Александр Дюма
The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.
Scarcely had he driven off before the others saw a plain sort of fellow in a gray suit, with his hat cocked over his nose and his hands in his pocket, saunter out of the same gate as had given passage to Lady Elizabeth, like a clerk who was strolling home after his work was over.
This was the King, attended by Valory.
Charny went up to meet them; for he had recognized Valory, and not the King. He was one of those who always wish to see a king kinglike. He sighed with pain, almost with shame, as he murmured:
"Come, Sire, come. Where is the Queen?" he asked of Valory.
"Coming with your brother."
"Good; take the shortest road and wait for us at St. Martin's Gate; I will go by the longer way round; we meet at the coach."
Both arrived at the rendezvous and waited half an hour for the Queen.
We shall not try to paint the fugitives' anxiety; Charny, on whom the whole responsibility fell, was like a maniac. He wanted to go back and make inquiries, but the King restrained him. The little prince wept and cried for his mother. His sister and the two ladies could not console him.
Their terror doubled when they saw Lafayette's carriage dash by, surrounded by soldiers, some bearing torches.
When at the palace gates, Viscount Charny wanted to turn to the left; the Queen, on his arm, stopped him and said that the count was waiting at the waterside gate of the Tuileries. She was so sure of what she asserted that doubt entered his mind.
"Be very careful, lady, for any error may be deadly to us," he said.
"I heard him say by the waterside," she repeated.
So he let her drag him through three courtyards, separated by thick walls and with chains at each opening, which should have been guarded by sentinels. They had to scramble through the gaps and clamber over the chains. Not one of the watchers had the idea of saying anything to them. How could they believe that a buxom woman in such dress as a housemaid would wear and climbing over the chains on the arm of a strapping young chap in livery, was the Queen of the French?
On arriving at the water's edge they found it deserted.
"He must mean the other side of the river," said the crazed Queen.
Isidore wanted to return but he said as if in a vertigo:
"No, no, there it is!"
She drew him upon the Royal Bridge which they crossed to find the other shore as blank as the nigher one.
"Let us look up this street," said she.
She forced Isidore to go up the Ferry Street a little. At the end of a hundred paces she owned she was wrong, but she stopped, panting; her powers almost fled her.
"Now, take me where you will," she said.
"Courage, my lady," said Isidore.
"It is not courage I lack so much as strength. Oh, heaven, will I never get my breath again," she gasped.
Isidore paused, for he knew that the second wind she panted was necessary to her as to the hunted deer.
"Take breath, madam," he said: "we have time, for my brother would wait till daylight for your sake."
"Then you believe that he loves me?" she exclaimed rashly as quickly while pressing his arm against her breast.
"I believe that his life is yours as mine is, and that the feeling in others which is love and respect becomes adoration in him."
"Thanks," she said, "that does me good! I breathe again. On, on!"
With a feverish step, she retraced the path they had gone and they went out by the small gate of the Carrousel. The large open space was till midnight covered with stalls and prowling cabs. But it was now deserted and gloomy.
Suddenly they heard a great din of carriages and horses. They saw a light: no doubt the flambeaux accompanying the vehicles.
Isidore wanted to keep in the dark but the Queen pressed forward. He dragged her into the depths of the gateway but the torchlight flooded this cave with its beams.
In the middle of the escort of cavalry, half reclining in a carriage, in his costume of General of the National Guards, was Marquis Lafayette.
As it whizzed by, Isidore felt an arm, strong with will if not real power, elbow him aside. It was the Queen's left arm, while with a cane in her right hand she struck the carriage wheels.
"A fig for you, Jailer!" she said. "I am out of your prison!"
"What are you doing, and what are you risking?" ejaculated the Viscount.
"I am taking my revenge," said the silly victim of spite, "and one may risk a good deal for that."
Behind the last torch-bearer she bounded along, radiant as a goddess, and gleeful as a child.
CHAPTER X.
