Александр Дюма
The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ASSEMBLY AND THE COMMUNE
It was the Commune which had caused the attack on the palace, which the king must have seen, for he took refuge in the House, and not in the City Hall. The Commune wanted to smother the wolf – the she-wolf and the whelps – between two blankets in their den.
This shelter to the royals converted the Assembly into Royalists. It was asserted that the Luxembourg Palace, assigned to the king as a residence, had a secret communication with those catacombs which burrow under Paris, so that he might get away at any hour.
The Assembly did not want to quarrel with the Commune over such a trifle, and allowed it to choose the royal house of detention.
The city pitched on the temple. It was not a palace, but a prison, under the town's hand; an old, lonely tower, strong, heavy, lugubrious. In it Philip the Fair broke up the Middle Ages revolting against him, and was royalty to be broken down in it now?
All the houses in the neighborhood were illuminated as the royal captives were taken hither to the part called "the palace," from Count Artois making it his city residence. They were happy to hold in bondage the king no more, but the friend of the foreign foe, the great enemy of the Revolution, and the ally of the nobles and the clergy.
The royal servants looked at the lodgings with stupefaction. In their tearful eyes were still the splendors of the kingly dwellings, while this was not even a prison into which was flung their master, but a kennel! Misfortune was not to have any majesty.
But, through strength of mind or dullness, the king remained unaffected, and slept on the poverty-stricken bed as tranquilly as in his palace, perhaps more so.
At this time, the king would have been the happiest man in the world had he been given a country cottage with ten acres, a forge, a chapel and a chaplain, and a library of travel-books, with his wife and children. But it was altogether different with the queen.
The proud lioness did not rage at the sight of her cage, but that was because so sharp a sorrow ached in her heart that she was blind and insensible to all around her.
The men who had done the fighting in the capture of the Royalist stronghold were willing that the prisoners, Swiss and gentlemen, should be tried by court-martial. But Marat shrieked for massacre, as making shorter work than even a drum-head court.
Danton yielded to him. Before the snake the lion was cowed, and slunk away, trying to act the fox.
The city wards pressed the Assembly to create an extraordinary tribunal. It was established on the twentieth, and condemned a Royalist to death. The execution took place by torch-light, with such horrible effect, that the executioner, in the act of holding up the lopped-off head to the mob, yelled and fell dead off upon the pavement.
The Revolution of 1789, with Necker, Bailly, and Sieyes, ended in 1790; that of Barnave, Lafayette, and Mirabeau in 1792, while the Red Revolution, the bloody one of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, was commencing.
Lafayette, repulsed instinctively by the army, which he had called upon in an address to march on Paris and restore the king, had fled abroad.
Meanwhile, the Austrians, whom the queen had prayed to see in the moonlight from her palace windows, had captured Longwy. The other extremity of France, La Vendee, had risen on the eve of this surrender.
To meet this condition of affairs, the Assembly assigned Dumouriez to the command of the Army of the East; ordered the arrest of Lafayette; decreed the razing of Longwy when it should be retaken; banished all priests who would not take the oath of allegiance; authorized house-to-house visits for aristocrats and weapons, and sold all the property of fugitives.
The Commune, with Marat as its prophet, set up the guillotine on Carrousel Square, with an apology that it could only send one victim a day, owing to the trouble of obtaining convictions.
On the 28th of August, the Assembly passed the law on domiciliary visits. The rumor spread that the Austrian and Prussian armies had effected their junction, and that Longwy had fallen.
It followed that the enemy, so long prayed for by the king, the nobles, and the priests, was marching upon Paris, and might be here in six stages, if nothing stopped him.
What would happen then to this boiling crater from which the shocks had made the Old World quake the last three years?
The insolent jest of Bouille would be realized, that not one stone would be left upon another.
It was considered a sure thing that a general, terrible, and inexorable doom was to fall on the Parisians after their city was destroyed. A letter found in the Tuileries had said:
"In the rear of the army will travel the courts, informed on the journey by the fugitives of the misdeeds and their authors, so that no time will be lost in trying the Jacobins in the Prussian king's camp, and getting their halters ready."
