Александр Дюма
The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.
"I am comfortable here."
Through motherly playfulness or womanly seductiveness, she allowed the boy to stay. It is impossible to tell what passed in Barnave's heart: he was both proud and happy. The prince set to playing with the buttons of the member's coat, which bore the motto: "Live Free or Die."
"What does that mean?" he wanted to know.
As Barnave was silent, Petion interpreted.
"My little man, that means that the French have sworn never to know masters more, if you can understand that? Explain it otherwise, Barnave, if you can."
The other was hushed: the motto, which he had thought sublime, seemed almost cruel at present. But he took the boy's hand and respectfully kissed it. The Queen wiped away a tear, risen from her heart.
The carriage, moving theatre of this little episode, continued to roll forward through the hooting of the mob, bearing to death six of the eight passengers.
CHAPTER XXI.
ANOTHER DUPE
On arriving at Dormans, the party had to get out at an inn as nothing was prepared for them. Either from Petion's orders or from the Royal Family's snubbing him on the journey having vexed him, or because the place was really full, only three garret rooms were available.
Charny got down the first to have the Queen's orders but she gave him a look to imply that he was to keep in the background. He hastened to obey without knowing the cause.
It was Petion who entered the hotel, and acted as quarter-master; he did not give himself the trouble to come out again and it was a waiter who told the Royals that their rooms were ready.
Barnave was embarrassed as he wanted to offer his arm to the Queen, but he feared that she who had been wont to rail at exaggerated etiquette, would nevertheless invoke it now. So he waited.
The King stepped out, followed by the Queen, who held out her arms for her son, but he said as if he knew his part to please his mother:
"No, I want to stay with my friend Barnave."
Marie Antoinette submitted with a sweet smile. Barnave let lady Elizabeth pass out with the Princess Royal before he alighted, carrying the boy in his arms.
Lady Tourzel closed the march, eager to snatch the royal child from these plebeian arms but the Queen made her a sign which cooled the ardor of the aristocratic governess. Barnave did not say anything on finding that the Virtuous Petion had taken the best part of the house, as he set down the prince on the second landing.
"Mamma, here is my friend Barnave going away," cried he.
"Very right, too," observed the Queen on seeing the attics reserved for her and her family.
The King was so tired that he wished to lie down, but the bed was so short that he had to get up in a minute and called for a chair. With the cane-bottomed one eking out a wooden one he lengthened the couch.
"Oh, Sire," said Malden, who brought the chair, "can you pass the night thus?"
"Certainly: besides, if what the ministers say be true, many of my subjects would be only too glad to have this loft, these chairs and this pallet."
He laid on this wretched bed, a prelude to his miserable nights in the Temple Prison.
When he came in to supper, he found the table set for six: Petion had added himself to the Royal Family.
"Why not eight, then, for Messieurs Latour Maubourg and Barnave?" jeered the King.
"M. Barnave excused himself, but M. Petion persisted," replied the waiter.
The grave, austere face of the deputy appeared in the doorway.
The King bore himself as if alone and said to the waiter:
"I sit at table with my own family solely: or without guests. If not, we do not eat at all."
Petion went away furious, and heard the door bolted after him.
The Queen looked for Charny during the meal, wishing that he had disobeyed her.
Her husband was rising after finishing supper when the waiter came to state that the first floor parlors were ready for them. They had been decked out with flowers, by the forethought of Barnave.
The Queen sighed: a few years before she would have had to thank Charny for such attentions. Moreover, Barnave had the delicacy not to appear to receive his reward; just as the count would have acted. How was it a petty country lawyer should show the same attentions and daintiness as the most eminent courtier? There was certainly much in this to set a woman – even a queen, a-thinking. Hence she did ponder over this mystery half the night.
What had become of Count Charny during this interval?
With his duty keeping him close to his masters, he was glad to have the Queen's signal for him to take some leisure for lonely reflection.
After having been so busy for others lately, he was not sorry to have time for his own distress.
He was the old-time nobleman, more a father than a brother to his younger brothers.
His grief had been great at Valence's death, but at least he had a comfort in the second brother Isidore on whom he placed the whole of his affection. Isidore had become more dear still since he was his intermediary with Andrea.
The less Charny saw of Andrea the more he thought of her, and to think of her was to love her. She was a statue when he saw her, but when he departed she became colored and animated by the distance. It seemed to him that internal fire sprang up in the alabaster mould and he could see the veins circulate blood and the heart throb.
