When Roederer entered the queen's apartments behind Weber, that lady was seated by the fire-place, with her back to the door; but she turned round on hearing it open.
"Well, sir?" she asked, without being very pointed in her inquiry.
"The honor has been done me of a call," replied Roederer.
"Yes, sir; you are one of the principal magistrates of the town, and your presence here is a shield for royalty. I wish to ask you, therefore, whether we have most to hope or to fear?"
"Little to hope, madame, and everything to fear."
"The mob is really marching upon the palace?"
"The front of the column is in the Carrousel, parleying with the Swiss Guards."
"Parleying? but I gave the Swiss the express order to meet brute force with force. Are they disobeying?"
"Nay, madame; the Swiss will die at their posts."
"And we at ours. The same as the Swiss are soldiers at the service of kings, kings are the soldiers at the beck of royalty."
Roederer held his peace.
"Have I the misfortune to entertain an opinion not agreeing with yours, sir?" asked the queen.
"Madame, I have no opinion unless I am asked for it."
"I do ask for it, sir."
"Then I shall state with the frankness of a believer. My opinion is that the king is ruined if he stays in the Tuileries."
"But if we do not stay here, where shall we go?" cried the queen, rising in high alarm.
"At present, there is no longer but one place of shelter for the royal family," responded the attorney-syndic.
"Name it, sir."
"The National Assembly."
"What do you say, sir?" demanded the queen, snapping her eyes and questioning like one who had not understood.
He repeated what he had said.
"Do you believe, sir, that I would ask a favor of those fellows?"
He was silent again.
"If we must meet enemies, I like those better who attack us in the broad day and in front, than those who wish to destroy us in the dark and from behind."
"Well, madame, it is for you to decide; either go and meet the people, or beat a retreat into the Assembly Hall."
"Beat a retreat? Are we so deprived of defenders that we must retreat before we have tried the exchange of shots?"
"Perhaps you will take the report, before you come to a conclusion, of some competent authority who knows the forces you have to dispose of?"
"Weber, bring me one of the principal officers—Maillardet, or Chesnaye, or—" she stopped on the point of saying "the Count of Charny."
Weber went out.
"If your majesty were to step up to the window, you would be able to judge for yourself."
With visible repugnance the lady took the few steps to the window, and, parting the curtains, saw the Carrousel Square, and the royal yard as well, crowded with ragged men bearing pikes.
"Good God! what are those fellows doing in here?" she exclaimed.
"I told your majesty—they are parleying."
"But they have entered the inner yards?"
"I thought I had better gain the time somehow for your majesty to come to a resolution."
The door opened.
"Come, come," cried the queen, without knowing that it would be Charny who appeared.
"I am here, madame," he said.
"Oh, is it you? Then I have nothing to say, as you told me a while ago what you thought should be done."
"Then the gentleman thought that the only course was—" said Roederer.
"To die," returned the queen.
"You see that what I propose is preferable, madame."
"Oh! on my soul, I do not know whether it is or not," groaned the queen.
"What does the gentleman suggest?"
"To take the king under the wing of the House."
"That is not death, but shame," said Charny.
"You hear that, sir?" cried the lady.
"Come, come," said the lawyer; "may there not be some middle course?"
Weber stepped forward.
"I am of very little account," he said, "and I know that it is very bold of me to speak in such company; but my devotion may inspire me. Suppose that your majesty only requested a deputation to watch over the safety of the king?"
"Well, I will consent to that. Lord Charny, if you approve of this suggestion, will you pray submit it to the king?"
Charny bowed and went out.
"Follow the count, Weber, and bring me the king's answer."
Weber went out after the nobleman.
Charny's presence, cold, stern and devoted, was so cruel a reproach to her as a woman, if not as a sovereign, that she shuddered in it. Perhaps she had some terrible forewarning of what was to happen.
Weber came back to say that the king accepted the idea.
"Two gentlemen are going to take his majesty's request to the Assembly."
"But look what they are doing!" exclaimed the queen.
The besiegers were busy fishing for Switzers.
