Александр Дюма
The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.
CHAPTER XXV.
CORRECTING THE PETITION
On the Field of Mars the Altar of the Country still stood, set up for the anniversary of the Bastile Capture, a skeleton of the past. On this sixteenth of July, it was used as a table on which was spread a petition to the Assembly, which considered that the King had practically abdicated by his flight, and that he ought to be replaced by "Constitutional methods." This was a cunning way to propose the Duke of Orleans as Regent.
Politics is a fine veil, but the people see through it if they are given time.
There was some discussion by the persons called on to sign over these very words. But they might have been glossed over by the man in charge of the paper, the pen and the ink, but for a man of the people, judging by his manners and dress, who, with a frankness next to roughness, stopped the secretary abruptly.
"Halt, this is cheating the people," said he.
"What do you mean?"
"This stuff about replacing the abdicated King by 'constitutional means.' You want to give us King Stock instead of King Log. You want to rig up royalty again and that is just what we don't want any more of."
"No, no more Kings – enough of royalty?" shouted most of the lookers on.
The secretary was Brissot, a Jacobin, and strange thing, here were the arch-revolutionists, the Jacobins defending royalty!
"Have a care, gentlemen," cried he and his supporters, "with no royalty, no king; the Republic would come, and we are not ripe for anything of that kind."
"Not ripe?" jeered the Commoner: "a few such suns as shone on Varennes when we nabbed the skulking King, will ripen us."
"Let's vote on this petition."
"Vote," shouted those who had clamored for no more royalty.
"Let those who do not want Louis XVI. or any other king, put up their hand," cried the plebeian in a lusty voice.
Such a powerful number held up their hands that the Ayes had it beyond a necessity of farther trial.
"Good," said the stranger; "to-morrow is Sunday, the seventeenth; let all the boys come out here to sign the petition as amended to our liking. I, Billet, will get the right sort ready."
At this name everybody recognized Farmer Billet, the Taker of the Bastile, the hero of the people, the volunteer envoy who had accompanied Lafayette's dandy aid to Varennes where he arrested the King whom he had brought back to Paris.
Thus, at the first start, the boldest of the politicians had been surpassed by – a man of the people, the embodied instincts of the masses! The other leaders said that a storm would be raised and that they had best get permission of the Mayor to hold this meeting on the morrow.
"Very well," said Billet, "obtain leave, and if refused you, I will wrest it from them."
Mayor Bailly was absent when Brissot and Desmoulins called for the leave: his deputy verbally granted it, but sent word to the House what he had done.
The House was caught napping, for it had done nothing in fixing the status of the King after his flight. As if from an enemy of the rulers, the decree was passed that "The suspension of the executive power will last until the King shall have accepted and signed the Constitutional Act." Thus he was as much of a king as before; the popular petition became useless.
Whoever claimed the dethronement of a monarch who was constitutionally maintained by the House, so long as the King agreed to accomplish this condition, was a rebel, of course. The decree was to be posted throughout the town next morning at eight.
Prudent politicians went out of the town. The Jacobins retired, and their vulgar member, Santerre, the great brewer of the working quarter, was chosen to go and withdraw the petition from the Altar of the Country.
But those meant to attend, spite of governmental warning, who are like the wolves and vultures who flock to the battlefields.
Marat was confined to his cellar by his monomania, but he yelled for the Assembly to be butchered and cried for a general massacre out of which he would wade a universal dictator.
Verriere, the abominable hunchback, careered about on a horse like the spectre of the Apocalypse, and stopped at every crossroad to invite the masses to meet on the Field of Mars.
So the thousands went to the rendezvous, to sign the paper, sing and dance and shout "The Nation Forever!"
The sun rose magnificently. All the petty tradesfolk who cater to the multitude swarmed on the parade-ground where the Altar of the Country stood up in the middle like a grand catafalque.
By half past four a hundred and fifty thousand souls were present. Those who rise early are usually bad sleepers, and who has not slept well is commonly in a bad humor.
In the midst of the chatter a woman's scream was heard. On the crowd flocking round her, she complained of having been stabbed in the ankle while leaning against the altar. Indeed the point of a gimlet was seen sticking through the boards. In a twinkling the planks were torn down and two men were unearthed in the hollow. They were old cronies, sots who had taken a keg of liquor with them and eatables, and stolen a march on the crowd by hiding here overnight.