It was in these times of loneliness and separation that the wife was the real rival of the Queen: in the feverish nights Charny saw the tapestry cleft or the walls melt to allow the transparent statue to approach his couch, with open arms and murmuring lips and kindled eye: the fire of her love beamed from within. He also would hold out his arms, calling the lovely vision, and try to press the phantom to his heart. But, alas! the vision would flee and, embracing vacancy, he would fall from his breathless dream into sad and cold reality.
Therefore, Isidore was dearer to him than Valence, and he had not the chance to mourn over him as he had over the cadet of the family.
Both had fallen for the same fatal woman and into the abyss of the same cause full of pitfalls. For them he would certainly fall.
Alone in an attic, shut up with a table which bore an old-fashioned three-wicked oil lamp, he drew out the bloodstained papers, the last relics of his brother. He sighed, raised his head and opened one letter.
It was from poor Catherine Billet. Charny had suspected the connection some months before Billet had at Varennes given him confirmation of it. Only then had he given it the importance it should have taken in his mind.
Now he learnt that the title of mistress had become holy by its promotion to that of mother, and in the simple language Catherine used, all her woman's life was given in expiation of her fault as a girl. A second and a third, showed the same plans of love, maternal joys, fears of the loving, pains and repentance.
Suddenly, among the letters, he saw one whose writing struck him. To this was attached a note of Isidore's, sealed with his arms in black wax. It was the letter which Andrea had enjoined him to give her husband in case he were mortally hurt or read to him if unable. The note explained this and concluded:
"I league to my brother the Count of Charny poor Catherine Billet, now living with my boy in the village of Villedovray."
This note had totally absorbed him: but finally he turned his attention to that from his wife. But after reading the explanation three times, he shook his head and said in an undertone:
"I have no right to open this letter; but I will so entreat her that she will let me read it."
Dawn surprised him, devouring with his gaze this letter damp with frequent pressing it with his lips.
Suddenly in the midst of the bustle for the departure, he heard his name called and he hurried out on the stairs.
Here he met Barnave inquiring for the Queen and charging Valory to get the order for the start. It was easy to see that Barnave had had no more sleep than the count. They bowed to each other, and Charny would surely have remarked the jealous gleam in the member's eye if he had been able to think of anything but the letter of his wife which he pressed to his heart under his arm.
On stepping into the coach once more the royal pair noticed they had only the population of the town to stare at them and cavalry to escort them. This was an attention of Barnave's.
He knew what the Queen had suffered from the squalid and infected peasants pressing round the wheels, the severed head, the threats to her guards. He pretended to have heard of an invasion by the Austrians to help Marquis Bouille, and he had turned towards the frontier all the irregularly armed men.
The hatred of the French for the foreign invader was such that it made them forget for the moment that the Queen was one of them.
She guessed to whom she owed this boon, and thanked him with a look.
As she resumed her place in the conveyance she glanced out to see Charny, who had taken the outer seat beside the Guards; he wanted to be in the danger, in hopes that a wound would give him the right to open his wife's letter. He did not notice her looking for him, and that made her sigh, which Barnave heard. Uneasy about it, he stopped on the carriage step.
"Madam," he said, "I remarked yesterday how incommoded we were in here: if you like I will find room in the other carriage with M. Latour-Maubourg."
While suggesting this, he would have given half his remaining days – not that many were left him! – to have her refuse the offer.
"No, stay with us," she quickly responded.
At once the Dauphin held out his little hands to draw him to him, saying:
"My friend Barnave! I do not want him to go."
Barnave gladly took his former place. The prince went over to his knee from his mother's. The Queen kissed him on his cheek as he passed and the member looked at the pink spots caused by the pressure like Tantalus at the fruit hanging over his head. He asked leave to kiss the little fellow and did it with such ardor that the boy cried out. She lost none of this incident in which Barnave was staking his head.
Perhaps she had no more slept than Charny or the deputy; perhaps the animation enflaming her eyes was caused by fever; any way, her purpled lips and rosy cheeks, all made her that perilous siren who with one golden tress would draw her adorers over the whirlpool's edge.
The carriage went faster and they could dine at Chateau Thierry. Before they got to Meaux, at evening Lady Elizabeth was overpowered by sleep and laid down in the middle of the vehicle. Her giving way had caused her to lean against Petion, who deposed in his report that she had tried to tempt him with love and had rested her head on his virtuous shoulder – that pious creature!
The halt at Meaux was in the bishop's palace, a gloomy structure which still echoed those sinister wails from Bossuet's study that presaged the downfall of monarchy.