Roederer looked out; but he had not the time to see what was in progress before a pistol-shot was followed by the formidable discharge. The building shook as though smitten to its foundations.
The queen screamed and fell back a step, but returned to the window, drawn by curiosity.
"Oh, see, see!" she cried, with flaring eyes, "they fly! they are routed! Why did you say, that we had no resource but in the Assembly?"
"Will your majesty be good enough to come with me," said the official.
"See, see," continued the queen, "there go the Swiss, making a sortie, and pursuing them! Oh, the Carrousel is swept free! Victory, victory!"
"In pity for yourself, madame, follow me," persisted Roederer.
Returning to her senses, she went with the attorney-syndic to the Louvre gallery, where he learned the king was, and which suited his purpose.
The queen had not an idea of it.
The gallery was barricaded half down, and it was cut through at a third of the way, where a temporary bridge was thrown across the gap; the foot of a fugitive might send it down, and so prevent the pursuers following into the Tuileries.
The king was in a window recess with his captains and some courtiers, and he held a spy-glass in his hand.
The queen had no need for it as she ran to the balcony.
The army of the insurrection was approaching, long and dense, covering the whole of the wide street along the riverside, and extending as far as the eye could reach.
Over the New Bridge, the southern districts effected a junction with the others.
All the church-bells of the town were frenziedly swinging out the tocsin, while the big bell of Notre Dame Cathedral overawed all the metallic vibrations with its bronze boom.
A burning sun sparkled in myriad points from the steel of gun-barrels and lance-points.
Like the rumblings of a storm, cannon was heard rolling on the pavement.
"What now, madame?" said Roederer.
Some fifty persons had gathered round the king.
The queen cast a long look on the group to see how much devotion lingered. Then, mute, not knowing to whom to turn, the poor creature took up her son and showed him to the officers of the court and army and National Guard, no longer the sovereign asking the throne for her heir, but the mother suing for protection for her boy.
During this time, the king was speaking in a low voice with the Commune attorney, or rather, the latter was repeating what he had said to the queen.
Two very distinct groups formed around the two sovereigns. The king's was cold and grave, and was composed of counselors who appeared of Roederer's opinion. The queen's was ardent, numerous, and enthusiastic young military men, who waved their hats, flourished their swords, raised their hands to the dauphin, kissed the hem of the queen's robe, and swore to die for both of them.
Marie Antoinette found some hope in this enthusiasm.
The king's party melted into the queen's, and with his usual impassibility, the monarch found himself the center of the two commingled. His unconcern might be courage.
The queen snatched a pair of pistols from Colonel Maillardet.
"Come, sire," she cried; "this is the time for you to show yourself and die in the midst of your friends!"
This action had carried enthusiasm to its height, and everybody waited for the king's reply, with parted lips and breath held in suspense.
A young, brave, and handsome king, who had sprung forward with blazing eye and quivering lip, to rush with the pistols in hand into the thick of the fight, might have recalled fortune to his crown.
They waited and they hoped.
Taking the pistols from the queen's hands, the king returned them to the owner.
"Monsieur Roederer," he said, "you were observing that I had better go over to the House?"
"Such is my advice," answered the legal agent of the Commune, bowing.
"Come away, gentlemen; there is nothing more to be done here," said the king.
Uttering a sigh, the queen took up her son in her arms, and said to her ladies:
"Come, ladies, since it is the king's desire," which was as much as to say to the others, "Expect nothing more from me."
In the corridor where she would have to pass through, Mme. Campan was waiting. She whispered to her: "How I wish I dwelt in a tower by the sea!"
The abandoned attendants looked at each other and seemed to say, "Is this the monarch for whom we came here to die?"
Colonel Chesnaye understood this mute inquiry, for he answered:
"No, gentlemen, it was for royalty. The wearer of the crown is mortal, but the principle imperishable."
The queen's ladies were terrified. They looked like so many marble statues standing in the corners and along the lobbies.
At last the king condescended to remember those he was casting off. At the foot of the stairs, he halted.