But unfortunately the mob at the woman's cue thought they made peepholes for a mean purpose and cried that the keg contained powder to blow up the signers of the petition. They forgot that these new Guido Fawkes hardly looked the sort to blow themselves up with their victims.
Be this as it may, they were taken to the police court where the magistrates laughingly released them; but the washer-women, great sticklers for women not to be probed in the ankle by gimlets, gave them a beating with the paddles used in thumping linen. This was not all: the cry that powder was found getting spread, they were taken from the women and slain. A few minutes after, their heads were cut off and the ready pikes were there to receive them on their points.
The news was perverted on its way to the Assembly where the heads were stated to be of two friends of order who had lost them while preaching respect to the law.
The Assembly at once voted the City to be under martial law.
Santerre, sent by the Jacobin Club to withdraw their petition before Billet transformed it, found that worthy the centre of the immense gathering. He did not know how to write but he had let some one guide his hand when he "put his fist" to it.
The brewer went up the steps of the altar, announced that the Assembly proclaimed any one a rebel who dared demand the dethronement of the King, and said he was sent to call in the petition.
Billet went down three steps to face the brewer. The two members of the lower orders looked at each other, examining the symbols of the two forces ruling France, the town and the country.
They had fought together to take the Bastile and acknowledged that they were brothers.
"All right," said Billet, "we do not want your petition; take yours back to the Jacobins; we will start another."
"And fetch it along to my brewery in the St. Antoine Suburb, where I will sign it and get my men and friends to do the same."
He held out his broad hand in which Billet clapped his.
At sight of this powerful alliance, the mob cheered.
They began to know the worth of the brewer, too. He went away with one of those gestures expressive of meeting again, which the lower classes understood.
"Now, look here," said Billet, "the Jacobins are afraid. They have a right to back out with their petition, but we are not afraid and we have the right to draw up another."
"Hurrah for another petition! all be on hand to-morrow."
"But why not to-day?" cried Billet: "who knows what may happen to-morrow?"
"He's right," called out many; "to-day – at once!"
A group of enlightened men flocked round Billet; they were members of the Invisibles like him, and, besides, strength has the loadstone's power to attract.
Roland and his celebrated wife with Dr. Gilbert, wrote the petition, which was read in silence, while all bared their head to this document dictated by the people. It declared that the King had abdicated the throne by his flight and called for a fresh House to "proceed in a truly national manner to try the guilty ruler and organize a new executive power."
It answered to everybody's wish so that it was applauded at the last phrase. Numbered sheets were served out for the signatures to be written on them by the many who sought to sign, all over the place.
During this work, which was so quietly done that women were strolling about the groups with their children, Lafayette arrived with his special guard, who were paid troops.
But he could not see any cause to intervene and marched away. It is true that on the road he had to take one barricade set up by the gang who had slaughtered the two Peeping Toms of the Altar of the Country. One of his aids had been fired at in this scuffle; and the report ran to the House that in a severe action Lafayette had been shot and his officers wounded.
The house sent a deputation to inquire.
This party of three found the multitude still signing, and signing a document so harmless that they personally said they would put their own names to it if they were not in an official position.
In the conflict of no importance between the mob and the National Guards two prisoners had been made by the latter. As usual in such cases they had nothing to do with the riot.
The principal petitioners asked their release.
"We can do nothing in the matter," replied the deputation; "but send a committee to the City Hall and the liberation will be given."
Billet was unanimously chosen chairman of a party of twelve. They were kept waiting an hour before the Mayor Bailly came to receive them. Bailly was pale but determined; he knew he was unjust but he had the Assembly's order at his back and he would carry it out to the end.
But Billet walked straight up to him, saying, in his firm tone:
"Mayor, we have been kept waiting an hour."
"Who are you and what have you to say to me?"
"I am surprised you should ask who I am, Mayor Bailly but those who turn off the right road do not always get back on the track. I am Farmer Billet."
Bailly was reminded of one of the Takers of the Bastile, who had tried to save the objects of public wrath from the slaughterers; the man who had given the King the tricolor cockade; who had aroused Lafayette on the night when the Royal Family were nearly murdered; the leader who had not shrank from making the King and the Queen prisoners.