The Queen looked around for support and smiled on seeing Barnave.
"Give me your arm," she said, "and be my guide in this old palace. I dare not venture alone lest the great voice is heard which one day made Christianity shudder with the outcry: 'The Duchess Henriette is dead!'"
Barnave sprang forward to offer his arm, while the lady cast a last glance around, fretted by Charny's obstinate silence.
"Do you seek some one?" he asked.
"Yes; the King."
"Oh, he is chatting with Petion."
Appearing satisfied, the Queen drew Barnave into the pile. She seemed a fugitive, following some phantom and looking neither before her nor behind. She only stopped, breathless, in the great preacher's sleeping chamber, where chance placed her confronting the portrait of a lady. Mechanically looking, she read the label: "Madam Henriette." She started without Barnave understanding why. From the name he guessed.
"Yes," he observed, "not Henrietta Maria of England, not the widow of the unfortunate Charles the First but the wife of the reckless Philip of Orleans; not she who died of cold in the Louvre Palace, but she who died of poison at St. Cloud and sent her ring to Bossuet. Rather would I have it her portrait," he said after a pause "for such a mouth as hers might give advice, but, alas! such are the very ones death seals up."
"What could Charles the First's widow furnish me in the way of advice?" she inquired.
"By your leave, I will try to say. 'Oh, my sister (Seems to say this mouth) do you not see the resemblance between our fates? I come from England as you from Austria, and was a foreigner to the English as you are to the French. I might have given my husband good counsel, but was silent or gave him bad; instead of uniting him to his people, I excited him to war against them; I gave him the counsel to march on London with the Irish. Not only did I maintain correspondence with the enemies of England but twice I went over into France to bring back foreign troops'. But why continue the bloody story which you know?"
"Continue," said the Queen, with dark brow and pleated lip.
"The portrait would continue to say: 'Sister, finally the Scotch delivered up their monarch, so that he was arrested just when he dreamt of escaping into France. A tailor seized him, a butcher led him into prison, a carter packed the jury, a beer-vendor presided over the assembly, and that nothing should be omitted odious in the trial and the sentence, it was carried out by a masked deaths-man striking off the victim's head.' This is what the picture of Henrietta Maria would say. God knows that nothing is lacking for the likeness. We have our brewer in Santerre for Cromwell, our butcher in Lengedre, not Harrison, and all the other plebeians who will conduct the trial; even as the conductor of this array is a lowborn peasant. What do you say to the picture?"
"I would say: 'Poor dear princess, you are reading me a page of history not giving me advice.'"
"If you do not refuse to follow it, the advice would be given you by the living," rejoined Barnave.
"Dead or living, those who can advise ought to do so: if good, it should be followed."
"Dead or living, one kind alone is given. Gain the people's love."
"It is so very easy to gain your people's love!"
"Why, madam, they are more your people than mine, and the proof is that they worshiped you when you first came here."
"Oh, sir, dwell not on that flimsy thing, popularity."
"Madam," returned Barnave, "if I, springing from my obscure sphere, won this popularity, how much easier for you to keep it than I to conquer it? But no," continued he, warming with the theme, "to whom have you confided this holy cause of monarchy, the loftiest and most splendorous? What voices and what arms do you choose to defend it? Never was seen such ignorance of the times and such forgetfulness of the characteristics of France! Why, you have only to look at me for one instance – who solicited the mission of coming to you with the single end of offering myself, devoting myself – "
"Hush, some one is coming," interrupted the Queen; "we must refer to this, M. Barnave, for I am ready to listen to your counsel and heed you."
It was a servant announcing that dinner was waiting.
The two Lifeguards waited at table, but Charny stood in a window recess. Though under the roof of one of the first bishops, the meal was nothing to brag of: but the King ate heartily.
The Dauphin had been asking for strawberries but was told along the road that there were none, though he had seen the country lads devouring them by the handsful. So the poor little fellow had envied the rustic urchins who could seek the fruit in the dewy grass like the birds that revel at nature's bounteous board.
This desire had saddened the Queen, who called Charny in a voice hoarse with emotion. At the third call he heard her and came, but the door opened and Barnave appeared on the sill; in his hand was a platter of the fruit.
"I hope the King and the Queen will excuse my intruding," he said, "but I heard the prince ask for strawberries several times during the day, so that, finding this dish on the bishop's table, I made so bold as to take and bring it."
"Thank you, count," said the Queen to Charny, "but M. Barnave has divined my want and I have no farther need of you."