"But what will befall all those I leave behind?" he inquired.
"Sire," replied Roederer, "it will be easy enough for them to follow you out. As they are in plain dress, they can slip out through the gardens."
"Alas," said the queen, seeing Count Charny waiting for her by the garden gate, with his drawn sword, "I would I had heeded you when you advised me to flee."
The queen's Life Guardsman did not respond, but he went up to the king, and said:
"Sire, will you please exchange hats, lest yours single out your majesty?"
"Oh, you are right, on account of the white feather," said Louis. "Thank you, my lord." And he took the count's hat instead of his own.
"Does the king run any risk in this crossing?" inquired the queen.
"You see, madame, that if so, I have done all I could to turn the danger aside from the threatened one."
"Is your majesty ready?" asked the Swiss captain charged to escort the king across the gardens.
The king advanced between two rows of Swiss, keeping step with him, till suddenly they heard loud shouting on the left.
The door near the Flora restaurant had been burst through by the mob, and they rushed in, knowing that the king was going to the Assembly.
The leader of the band carried a head on a pole as the ensign.
The Swiss captain ordered a halt and called his men to get their guns ready.
"My Lord Charny," said the queen, "if you see me on the point of falling into those ruffians' hands, you will kill me, will you not?"
"I can not promise you that, for I shall be dead before they touch you."
"Bless us," said the king; "this is the head of our poor Colonel Mandat. I know it again."
The band of assassins did not dare to come too near, but they overwhelmed the royal pair with insults. Five or six shots were fired, and two Swiss fell—one dead.
"Do not fire," said Charny; "or not one of us will reach the House alive."
"That is so," observed the captain; "carry arms."
The soldiers shouldered their guns and all continued crossing diagonally. The first heats of the year had yellowed the chestnut-trees, and dry leaves were strewing the earth. The little prince found some sport in heaping them up with his foot and kicking them on his sister's.
"The leaves are falling early this year," observed the king.
"Did not one of those men write that royalty will not outlast the fall of the leaf?" questioned the queen.
"Yes, my lady," replied Charny.
"What was the name of this cunning prophet?"
"Manuel."
A new obstacle rose in the path of the royal family: a numerous crowd of men and women, who were waiting with menacing gestures and brandished weapons on the steps and the terrace which had to be gone over to reach the riding-school.
The danger was the worse from the Swiss being unable to keep in rank. The captain tried in vain to get through, and he showed so much rage that Roederer cried:
"Be careful, sir—you will lead to the king being killed."
They had to halt, but a messenger was sent to the Assembly to plead that the king wanted asylum.
The House sent a deputation, at the sight of whom the mob's fury was redoubled.
Nothing was to be heard but these shouts yelled with wrath:
"Down with Veto!"—"Over with the Austrian!"—"Dethronement or death!"
Understanding that it was in particular their mother who was threatened, the two children huddled up to her. The little dauphin asked:
"Lord Charny, why do these naughty people want to hurt my mamma?"
A gigantic man, armed with a pike, and roaring louder than the rest, "Down with Veto—death to the Austrian!" kept trying to stab the king and the queen.
The Swiss escort had gradually been forced away, so that the royal family had by them only the six noblemen who had left the palace with them, Charny, and the Assembly deputation.
There were still some thirty paces to go in the thick crowd.
It was evident that the lives of the pair were aimed at, and chiefly the queen's.
The struggle began at the staircase foot.
"If you do not sheathe your sword," said Roederer, "I will answer for nothing."
Without uttering a word, Charny put up his sword.
The party was lifted by the press as a skiff is tossed in a gale by the waves, and drawn toward the Assembly. The king was obliged to push away a ruffian who stuck his fist in his face. The little dauphin, almost smothered, screamed and held out his hands for help.
A man dashed forward and snatched him out of his mother's arms.
"My Lord Charny, my son!" she shrieked; "in Heaven's name, save my boy!"