"As for what I have to say," continued he, "we are the messengers of the people assembled on the parade-ground: we demand the fulfillment of the promise of your three envoys – that the two citizens unjustly accused and whose innocence we guarantee, shall be set free straightway."
"Nonsense, whoever heard of promises being kept that were made to rioters?" returned Bailly, trying to go by.
The committee looked astonished at one another and Billet frowned.
"Rioters? so we are rioters now, eh?"
"Yes, factious folk, among whom I will restore peace by going to the place."
Billet laughed roughly in that way which is a menace on some lips.
"Restore peace? Your friend Lafayette has been there, and your three delegates, and they will say it is calmer than the City Hall Square."
At this juncture a captain of militia came running up in fright to tell the Mayor that there was fighting on the Field of Mars, "where fifty thousand ragamuffins were making ready to march on the Assembly."
Scarce had he got the words out before he felt Billet's heavy hand on his shoulder.
"Who says this?" demanded the farmer.
"The Assembly."
"Then the Assembly lies." The captain drew his sword on him, which he seized by the hilt and the point and wrenched from his grasp.
"Enough, gentlemen," said Bailly; "we will ourselves see into this. Farmer Billet, return the sword, and if you have influence over those you come from, hasten back, to make them disperse."
Billet threw the sabre at the officer's feet.
"Disperse be hanged! the right to petition is recognized by decree and till another revokes it, nobody can prevent citizens expressing their wishes – mayor, or National Guards commander, or others. Come to the place – we will be there before you."
Those around expected Bailly to give orders for the arrest of this bold speaker, but he knew that this was the voice of the people, so loud and lofty. He made a sign and Billet and his friends passed out.
When they arrived on the parade-ground, the crowd was a third larger, say, sixty thousand, all old, women and men. There was a rush for the news.
"The two citizens are not released: the mayor will not answer except that we are all rioters."
The "rioters" laughed at this title and went on signing the petition, which had some five thousand names down: by night it would be fifty thousand, and the Assembly would be forced to bow to such unanimity.
Suddenly the arrival of the military was shouted. Bailly and the city officials were leading the National Guards hither.
When the bayonets were seen, many proposed retiring.
"Brothers, what are you talking of?" said Billet, on the Altar of the Country, "why this fear? either martial law is aimed at us, or not. If not, why should we run? if it is, the riot act must be read and that will give time to get away."
"Yes, yes," said many voices, "we are lawfully here. Wait for the summons to disperse. Stand your ground."
The drums were heard and the soldiers appeared at three entrances into the ground. The crowd fell back towards the Altar which resembled a pyramid of human bodies. One corps was composed of four thousand men from the working quarter and Lafayette, who did not trust them, had added a battalion of his paid Guards to them. They were old soldiers, Fayettists, who had heard of their god being fired on and were burning to avenge the insult.
So, when Bailly was received by the "booing" of the boys, and one shot was heard from the mob in that part, which sent a bullet to slightly wound a dragoon, the Mayor ordered a volley, but of blank cartridge from those soldiers around him.
But the Fayettists, also obeyed the command and fired on the mass at the Altar, a most inoffensive crowd.
A dreadful scream arose there, and the fugitives were seen leaving corpses behind them, with the wounded dragging themselves in trails of blood! Amid the smoke and dust the cavalry rushed in chase of the running figures.
The broad expanse presented a lamentable aspect, for women and children had mostly been shot and cut down.
An aid galloped up to the East-end battalions and ordered them to march on their side and sweep the mob away till they had formed a junction with the other corps. But these workingmen pointed their guns at him and the cavalry running down the fugitives and made them recoil before the patriotic bayonets. All who ran in this direction found protection.
Who gave the order to fire? none will ever know. It remains one of those historical mysteries inexplicable despite the most conscientious investigations. Neither the chivalric Lafayette nor the honest Bailly liked bloodshed, and this stain clung to them to the end. In vain were they congratulated by the Assembly; in vain their press organs called this slaughter a constitutional victory; this triumph was branded like all those days when the slain were given no chance to fight. The people who always fit the cap to the right head, call it "The Massacre of the Champ de Mars."