Charny bowed without a word and returned to his place. The Dauphin thanked the member, and the King asked him to sit down between the boy and the Queen to partake of the meal, bad as it was.
Charny beheld the scene without a spark of jealousy. But he said, on seeing this poor moth singe its wings at the royal light:
"Still another going to destruction! a pity, for he is worth more than the others." But returning to his thought, he muttered: "This letter, what can be in this letter?"
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CENTRE OF CATASTROPHES
After the repast, the King called the three Lifeguards into council with the Queen and Lady Elizabeth.
"Gentlemen," he began, "yesterday, M. Petion proposed that you should flee in disguise, but the Queen and I opposed the plan for fear it was a plot. This day he repeats the offer, pledging his honor as a representative, and I believe you ought to hear the idea."
"Sire, we humbly beg," replied Charny for the others, "that we may be free to take the hint or leave it."
"I pledge myself to put no pressure on you. Your desires be done."
The astonished Queen looked at Charny without understanding the growing indifference she remarked in his determination not to swerve from his duty. She said nothing but let the King conduct the conversation.
"Now that you reserve freedom, here are Petion's own words," he went on. "Sire, there is no safeguard for your attendants in Paris. Neither I, nor Barnave nor Latour can answer for shielding them even at peril of our lives, for their blood is claimed by the people.'"
Charny exchanged a look with the other two bodyguards who smiled with scorn.
"Well?" he said.
"M. Petion suggests that he should provide three National Guards suits and you might in them get away this night."
Charny consulted his brother officers who replied with the same smile.
"Sire," he replied, "our days are set apart for your Majesty, having deigned to accept the homage, it is easier for us to die than separate. Do us the favor to treat us as you have been doing. Of all your court and army and Lifeguards, three have stood staunch; do not rob them of the only glory they yearn for, namely to be true to the last."
"It is well, gentlemen," said, the Queen; "but you understand that you are no longer servants but brothers." She took her tablets from her pockets. "Let us know the names of your kinsfolk so that, should you fall in the struggle, we can tell the loved ones how it happened and soothe them as far as in our power lies."
Malden named his old, infirm mother and Valory his young orphan sister. The Queen stopped in her writing to wipe her eyes.
"Count," she said, turning to Charny, "we know that you have no one to mention as you have lost your two brothers – "
"Yes, they had the happiness to perish for your sake," said the nobleman "but the latter to fall leaves a poor girl recommended in a kind of will found upon him. He stole her away from her family which will never forgive her. So long as I live she and her child never shall want, but, as your Majesty says with her admirable courage, we are all in the face of death, and if death strikes me down, she and her babe will be penniless. Madam, deign to write the name of this poor country girl, and if I die like the others of the house of Charny, for my august master and noble mistress, lower your generosity to Catherine Billet and her child, in Villedovray."
No doubt the idea of George Charny expiring like his brothers was too dreadful a picture for the hearer, for in swaying back with a faint cry, she let the tablets fall and sank giddily on a chair. The two Guards hastened to her while Charny caught up the memo-book and inscribed the name and address.
The Queen recovered and said: "Gentlemen, do not leave me without kissing my hand."
The Lifeguards obeyed, but when it came Charny's turn he barely brushed the hand with his lips. It seemed to him sacrilege when he was carrying Andrea's letter on his heart. The Queen sighed: never had she so accurately measured the depth of the gulf between her and her lover, widening daily.
As the Guards therefore replied next day to the Committeemen that they would not change their attire from what the King authorized them to wear, Barnave had an extra seat placed in front of them with two grenadiers to occupy it so as to shield them in some degree.
At ten A. M. they quitted Meaux for Paris, from which they had been five days absent.
What an unfathomable abyss had deepened in those few days.
At a league beyond Meaux the accompanying sightseers took an aspect more frightful than before. All the dwellers of the Paris suburbs flocked to the road. Barnave tried to make the postillions go at a trot but the Claye National Guard blocked the way with their bayonets and it would be imprudent to try to break that dam: comprehending the danger, the Queen supplicated the deputies not to vex the mob – it was a formidable storm growling and felt to be coming.
Such was the press that the horses could hardly move at a walk.
It had never been hotter, the air seemed fire.
The insolent curiosity of the people pursued the royal prisoners right up to the carriage interior. Men mounted upon it and clung to the horses. It was a miracle that Charny and his comrades were not killed over and over again. The two grenadiers failed to fend off the attacks: appeals in the name of the Assembly were drowned by the hooting.
Two thousand men formed the vanguard, and double that number closed up the rear. On the flanks rolled an incalculable gathering.