The stories also came of the Uhlans seizing Republican local worthies and cropping their ears. If they acted thus on the threshold, what would they do when within the gates?
It was no longer a secret.
A great throne would be erected before the heap of ruins which was Paris. All the population would be dragged and beaten into passing before it; the good and the bad would be sifted apart as on the last judgment day. The good – in other words, the religious and the Royalists – would pass to the right, and France would be turned over to them for them to work their pleasure; the bad, the rebels, would be sent to the left, where would be waiting the guillotine, invented by the Revolution, which would perish by it.
But to face the foreign invader, had this poor people any self-support? Those whom they had worshiped, enriched, and paid to defend her, would they stand up for her now? No.
The king conspired with the enemy, and from the temple, where he was confined, continued to correspond with the Prussians and Austrians: the nobility marched against France, and were formed in battle array by her princes; her priests made the peasants revolt. From their prison cells, the Royalist prisoners cheered over the defeats of the French by the Prussians, and the Prussians at Longwy were hailed by the captives in the abbey and the temple.
In consequence, Danton, the man for extremes, rushed into the rostrum.
"When the country is in danger, everything belongs to the country," he said.
All the dwellings were searched, and three thousand persons arrested; two thousand guns were taken.
Terror was needed; they obtained it. The worst mischief from the search was one not foreseen; the mob had entered rich houses, and the sight of luxuries had redoubled their hatred, though not inciting them to pillage. There was so little robbery that Beaumarchais, then in jail, said that the crowd nearly drowned a woman who plucked a rose in his gardens.
On this general search day, the Commune summoned before its bar a Girondist editor, Girey-Dupre, who took refuge at the War Ministry, from not having time to get to the House. Insulted by one of its members, the Girondists summoned the Commune's president, Huguenin, before its bar for having allowed the Ministry to take Girey by force.
Huguenin would not come, and he was ordered to be arrested by main force, while a fresh election for a Commune was decreed.
The present one determined to hold office, and thus was civil war set going. No longer the mob against the king, citizens against aristocrats, the cottage against the castle; but hovels against houses, ward against ward, pike to pike, and mob to mob.
Marat called for the massacre of the Assembly; that was nothing, as people were used to his shrieks for wholesale slaughter. But Robespierre, the prudent, wary, vague, and double-meaning denunciator, came out boldly for all to fly to arms, not merely to defend, but to attack. He must have judged the Commune was very strong to do this.
The physician who might have his fingers on the pulse of France at this period must have felt the circulation run up at every beat.
The Assembly feared the working-men, who had broken in the Tuileries gates and might dash in the Assembly doors. It feared, too, that if it took up arms against the Commune, it would not only be abandoned by the Revolutionists, but be bolstered up by the moderate Royalists. In that case it would be utterly lost.
It was felt that any event, however slight, might lead this disturbance to colossal proportions. The event, related by one of our characters, who has dropped from sight for some time, and who took a share in it, occurred in the Chatelet Prison.
CHAPTER XIX.
CAPTAIN BEAUSIRE APPEARS AGAIN
After the capture of the Tuileries, a special court was instituted to try cases of theft committed at the palace. Two or three hundred thieves, caught red-handed, had been shot off-hand, but there were as many more who had contrived to hide their acts.
Among the number of these sly depredators was "Captain" Beausire, a corporal of the French Guards once on a time, but more conspicuous as a card-sharper and for his hand in the plot of robbers by which the court jewelers were nearly defrauded of the celebrated set of diamonds which we have written about under their historic name of "The Queen's Necklace."
This Beausire had entered the palace, but in the rear of the conquerors. He was too full of sense to be among the first where danger lay in taking the lead.
It was not his political opinions that carried him into the king's home, to weep over the fall of monarchy or to applaud the triumph of the people; bless your innocence, no! Captain Beausire came as a mere sight-seer, soaring above those human weaknesses known as opinions, and having but one aim in view, to wit, to ascertain whether those who lost a throne might not have lost at the same time some article of value rather more portable and easy to put out of sight.