CHAPTER XXVI.
CAGLIOSTRO'S COUNSEL
Paris had heard the fusillade and quivered, feeling that she had been wounded and the blood was flowing.
The Queen had sent her confidential valet Weber to the spot to get the latest news. To be just to her and comprehend the hatred she felt for the French, she had not only so suffered during the flight to Varennes, that her hair had turned white, but also after her return.
It was a popular idea, shared in by her own retinue, that she was a witch. A Medea able to go out of window in a flying car.
But if she kept her jailers on the alert, they also frightened her. She had a dream of scenes of violence, for they had always turned against her.
She waited with anxiety for her envoy's return, for the mobs might have overturned this old, decrepit, trimming Assembly of which Barnave had promised the help, and which might now want help itself.
The door opened: she turned her eyes swiftly thither, but instead of her foster-brother, it was Dr. Gilbert, with his stern face.
She did not like this royalist whose constitutional ideas made him a republican almost; but she felt respect for him; she would not have sent him in any strait, but she submitted to his influence when by.
"You, doctor?" she said with a shiver.
"It is I, madam. I bring you more precise news than those you expect by Weber. He was on the side of the Seine where no blood was spilt, while I was where the slaughter was committed. A great misfortune has taken place – the court party has triumphed."
"Oh, you would call this a misfortune, doctor!"
"Because the triumph is one of those which exhaust the victor and lay him beside the dead. Lafayette and Bailly have shot down the people, so that they will never be able to serve you again; they have lost their popularity."
"What were the people doing when shot down?"
"Signing a petition demanding the removal of the King."
"And you think they were wrong to fire on men doing that?" returned the sovereign, with kindling eye.
"I believe it better to argue with them than shoot them."
"Argue about what?"
"The King's sincerity."
"But the King is sincere!"
"Excuse me, madam: three days ago, I spent the evening trying to convince the King that his worst enemies were his brothers and the fugitive nobles abroad. On my knees I entreated him to break off dealings with them and frankly adopt the Constitution, with revision of the impracticable articles. I thought the King persuaded, for he kindly promised that all was ended between him and the nobles who fled: but behind my back he signed, and induced you to sign, a letter which charged his brother to get the aid of Prussia and Austria."
The Queen blushed like a schoolboy caught in fault; but such a one would have hung his head – she only held hers the stiffer and higher.
"Have our enemies spied in our private rooms?" she asked.
"Yes, madam," tranquilly replied the doctor, "which is what makes such double-dealing on the King's part so dangerous."
"But, sir, this letter was written wholly by the royal hand, after I signed it, too, the King sealed it up and handed it to the messenger."
"It has been read none the less."
"Are we surrounded by traitors?"
"All men are not Charnys."
"What do you mean?"
"Alas, Madam! that one of the fatal tokens foretelling the doom of Kings is their driving away from them those very men whom they ought to 'grapple to them by hooks of steel.'"
"I have not driven Count Charny away," said the Queen bitterly, "he went of his own free will. When monarchs become unfortunate, their friends fall off."
"Do not slander Count Charny," said Gilbert mildly, "or the blood of his brothers will cry from their graves that the Queen of France is an ingrate. Oh, you know I speak the truth, madam: that on the day when unmistakable danger impends, the Count of Charny will be at his post and that the most perillous."
"But I suppose you have not come to talk about Count Charny," said she testily, though she lowered her head.
"No, madam; but ideas are like events, they are attached by invisible links and thus are drawn forth from darkness. No, I come to speak to the Queen and I beg pardon if I addressed the woman: but I am ready to repair the error. I wish to say that you are staking the woe or good of the world on one game: you lost the first round on the sixth of October, you win the second, in the courtiers' eyes, on this sad day; and to-morrow you will begin what is called the rub. If you lose, with it go throne, liberty and life."
"Do you believe that this prospect makes us recede?" queried the proud one, quickly rising.
"I know the King is brave and the Queen heroic; so I never try to do anything with them but reason; unfortunately I can never pass my belief into their minds."
"Why trouble about what you believe useless?"
"Because it is my duty. It is sweet in such times to feel, though the result is unfruitful, that one has done his duty."