The air seemed to fail as they neared Paris as though that giant inhaled it all. The Queen was suffocating, and when the King begged for a glass of wine it was proposed that he should have a sponge dipped in gall and vinegar.
At Lavillette, the multitude was beyond the power of sight to estimate; the pavement was so covered that they could not move. Windows, walls, doors, all were crammed. The trees were bending under the novel living fruit.
Everybody wore their hats, for the walls had been placarded:
"Flogging for whoever salutes the King: hanging for him who insults him."
All this was so appalling that the Commissioners dared not go down St. Martin's Street Without-the-City, a crowded way full of horrors, where Berthier Savigny had been torn to pieces and other barbarities committed.
So they made the circuit and went by the Champs Elysees.
The concourse of spectators was still more great and broke up the ranks of the soldiery.
It was the third time Louis had entered by this dread entrance.
All Paris rushed hither. The King and the Queen saw a vast sea of heads, silent, sombre and threatening, with hats on. Still more alarming was the double row of National Guards, all the way to the Tuileries, their muskets held butt up as if at a funeral. It was a funeral procession indeed, for the monarchy of seven centuries!
This slowly toiling carriage was the hearse taking royalty to the grave.
On perceiving this long file of Guards the soldiers of the escort greeted them with "Long Live the Nation!" and that was the cry bursting out along the line from the barrier to the palace.
All the bystanders joined in, a cry of brotherhood uttered by the whole of France, but this one family was excluded.
Behind the cab following the royal carriage came a chaise, open but covered with green boughs on account of the heat; it contained Drouet and two others who had arrested the King. Fatigue had forced them to ride.
Billet alone, indefatigable, as if revenge made him bronze, kept on horseback and seemed to lead the whole procession.
Louis noticed that the statue of his ancestor, on Louis XV. Square, had the eyes bandaged; in token of the blindness of rulers, Petion explained.
Spite of all, the mob burst all bars and stormed the carriage. Suddenly the Queen saw at the windows those hideous men with implacable speech who come to the surface on certain days like the sea monsters seen only in tempestuous weather.
Once she was so terrified that she pulled down the sash, whereupon a dozen furious voices demanded the reason.
"I am stifling," she stammered.
"Pooh, we will stifle you in quite another way, never fear," replied a rough voice while a dirty fist smashed the window.
Nevertheless the cortege reached the grand terrace steps.
"Oh, gentlemen, save the Lifeguards," cried the Queen, particularly to Barnave and Petion.
"Have you any preference?" asked the former.
"No," she answered, looking at him full and square.
She required that the King and the royal children should first alight.
The next ten minutes were the cruelest of her life. She was under the impression, not that she would be killed – prompt death would be nothing – but made the sport of the mob or dragged away into jail whence she would issue only after a trial handing her over to ignominious death.
As she stepped forth, under the ceiling of steel made by the swords and bayonets of the soldiers, Barnave gathered to cover her. Even as a giddiness made her close her eyes, she caught a glimpse down the flashing vista of a face she remembered. This face seemed to be the centre of the multitudinous eyes of the mob: from his glance would come the cue for her immolation. It was the terrible man who had in a mysterious manner at Taverney Manor raised the veil over the future. He whom she had seen at Sevres on returning from Versailles. He who appeared merely to foretell great catastrophes or to witness their fulfillment.
And yet if Cagliostro, was he not dead in the dungeons of the Pope?
To be assured that her sight did not deceive her, she darted down the tunnel of steel, strong against realities but not against this sinister vision.
It seemed to her that the earth gave way under her tread; that all whirled round her, palace, gardens, trees, the countless people; that vigorous arms seized her and carried her away amid deafening yells. She heard the Lifeguards shouting, calling the wrath upon them to turn it aside from its true aim. Opening her eyes an instant, she beheld Charny between the pair hurled from the box – pale and handsome, as ever, he fought with ten men at once, with the nobleman's smile of scorn and the martyr's light in his gaze. From Charny her eyes went back to the man whose myrmidons ruled the storm and swept her out of the maelstrom. With terror she undoubtedly recognized the magician of Taverney and Sevres.
"You, it is you!" she gasped, trying to repel him with her rigid hands.
"Yes, it is I," he hissed in her ear. "I still need you to push the throne into its last gulf, and so I save you!"
She could support no more, but screaming, she swooned.
Meanwhile the mob, defrauded of the chief morsel, were tearing the Lifeguards to pieces and carrying Billet and Drouet in triumph.