To be in harmony with the situation, Beausire had clapped on an enormous red cap, was armed with the largest-sized saber, and had splashed his shirt-front and hands with blood from the first quite dead man he stumbled upon. Like the wolf skulking round the edge and the vulture hovering over the battle-field, perhaps taken for having helped in the slaughter, some believed he had been one of the vanquishers.
The most did so accept him as they heard him bellow "Death to the aristocrats!" and saw him poke under beds, dash open cupboards, and even bureau drawers, in order to make sure that no aristocrat had hidden there.
However, for the discomfiture of Captain Beausire, at this time, a man was present who did not peep under beds or open drawers, but who, having entered while the firing was hot, though he carried no arms with the conquerors, though he did no conquering, walked about with his hands behind his back, as he might have done in a public park on a holiday. Cold and calm in his threadbare but well-brushed black suit, he was content to raise his voice from time to time to say:
"Do not forget, citizens, that you are not to kill women and not to touch the jewels."
He did not seem to feel any right to censure those who were killing men and throwing the furniture out of the windows.
At the first glance he had distinguished that Captain Beausire was not one of the storming-parties.
The consequence was that, about half past nine, Pitou, who had the post of honor, as we know, guarding the main entrance, saw a sort of woe-begone and slender giant stalk toward him from the interior of the palace, who said to him with politeness, but also with firmness, as if his mission was to modify disorder with order and temper vengeance with justice:
"Captain, you will see a fellow swagger down the stairs presently, wearing a red cap, swinging a saber and making broad gestures. Arrest him and have your men search him, for he has picked up a case of diamonds."
"Yes, Master Maillard," replied Pitou, touching his cap.
"Aha! so you know me, my friend?" said the ex-usher of the Chatelet Prison.
"I rather think I do know you," exclaimed Pitou. "Don't you remember me, Master Maillard? We took the Bastile together."
"That's very likely."
"We also marched to Versailles together in October."
"I did go there at that time."
"Of course you did; and the proof is that you shielded the ladies who went to call on the queen, and you had a duel with a janitor who would not let you go in."
"Then, for old acquaintance' sake, you will do what I say, eh?"
"That, and anything else – all you order. You are a regular patriot, you are."
"I pride myself on it," replied Maillard, "and that is why I can not permit the name we bear to be sullied. Attention! this is our man."
In fact, at this time, Beausire stamped down the grand stairs, waving his large sword and shouting: "The nation forever!"
Pitou made a sign to Maniquet and another, who placed themselves at the door without any parade, and he went to wait for the sham rioter at the foot of the stairs.
With a glance, the suspicious character noticed the movements, and as they no doubt disquieted him, he stopped, and made a turn to go back, as if he had forgotten something.
"Beg pardon, citizen," said Pitou; "this is the way out."
"Oh, is it?"
"And as the order is to vacate the Tuileries, out you go, if you please."
Beausire lifted his head and continued his descent.
At the last step he touched his hand to his red cap, and in an emphasized military tone, said:
"I say, brother-officer, can a comrade go out or not?"
"You are going out," returned Pitou; "only, in the first place, you must submit to a little formality."
"Hem! what is it, my handsome captain?"
"You will have to be searched."
"Search a patriot, a capturer of the tyrants' den, a man who has been exterminating aristocrats?"
"That's the order; so, comrade, since you are a fellow-soldier," said the National Guardsman, "stick your big toad-sticker in its sheath, now that all the aristos are slain, and let the search be done in good part, or, if not, I shall be driven to employ force."
"Force?" said Beausire. "Ha! you talk in this strain because you have twenty men at your back, my pretty captain; but if you and I were alone together – "
"If we were alone together, citizen," returned the man from the country, "I'd show you what I should do. In this way, I should seize your left wrist with my right hand; with my left, I should wrench your saber from your grasp, like this, and I should snap it under my foot, just like this, as being no longer worthy of handling by an honest man after a thief."