Charny took a couple of steps in chase of the fellow with the prince, but as soon as he unmasked the queen, two or three hands dragged her toward them, and one clutched the neckerchief on her bosom. She sent up a scream.
Charny forgot Roederer's advice, and his sword disappeared its full length in the body of the wretch who had dared to lay hands on the queen.
The gang howled with rage on seeing one of their number slain, and rushed all the more fiercely on the group.
Highest of all the women yelled: "Why don't you kill the Austrian?"—"Give her to us to have her throat slit!"—"Death to her—death!"
Twenty naked arms were stretched out to seize her. Maddened by grief, thinking nothing of her own danger, she never ceased to cry:
"My son—save my son!"
They touched the portals of the Assembly, but the mob doubled their efforts for fear their prey would escape.
Charny was so closely pressed that he could only ply the handle of his sword. Among the clinched and menacing fists, he saw one holding a pistol and trying to get a shot at the queen. He dropped his sword, grasped the pistol by both hands, wrenched it from the holder, and discharged it into the body of the nearest assailant. The man fell as though blasted by lightning.
Charny stooped in the gap to regain his rapier.
At this moment, the queen entered the Assembly vestibule in the retinue of the king.
Charny's sword was already in a hand that had struck at her.
He flew at the murderer, but at this the doors were slammed, and on the step he dropped, at the same time felled by an iron bar on his head and a spear right through his heart.
"As fell my brothers," he muttered. "My poor Andrea!"
The fate of the Charnys was accomplished with the last one, as in the case of Valence and Isidore. That of the queen, for whom their lives were laid down, was yet to be fulfilled.
At this time, a dreadful discharge of great guns announced that the besiegers and the garrison were hard at work.
For a space, the Swiss might believe that they had dealt with an army and wiped it off the earth. They had slain nearly four hundred men in the royal yard, and almost two hundred in the Carrousel; seven guns were the spoils.
As far as they could see, no foes were in sight.
One small isolated battery, planted on the terrace of a house facing the Swiss guard-house, continued its fire without their being able to silence it. As they believed they had suppressed the insurrection, they were taking measures to finish with this battery at any cost, when they heard on the water-side the rolling of drums and the much more awful rolling of artillery over the stones.
This was the army which the king was watching through his spy-glass from the Louvre gallery.
At the same time the rumor spread that the king had quitted the palace and had taken refuge in the House of Representatives.
It is hard to tell the effect produced by this news, even on the most firm adherents.
The monarch, who had promised to die at his royal post, deserting it and passing over to the enemy, or at least surrendering without striking a blow!
Thereupon the National Guards regarded themselves as released from their oath, and almost all withdrew.
Several noblemen followed them, thinking it foolish to die for a cause which acknowledged itself lost.
Alone the Swiss remained, somber and silent, the slaves of discipline.
From the top of the Flora terrace and the Louvre gallery windows, could be seen coming those heroic working-men whom no army had ever resisted, and who had in one day brought low the Bastile, though it had been taking root during four centuries.
These assailants had their plan; believing the king in his castle, they sought to encompass him so as to take him in it.
The column on the left bank had orders to get in by the river gates; that coming down St. Honore Street to break in the Feuillants' gates, while the column on the right bank were to attack in front, led by Westerman, with Santerre and Billet under his orders.
The last suddenly poured in by all the small entrances on the Carrousel, singing the "It shall go on."
The Marseilles men were in the lead, dragging in their midst two four-pounders loaded with grape-shot.
About two hundred Swiss were ranged in order of battle on Carrousel Square.
Straight to them marched the insurgents, and as the Swiss leveled their muskets, they opened their ranks and fired the pieces.
The soldiers discharged their guns, but they immediately fell back to the palace, leaving some thirty dead and wounded on the pavement.
Thereupon, the rebels, headed by the Breton and Marseilles Federals, rushed on the Tuileries, capturing the two yards—the royal, in the center, where there were so many dead, and the princes', near the river and the Flora restaurant.
Billet had wished to fight where Pitou fell, with a hope that he might be only wounded, so that he might do him the good turn he owed for picking him up on the parade-ground.
