergent. "Here goes for mine; you can do as you like."
He signed the delivery note, and Panis put his name to it.
Things were easier now; when the Marseilles men had powder and shot they would not let themselves be butchered without hitting back.
As soon as they were armed, the Assembly received their petition, and allowed them to attend the session. The Assembly was in great fear, so much so as to debate whether it ought not to transfer the meetings to the country. For everybody stood in doubt, feeling the ground to quake underfoot and fearing to be swallowed.
This wavering chafed the southerners. No little disheartened, Barbaroux talked of founding a republic in the south.
He turned to Robespierre, to see if he would help to set the ball rolling. But the Incorruptible's conditions gave him suspicions, and he left him, saying:
"We will no more have a dictator than a king."