Putting into practice the theory he announced, Pitou disarmed the sham patriot, and breaking the sword, tossed the hilt afar.
"A thief? I, Captain de Beausire, a thief?" thundered the conqueror in the red cap.
"Search Captain Beausire with the de," said Pitou, pushing the card-sharper into the midst of his men.
"Well, go ahead with your search," replied the victim of suspicion, meekly dropping his arms.
They had not needed his permission to proceed with the ferreting; but to the great astonishment of Pitou, and especially of Maillard, all their searching was in vain. Whether they turned the pockets inside out, or examined the hems and linings, all they found on the ex-corporal was a pack of playing-cards so old that the faces were hardly to be told from the backs, as well as the sum of eleven cents.
Pitou looked at Maillard, who shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, "I have missed it somehow, but I do not know what I can do about it now."
"Go through him again," said Pitou, one of whose principal traits was patience.
They tried it again, but the second search was as unfruitful as the former; they only found the same pack of cards and eleven cents.
"Well," taunted Beausire, triumphantly, "is a sword still disgraced by having been handled by me?"
"No," replied Pitou; "and to prove it, if you are not satisfied with the excuses I tender you, one of my men shall lend you his, and I will give you any other satisfaction you may like."
"Thanks, no, young sir," said the other, drawing himself up to his full height; "you acted under orders, and an old veteran like me knows that an order is sacred. Now I beg to remark that Madame de Beausire must be anxious about my long absence, and if I am allowed to retire – "
"Go, sir," responded Pitou; "you are free."
Beausire saluted in a free-and-easy style and took himself out of the palace. Pitou looked round for Maillard, but he was not by.
"I fancy I saw him go up the stairs," said one of the Haramont men.
"You saw clearly, for he is coming down," observed Pitou.
Maillard was in fact descending, and as his long legs took the steps two by two, he was soon on the landing.
"Well, did you find anything?" he inquired.
"No," rejoined the captain.
"Then, I have been luckier than you, for I lighted on the case."
"So we were wrong, eh?"
"No; we were right."
Maillard opened the case and showed the old setting from which had been prized all the stones.
"Why, what does this mean?" Pitou wanted to know.
"That the scamp guessed what might happen, picked out the diamonds, and as he thought the setting would be in his way, he threw it with the case into the closet where I found it."
"That's clear enough. But what has become of the stones?"
"He found some means of juggling them away."
"The trickster!"
"Has he been long gone?" inquired Maillard.
"As you came down, he was passing through the middle yard."
"Which way did he take?"
"He went toward the water-side."
"Good-bye, captain."
"Are you going after him, Master Maillard?"
"I want to make a thorough job of it," returned the ex-usher.
And unfolding his long legs like a pair of compasses, he set off in pursuit of Captain Beausire.
Pitou was thinking the matter over when he recognized the Countess of Charny, and the events occurred which we have related in their proper time and place. Not to mix them up with this present matter, we think, falls into line here.
CHAPTER XX.
THE EMETIC
Rapid as was Maillard's gait, he could not catch up with his quarry, who had three things in his favor, namely: ten minutes' start, the darkness, and the number of passengers on the Carrousel, in the thick of whom he disappeared.
But when he got out upon the Tuileries quay, the ex-usher kept on, for he lived in the working-quarter, and it was not out of his way home to keep to the water-side.
A great concourse was upon the bridges, flocking to the open space before the Palace of Justice, where the dead were laid out for identification, and people sought for their dear ones, with hope, or, rather, fear.
Maillard followed the crowd.
At a corner there he had a friend in a druggist, or apothecary, as they said in those days. He dropped in there, sat down, and chatted of what had gone on, while the surgeons rushed in and about to get the materials they wanted for the injured; for among the corpses a moan, a scream, or palpable breathing showed that some wretch still lived, and he was hauled out and carried to the great hospital, after rough dressing.
So there was a great hubbub in the worthy chemist's store; but Maillard was not in the way; on such occasions they were delighted to see a patriot of the degree of a hero of the Bastile, who was balm itself to the lovers of liberty.