So he was one of the first to enter the center court. Such was the reek of blood that one might believe one was in the shambles; it rose from the heap of corpses, visible as a smoke in some places.
This sight and stench exasperated the attackers, who hurled themselves on the palace.
Besides, they could not have hung back had they wished, for they were shoved ahead by the masses incessantly spouted forth by the narrow doors of the Carrousel.
But we hasten to say that, though the front of the pile resembled a frame of fire-works in a display, none had the idea of flight.
Nevertheless, once inside the central yard, the insurgents, like those in whose gore they slipped, were caught between two fires: that from the clock entrance and from the double row of barracks.
The first thing to do was stop the latter.
The Marseillais threw themselves at the buildings like mad dogs on a brasier, but they could not demolish a wall with hands; they called for picks and crows.
Billet asked for torpedoes. Westerman knew that his lieutenant had the right idea, and he had petards made. At the risk of having these cannon-cartridges fired in their hands, the Marseilles men carried them with the matches lighted and flung them into the apertures. The woodwork was soon set aflame by these grenades, and the defenders were obliged to take refuge under the stairs.
Here the fighting went on with steel to steel and shot for shot.
Suddenly Billet felt hands from behind seize him, and he wheeled round, thinking he had an enemy to grapple: but he uttered a cry of delight. It was Pitou; but he was pretty hard to identify, for he was smothered in blood from head to foot; but he was safe and sound and without a single wound.
When he saw the Swiss muskets leveled, he had called out for all to drop flat, and he had set the example.
But his followers had not time to act like him. Like a monstrous scythe, the fusillade had swept along at breast-high, and laid two thirds of the human field, another volley bending and breaking the remainder.
Pitou was literally buried beneath the swathe, and bathed by the warm and nauseating stream. Despite the profoundly disagreeable feeling, Pitou resolved not to make any move, while bathed in the blood of the bodies stifling him, and to wait for a favorable time to show tokens of life.
He had to wait for over an hour, and every minute seemed an hour. But he judged he had the right cue when he heard his side's shouts of victory, and Billet's voice, among the many, calling him.
Thereupon, like the Titan under the mountain, he shook off the mound of carcasses covering him, and ran to press Billet to his heart, on recognizing him, without thinking that he might soil his clothes, whichever way he took him.
A Swiss volley, which sent a dozen men to the ground, recalled them to the gravity of the situation.
Two thousand yards of buildings were burning on the sides of the central court. It was sultry weather, without the least breath; like a dome of lead the smoke of the fire and powder pressed on the combatants; the smoke filled up the palace entrances. Each window flamed, but the front was sheeted in smoke; no one could tell who delivered death or who received it.
Pitou and Billet, with the Marseillais at the fore, pushed through the vapor into the vestibule. Here they met a wall of bayonets—the Swiss.
The Swiss commenced their retreat, a heroic one, leaving a rank of dead on each step, and the battalion most slowly retiring.
Forty-eight dead were counted that evening on those stairs.
Suddenly the cry rang through the rooms and corridors:
"Order of the king—the Swiss will cease firing."
It was two in the afternoon.
The following had happened in the House to lead to the order proclaimed in the Tuileries; one with the double advantage of lessening the assailants' exasperation and covering the vanquished with honor.
As the doors were closing behind the queen, but still while she could catch a glimpse of the bars, bayonets, and pikes menacing Charny, she had screamed and held her hands out toward the opening; but dragged away by her companions, at the same time by her maternal instinct, she had to enter the Assembly Hall.
There she had the great relief afforded her of seeing her son seated on the speaker's desk; the man who had carried him there waved his red cap triumphantly over the boy's head and shouted gladly:
"I have saved the son of my master—long live the dauphin!"
But a sudden revulsion of feeling made Marie Antoinette recur to Charny.
"Gentlemen," she said, "one of my bravest officers, most devoted of followers, has been left outside the door, in danger of death. I beg succor for him."
Five or six members sprung away at the appeal.