ON THE HIGHWAY
The Queen had not taken ten paces beyond the gateway before a man in a blue garrick and with his face hidden by a tarpaulin hat, caught her convulsively by the arm and dragged her to a hackney coach stationed at the St. Nicaise corner: it was Count Charny.
They expected to see the Queen come up, after this half hour of delay, dying, downcast and prostrated, but they saw her merry and gladsome; the cut of the cane which she had given a carriage-wheel and fancied was on the rider, had made her forget her fatigue, her blunder, her obstinacy, the lost time and the consequences of the delay.
Charny pointed out a saddled horse which a servant was holding at a little distance to his brother who mounted and dashed ahead to pioneer the way. He would have to get the horses ready at Bondy.
Seeing him go, the Queen uttered some words of thanks which he did not hear.
"Let us be off, madam; we have not one second to lose," said Charny, with that firmness of will mixed with respect which great men take for grand occasions.
The Queen entered the hackney-coach, where were five already, the King, Lady Elizabeth, the Princess Royal, her brother and Lady Tourzel. She had to sit at the back with her son on her lap, with the King beside her: the two ladies and the girl were on the front seat. Fortunately the hackney carriages, old family coaches, were roomy in those days.
Charny got upon the box and to avert suspicion, turned the horses round and had them driven to the gate circuitously.
Their special conveyance was waiting for them there, on the side-road leading to the ditch. This part was lonesome. The traveling carriage had the door open, and Malden and Valory were on the steps.
In an instant the six travelers were out on the road. Charny drove the hack to the ditch and upset it in it, before returning to the party.
They were inside; Malden got up behind; Valory joined Charny on the box. The four horses went off at a rattling good pace as a quarter past one sounded from the church clock.
In an hour they were at Bondy, where Isidore had better teams ready. He saw the royal coach come up.
Charny got down to get inside as had been settled; but Lady Tourzel, who was to be sent back to town alone, had not been consulted.
With all her profound devotion to the Royal Family, she was unalterable on points of court etiquette. She stated that her duty was to look after the royal children, whom she was bound not to quit for a single instant unless by the King's express order, or the Queen's; but there being no precedent of a Queen having ordered the royal governess away from her charges, she would not go.
The Queen quivered with impatience, for she doubly wished Charny in the vehicle, as a lover who would make it pleasanter and as a Queen, as he would guard her.
Louis did not dare pronounce on the grave question. He tried to get out of the dilemma by a side-issue. Lady Tourzel stood ready to yield to the King's command but he dared not command her, so strong are the minutest regulations in the courtly-bred.
"Arrange anyway you like, count," said the fretful Queen, "only you must be with us."
"I will follow close to the carriage, like a simple servant," he replied: "I will return to town to get a horse by the one my brother came therefrom, and changing my dress I will join you at full speed."
"Is there no other means?" said Marie Antoinette in despair.
"I see none," remarked the King.
Lady Tourzel took her seat triumphantly and the stage-coach started off.
The importance of this discussion had made them forget to serve out the firearms which went back to Paris in the hack.
By daybreak, which was three o'clock, they changed horses at Meaux where the King was hungry. They brought their own provisions in the boot of the coach, cold veal and bread and wine, which Charny had seen to. But there were no knives and forks and the King had to carve with "Jean," that is, Malden's hunting-knife.
During this, the Queen leaned out to see if Charny were returning.
"What are you thinking of, madam?" inquired the King, who had found the two guards would not take refreshment.
"That Lafayette is in a way at this hour," replied the lady.
But nothing showed that their departure had been seen.
Valory said that all would go well.
"Cheer up!" he said, as he got upon the box with Malden and off they rolled again.
At eight o'clock they reached the foot of a long slope where the King had all get out to walk up. Scattered over the road, the pretty children romping and playing, the sister resting on her brother's arm and smiling: the pensive women looking backward, and all lit up by the June sun while the forest flung a transparent shade upon the highway – they seemed a family going home to an old manor to resume a regular and peaceful life and not a King and Queen of France fleeing from the throne which would be converted into their scaffold.