He had been there upward of a quarter of an hour, with his long legs tucked well under him and taking up as little room as possible, when a woman, of the age of thirty-eight or so, came in. Under the garb of most abject poverty, she preserved a vestige of former opulence, and a bearing of studied aristocracy, if not natural.
But what particularly struck Maillard was her marked likeness to the queen; he would have cried out with amaze but for his having great presence of mind. She held a little boy by the hand, and came up to the counter with an odd timidity, veiling the wretchedness of her garments as much as she could, though that was the more manifest from her taking extreme care of her face and her hands.
For some time it was impossible for her to make herself heard owing to the uproar; but at last she addressed the master of the establishment, saying:
"Please, sir, I want an emetic for my husband, who is ill."
"What sort do you want, citizeness?" asked the dispenser of drugs.
"Any sort, as long as it does not cost more than eleven cents."
This exact amount struck Maillard, for it will be remembered that eleven coppers were the findings in Beausire's pockets.
"Why should it not cost more than that?" inquired the chemist.
"Because that is all the small change my man could give me."
"Put up some tartar emetic," said the apothecary to an assistant, "and give it to the citizeness."
He turned to attend to other demands while the assistant made up the powder. But Maillard, who had nothing to do to distract his attention, concentrated all his wits on the woman who had but eleven cents.
"There you are, citizeness; here's your physic," said the drug clerk.
"Now, then, Toussaint," said the woman, with a drawl habitual to her, "give the gentleman the eleven cents, my boy."
"There it is," replied the boy, putting the pile of coppers on the counter. "Come home quick, Mamma Oliva, for papa is waiting."
He tried to drag her away, repeating, "Why don't you come quick? Papa is in such a hurry."
"Hi! hold on, citizeness!" cried the budding druggist; "you have only given me nine cents."
"What do you mean by only nine?" exclaimed the woman.
"Why, look here; you can reckon for yourself."
The woman did so, and saw there were just nine.
"What have you done with the other two coins, you wicked boy?" she asked.
"Me not know nothing about 'em," whimpered the child. "Do come home, Mamma Oliva!"
"You must know, for I let you carry the money."
"I must have lost 'em. But come along home," whined the boy.
"You have a bewitching little fellow there, citizeness," remarked Maillard; "he appears sharp-witted, but you will have to take care lest he become a thief."
"How dare you, sir! – a thief?" cried the woman called Oliva. "Why do you say such a thing, I should like to know?"
"Only because he has not lost the two cents, but hid them in his shoe."
"Me?" retorted the boy. "What a lie!"
"In the left shoe, citizeness – in the left," said Maillard.
In spite of the yell of young Toussaint, Mme. Oliva took off his left shoe and found the coppers in it. She handed them to the apothecary's clerk, and dragged away the urchin with threats of punishment which would have appeared terrible to the by-standers, if they had not been accompanied by soft words which no doubt sprung from maternal affection. Unimportant as the incident was in itself, it certainly would have passed without comment amid the surrounding grave circumstances, if the resemblance of the heroine to the queen had not impressed the witness. The result of his pondering over this was that he went up to his friend in drugs, and said to him, in a respite from trade:
"Did you not notice the likeness of that woman who just went out to – "
"The queen?" said the other, laughing.
"Yes; so you remarked it the same as I?"
"Oh, ever so long ago. It is a matter of history."
"I do not understand."
"Do you not remember the celebrated trial of 'The Queen's Necklace'?"
"Oh, you must not put such a question to an usher of the law courts – he could not forget that."
"Well, you must recall one Nicole Legay, alias Oliva."
"Oh, of course; you are right. She played herself as the queen upon the Prince Cardinal Rohan."
"While she was living with a discharged soldier, a bully and card-cheat, a spy and recruiter, named Beausire."
"What do you say?" broke out Maillard, as though snake-bitten.
"A rogue named Beausire," repeated the druggist.
"Is it he whom she styles her husband?" asked Maillard.
"Yes."
"And for whom she came to get the physic?"
"The rascal has been drinking too hard."