She looked him in the face and asked:
"Do you think it possible to save the King and the throne?"
"I believe for him and hope for the other."
"Then you are happier than I," she responded with a sad sigh: "I believe both are lost and I fight merely to salve my conscience."
"Yes, I understand that you want a despotic monarchy and the King an absolute one: like the miser who will not cast away a portion of his gold in a shipwreck so that he may swim to shore with the rest, you will go down with all. No, cut loose of all burdens and swim towards the future."
"To throw the past into a gulf is to break with all the crowned heads of Europe."
"Yes, but it is to join hands with the French people."
"Our enemies," returned Marie Antoinette.
"Because you taught them to doubt you."
"They cannot struggle against an European Coalition."
"Suppose a Constitutional King at their head and they will make the conquest of Europe."
"They would need a million of armed men for that."
"Millions do not conquer Europe – an idea will. Europe will be conquered when over the Alps and across the Rhine advance the flags bearing the mottoes: 'Death to tyranny!' and 'Freedom to all!'"
"Really, sir, there are times when I am inclined to think the wise are madmen."
"Ah, you know not that France is the Madonna of Liberty, for whose coming the peoples await around her borders. She is not merely a nation, as she advances with her hands full of freedom – but immutable Justice and eternal Reason. But if you do not profit by all not yet committed to violence, if you dally too long, these hands will be turned to rend herself.
"Besides, none of these kings whose help you seek is able to make war. Two empires, or rather an empress and a minister, deeply hate us but they are powerless! Catherine of Russia and William Pitt. Your envoy to Pitt, the Princess Lamballe, can get him to do much to prevent France becoming a republic, but he hates the monarch and will not promise to save him. Is not Louis the Constitutional King, the crowned philosopher, who disputed the East Indies with him and helped America to wrest herself from the Briton's grasp? He desires only that the French will have a pendant to his Charles the Beheaded."
"Oh, who can reveal such things to you?" gasped the Queen.
"The same who tell me what is in the letters you secretly write."
"Have we not even a thought that is our own?"
"I tell you that the Kings of Europe are enmeshed in an unseen net where they write in vain. Do not you resist, madam: but put yourself at the head of ideas which will otherwise spurn you if you take the lead, and this net will be your defense when you are outside of it and the daggers threatening you will be turned towards the other monarchs."
"But you forgot that the kings are our brothers, not enemies, as you style them."
"But, Madam, if the French are called your sons you will see how little are your brothers according to politics and diplomacy. Besides, do you not perceive that all these monarchs are tottering towards the gulf, to suicide, while you, if you liked, might be marching towards the universal monarchy, the empire of the world!"
"Why do you not talk thus to the King?" said the Queen, shaken.
"I have, but like yourself, he has evil geniuses who undo what I have done. You have ruined Mirabeau and Barnave, and will treat me the same – whereupon the last word will be spoken."
"Dr. Gilbert, await me here!" said she: "I will see the King for a while and will return."
He had been waiting a quarter of an hour when another door opened than that she had left by, and a servant in the royal livery entered. He looked around warily, approached Gilbert, making a masonic sign of caution, handed him a letter and glided away.
Opening the letter, Gilbert read:
"Gilbert: You waste your time. At this moment, the King and the Queen are listening to Lord Breteuil fresh from Vienna, who brings this plan of policy: 'Treat Barnave as you did Mirabeau; gain time, swear to the Constitution and execute it to the letter to prove that it is unworkable. France will cool and be bored, as the French have a fanciful head and will want novelty, so that the mania for liberty will pass. If it do not, we shall gain a year and by that time we shall be ready for war.'
"Leave these two condemned beings, still called King and Queen in mockery, and hasten to the Groscaillou Hospital, where an injured man is in a dying state, but not so hopeless as they: he may be saved, while they are not only lost but will drag you down to perdition with them!"
The note had no signature, but the reader knew the hand of Cagliostro.
Madam Campan entered from the Queen's apartments; she brought a note to the effect that the King would be glad to have Dr. Gilbert's proposition in writing, while the Queen could not return from being called away on important business.
"Lunatics," he said after musing. "Here, take them this as my answer."
And he gave the lady Cagliostro's warning, as he went out.