An accident was soon to stir up the dormant passions in the bosoms of the party.
The Queen suddenly stopped as though her feet had struck root.
A horseman appeared a quarter-league away, wrapped in the cloud of dust which his horse's hoofs threw up.
Marie Antoinette dared not say: "It is Count Charny!" but she did exclaim, "News from Paris!"
Everybody turned round except the Dauphin who was chasing a butterfly – compared with its capture the news from the capital little mattered.
Being shortsighted, the King drew a small spy-glass from his pocket.
"I believe it is only Lord Charny," he said.
"Yes, it is he," said the Queen.
"Go on," said the other: "he will catch up to us and we have no time to lose."
The Queen dared not suggest that the news might be of value.
It was only a few seconds at stake anyhow, for the rider galloped up as fast as his horse could go.
He stared as he came up for he could not understand why the party should be scattered all over the road.
He arrived as the huge vehicle stopped at the top of the ridge to take up the passengers.
It was indeed Charny as the Queen's heart and the King's eyes had told them. He was now wearing a green riding coat with flap collar, a broad brimmed hat with steel buckle, white waistcoat, tight buckskin breeches, and high boots reaching above the knee. His usually dead white complexion was animated by the ride and sparks of the same flame which reddened his cheeks shot from his eyes.
He looked like a conqueror as he rushed along; the Queen thought she had never seen him look handsomer. She heaved a deep sigh as the horseman leaped off his horse and saluted the King.
Turning, he bowed to the Queen. All grouped themselves round him, except two guardsmen who stood aloof in respect.
"Come near, gentlemen," said the King: "what news Count Charny brings concerns us all."
"To begin with, all goes well," said Charny: "At two in the morning none suspected our flight."
They breathed easier: the questions were multiplied. He related that he had entered the town and been stopped by a patrol of volunteers who however became convinced that the King was still in the palace. He entered his own room and changed his dress: the aid of Lafayette who first had a doubt, had become calm and dismissed extra guards.
He had returned on the same horse from the difficulty of getting a fresh one so early. It almost foundered, poor beast, but he reached Bondy upon it. There he took a fresh one and continued his ride with nothing alarming along the road.
The Queen found that such good news deserved the favor of her extending her hand to the bearer; he kissed it respectfully, and she turned pale. Was it from joy that he had returned, or with sorrow that he did not press it?
When the vehicle started off, Charny rode by the side.
At the next relay house all was ready except a saddle horse for the count which Isidore had not foreseen the want of. There would be delay for one to be found. The vehicle went off without him, but he overtook it in five minutes. It was settled that he should follow and not escort it. Still he kept close enough for the Queen to see him if she put her head out of the window and thus he exchanged a few words with the illustrious couple when the pace allowed it.
Charny changed horses at Montmirail and was dashing on thinking it had a good start of him when he almost ran into it. It had been pulled up from a trace breaking. He dismounted and found a new leather in the boot, filled with repairing stuff. The two guardsmen profited by the halt to ask for their weapons, but the King opposed their having them. On the objection that the vehicle might be stopped he replied that he would not have blood spilt on his account.
They lost half an hour by this mishap, when seconds were priceless.
They arrived at Chalons by two o'clock.
"All will go well if we reach Chalons without being stopped," the King had said.
Here the King showed himself for a moment. In the crowd around the huge conveyance two men watched him with sustained attention. One of them suddenly went away while the other came up.
"Sire, you will wreck all if you show yourself thus," he said. "Make haste, you lazybones," he cried to the postboys: "this is a pretty way to serve those who pay you handsomely."
He set to work, aiding the hostlers.
It was the postmaster.
At last the horses were hooked on and the postboys in their saddles and boots. The first tried to start his pair when they went clean off their feet. They got them up and all clear again, when the second span went off their feet! This time the postboy was caught under them.