"An emetic?" continued Maillard, as one on the track of an important secret and did not wish to be turned astray.
"A vomitory – yes."
"By Jupiter, I have nailed my man!" exclaimed the visitor.
"What man?"
"The man who had only eleven cents – Captain de Beausire, in short. That is, if I knew where he lives."
"Well, I know if you do not; it is close by, No. 6 Juiverie Street."
"Then I am not astonished at young Beausire stealing two cents from his mother, for he is the son of the cheat."
"No cheat there – his living likeness."
"A chip of the old block. My dear friend," continued Maillard, "straight as a die, how long does your dose take to operate?"
"Immediately after taking; but these fellows fight shy of medicine. He will play fast and loose before he takes it, and his wife will have to make a cup of soup to wash the taste out of his mouth."
"You mean I may have time to do what I have to do?"
"I hope so; you seem to feel great interest in our Captain Beausire?"
"So much so that, for fear he will be very bad, I am going to get a couple of male nurses for him."
Leaving the drug store with a silent laugh, the only one he indulged in, Maillard hurried back to the Tuileries.
Pitou was absent, for we know he was attending on the Countess of Charny, but Lieutenant Maniquet was guarding the post. They recognized each other.
"Well, Citizen Maillard, did you overtake the fellow?" asked Maniquet.
"No; but I am on his track."
"Faith, it is a blessing; for though we did not find the diamonds on the knave, somehow I am ready to bet that he has them."
"Make the bet, citizen, and you will win," said the usher.
"Good; and can we help you catch him?"
"You can."
"In what way, Citizen Maillard? We are under your orders."
"I want a couple of honest men."
"You can take at random, then. Boulanger and Molicar, step out this way."
That was all the usher desired; and with the two soldiers of Haramont he proceeded at the double-quick to the residence of Beausire.
In the house they were guided by the cries of young Toussaint, still suffering from a correction, not maternal, as Papa Beausire, on account of the gravity of the misdemeanor, had deemed it his duty to intervene and add some cuffs from his hard hand to the gentle slap which Oliva had administered much against her will with her softer one to her beloved offspring.
The door was locked.
"In the name of the law, open!" called out Maillard.
A conversation in a low voice ensued, during which young Toussaint was hushed, as he thought that the abstraction of the two cents from his mother was a heinous crime for which Justice had risen in her wrath; while Beausire, who attributed it to the domiciliary visits, tried to tranquilize Oliva, though he was not wholly at his ease. He had, moreover, gulped down the tartar as soon as he had chastised his son.
Mme. Beausire had to take her course, and she opened the door just as Maillard was going to knock for a second time.
The three men entered, to the great terror of Oliva and Master Toussaint, who ran to hide under a ragged straw-bottomed chair.
Beausire had thrown himself on the bed, and Maillard had the satisfaction of seeing by the light of a cheap candle smoking in an iron holder that the physic paper was flat and empty on the night-table. The potion was swallowed, and they had only to abide the effects.
On the march, Maillard had related to the volunteers what had happened, so that they were fully cognizant of the state of matters.
"Citizens," he restricted himself to saying, "Captain Beausire is exactly like that princess in the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, who never spoke unless compelled, but who, whenever she opened her mouth, let fall a diamond. Do not, therefore, let Beausire spit out a word unless learning what it contains. I will wait for you at the Municipality offices. When the gentleman has nothing more to say to you, take him to the Chatelet Prison, where you will say Citizen Maillard sent him for safe keeping, and you will join me at the City Hall with what he shall have delivered."
The National Guards nodded in token of passive obedience, and placed themselves with Beausire between them. The apothecary had given good measure for eleven cents, and the effect of the emetic was most satisfactory.
About three in the morning, Maillard saw his two soldiers coming to him. They brought a hundred thousand francs' worth of diamonds of the purest water, wrapped in a copy of the prison register, stating that Beausire was under ward and lock. In his name and the two Haramontese, Maillard placed the gems in charge of the Commune attorney, who gave them a certificate that they had deserved the thanks of the country.