Charny, who was looking on in silence, seized hold of the man and dragged him out of his heavy boots, remaining under the horse.
"What kind of horses have you given us?" demanded he of the postinghouse master.
"The best I had in," replied the man.
The horses were so entangled with the traces that the more they pulled at them the worse the snarl became.
Charny flew down to the spot.
"Unbuckle and take off everything," he said, "and harness up afresh. We shall get on quicker so."
The postmaster lent a hand in the work, cursing with desperation.
Meanwhile the other man, who had been looking on had run to the mayor, whom he told that the Royal Family were in a coach passing through the town. Luckily the official was far from being a republican and did not care to take any responsibility on himself. Instead of making the assertion sure, he shilly-shallied so that time was lost and finally arrived as the coach disappeared round the corner.
But more than twenty minutes had been frittered away.
Alarm was in the royal party; the Queen thought that the downfall of the two pair of horses were akin to the four candles going out one after another which she had taken to portend the death of herself, her husband and their two children.
Still, on getting out of the town, she and the King and his sister had all exclaimed:
"We are saved!"
But, a hundred paces beyond, a man shouted in at the window:
"Your measures are badly taken – you will be arrested!"
The Queen screamed but the man jumped into the hedge and was lost to sight.
Happily they were but four leagues from Sommevelle Bridge, where Choiseul and forty hussars were to be posted. But it was three in the afternoon and they were nearly four hours late.
CHAPTER XI.
THE QUEEN'S HAIRDRESSER
On the morning of the twenty-first of June, the Count of Choiseul, who had notified the King that he could wait no longer but must pick up his detachments along the road and fall back towards Bouille, who was also at the end of his patience, was told that a messenger from the Queen was at last at his house in Paris.
It was Leonard the Queen's hairdresser. He was a favorite who enjoyed immense credit at the court, but the duke could wish for a more weighty confidant. But how could the Queen go into exile without the artist who alone could build up her hair into one of those towers which caused her to be the envy of her sex and the stupefaction of the sterner one?
He was wearing a round hat pulled down to his eyes and an enormous "wraprascal," which he explained were property of his brother. The Queen, in confiding to him her jewels, had ordered him to disguise himself, and placed himself under the command of Choiseul. Not only verbal was this direction but in a note which the duke read and burned.
He ordered a cab to be made ready. When the servant reported it at the door, he said to the hairdresser:
"Come, my dear Leonard."
"But where?"
"A little way out of town where your art is required."
"But the diamonds?"
"Bring them along."
"But my brother will come home and see I have taken his best hat and overcoat – he will wonder what has become of me."
"Let him wonder! Did not the Queen bid you obey me as herself?"
"True, but Lady Ange will be expecting me to do up her hair. Nobody can make anything of her scanty wisp but me, and – "
"Lady Ange must wait till her hair grows again."
Without paying farther heed to his lamentations, the lord forced him into his cab and the horse started off at a fast gait. When they stopped to renew the horse, he believed they were going to the world's end, though the duke confessed that their destination was the frontier.
At Montmirail they were to pass the balance of the night, and indeed at the inn beds were ready. Leonard began to feel better, in pride at having been chosen for such an important errand.
At eleven they reached Sommevelle Bridge, where Choiseul got out to put on his uniform. His hussars had not yet arrived.
Leonard watched his preparations, particularly his freshening the pistol primings, with sharp disquiet and heaved sighs which touched the hearer.
"It is time to let you into the truth, Leonard; you are true to your masters so you may as well know that they will be here in a couple of hours. The King, the Queen, Lady Elizabeth, and the royal children. You know what dangers they were running, and dangers they are running still, but in two hours they will be saved. I am awaiting a hussar detachment to be brought by Lieut. Goguelat. We will have dinner and take our time over it."
But they heard the bugle and the hussars arrived. Goguelat brought six blank royal warrants and the order from Bouille for Choiseul to be obeyed like himself by all military officers, whatever their ranking seniority.
The horses were hobbled, wine and eatables served out to the troopers and Choiseuil sat at table.
Not that the lieutenant's news was good. He had found ferment everywhere along the road. For more than a year rumors of the King's flight had circulated as well in the country as in town, and the stationing of the soldiers had aroused talk. In one township the village church bells had sounded the alarm.
This was calculated to dull even a Choiseuil's appetite. So he got up from the board in an hour, as the clock struck half after twelve, and leaving Lieut. Boudet to rule the troop of horse, he went out on a hill by the town entrance which commanded a good view. Every five minutes he pulled out his watch, and, each time, Leonard groaned: "Oh, my poor masters, they will not come. Something bad has happened them."
His despair added to the duke's disquiet.
Three o'clock came without any tidings. It will be remembered that this was the hour when the King left Chalons.
While Choiseul was fretting, Fatality, unless Cagliostro had a hand in it, was preparing an event which had much to do with influencing the drama in course of performance.
A few days before, some peasants on the Duchess of Elbœuf's estate, near Sommevelle Bridge, had refused payment of some unredeemable taxes. They were threatened with the sheriff calling in the military; but the Federation business had done its work and the inhabitants of the neighborhood vowed to make common cause with their brothers of the plow and came armed to resist the process-servers.
On seeing the hussars ride in, the clowns thought that they were here for this purpose. So they sent runners to the surrounding villages and at three o'clock the alarm-bells were booming all over the country.
Choiseul went back on hearing this and found Lieut. Boudet uneasy.
Threats were heard against the hussars who were the best hated corps in the army. The crowd bantered them and sang a song at them which was made for the occasion:
"Than the hussars there is no worse,
But we don't care for them a curse!"
Other persons, better informed or keener, began to whisper that the cavalry were here not to execute a writ on the Elbœuf tillers but to wait for the King and Queen coming through.
Meanwhile four o'clock struck without any courier with intelligence.
The count put Leonard in his cab with the diamonds, and sent him on to Varennes, with order to say all he could to the commanders of each military troop on the road.
To calm the agitation he informed the mob that he and his company were there not to assist the sheriff, but to guard a treasure which the War Minister was sending along. This word "treasure," with its double meaning, confirmed suspicions on one side while allaying irritability on the other. In a short time he saw that his men were so outnumbered and as hedged in that they could do nothing in such a mass, and would have been powerless to protect the Royal Family if they came then.
His orders were to "act so that the King's carriage should pass without hindrance," while his presence was becoming an obstacle instead of protection.
Even had the King came up he had better be out of the way. Indeed his departure would remove the block from the highway. But he needed an excuse for the going.
The postmaster was there among half-a-dozen leading citizens whom a word would turn into active foes. He was close to Choiseul who inquired:
"My friend, did you hear anything about this military money-chest coming through?"
"This very morning," replied the man, "the stage-coach came along for Metz with a hundred thousand crowns; two gendarmes rode with it."
"You don't say so?" cried the nobleman, amazed at luck so befriending him.
"It is so true that I was one of the escort," struck in a gendarme.
"Then the Minister preferred that way of transmitting the cash," said Choiseul, turning to his lieutenant, quietly, "and we were sent only as a blind to highwaymen. As we are no longer needed, I think we can be off. Boot and saddle, my men!"
The troop marched out with trumpets sounding and the count at the head as the clock struck half-past five.
He branched off the road to avoid St. Menehould, where great hubbub was reported to prevail.
At this very instant, Isidore Charny, spurring and whipping a horse which had taken two hours to cover four leagues, dashed up to the posthouse to get another; asking about a squad of hussars he was told that it had marched slowly out of the place a quarter of an hour before; leaving orders about the horses for the carriage, he rode off at full speed of the fresh steed, hoping to overtake the count.
Choiseul had taken the side road precisely as Isidore arrived at the post, so that the viscount never met him.