The king, the queen, and the rest of the royal family, with their attendants, proceeded to the seats intended for the cabinet officers, and took places there.
The Assembly received them standing, not from etiquette, but the respect misfortune compelled.
Before sitting down, the king held up his hand to intimate that he wished to speak.
"I came here to prevent a great crime," he said, in the silence; "I thought I could not be in safety anywhere else."
"Sire," returned Vergniaud, who presided, "you may rely on the firmness of the National Assembly; its members are sworn to die in defending the people's rights and the constitutional authorities."
As the king was taking his seat, a frightful musketry discharge resounded at the doors. It was the National Guards firing, intermingled with the insurgents, from the Feuillants' terrace, on the Swiss officers and soldiers forming the royal escort.
An officer of the National Guard, probably out of his senses, ran in in alarm, and only stopped by the bar, cried: "The Swiss—the Swiss are coming—they have forced past us!"
For an instant the House believed that the Swiss had overcome the outbreak and were coming to recover their master; for at the time Louis XVI. was much more the king to the Swiss than to any others.
With one spontaneous movement the House rose, all of a mind, and the representatives, spectators, officials, and guards, raising their hands, shouted, "Come what may, we vow to live and die free men!"
In such an oath the royals could take no part, so they remained seated, as the shout passed like a whirlwind over their heads from three thousand mouths. The error did not last long, but it was sublime.
In another quarter of an hour the cry was: "The palace is overrun—the insurgents are coming here to take the king!"
Thereupon the same men who had sworn to die free in their hatred of royalty, rose with the same spontaneity to swear they would defend the king to the death. The Swiss captain, Durler, was summoned outside to lay down his arms.
"I serve the king and not the House," he said. "Where is the royal order?"
They brought him into the Assembly by force; he was black with powder and red with blood.
"Sire," he said, "they want me to lay down arms. Is it the king's order?"
"Yes," said Louis; "hand your weapons to the National Guard. I do not want such brave men to perish."
Durler lowered his head with a sigh, but he insisted on a written order. The king scribbled on a paper: "The king orders the Swiss to lay down their arms and return into barracks."
This was what voices were crying throughout the Tuileries, on the stairs, and in the rooms and halls. As this order restored some quiet to the House, the speaker rang his bell and called for the debating to be resumed.
A member rose and pointed out that an article of the Constitution forbade debates in the king's presence.
"Quite so," said the king; "but where are you going to put us?"
"Sire," said the speaker, "we can give you the room and box of the 'Logographe,' which is vacant owing to the sheet having ceased to appear."
The ushers hastened to show the party where to go, and they had to retrace some of the path they had used to enter.
"What is this on the floor?" asked the queen. "It looks like blood!"
The servants said nothing; for while the spots might be blood, they were ignorant where they came from.
Strange to say, the stains grew larger and nearer together as they approached the box. To spare her the sight, the king quickened the pace, and opening the box door himself, he bid her enter.
The queen sprung forward; but even as she set foot on the sill, she uttered a scream of horror and drew back, with her hands covering her eyes. The presence of the blood-spots was explained, for a dead body had been placed in the room.
It was her almost stepping upon this which had caused her to leap back.
"Bless us," said the king, "it is poor Count Charny's body!" in the same tone as he had said to the gory relic on the pike, "This is poor Mandat's head."
Indeed, the deputies had snatched the body from the cutthroats, and ordered it to be taken into the empty room, without the least idea that the royal family would be consigned to this room in the next ten minutes. It was now carried out and the guests installed. They talked of cleaning up, but the queen shook her head in opposition, and was the first to take a place over the blood-stains. No one noticed that she burst her shoe-laces and dabbled her foot in the red, still warm blood.
"Oh, Charny, Charny!" she murmured; "why does not my life-blood ooze out here to the last drop to mingle with yours unto all eternity?"
Three P. M. struck.
The last of her Life Guards was no more, for in and about her palace nearly a thousand nobles and Swiss had fallen.
During the slaying of the last of his adherents, what was the monarch doing? Being hungry, he called for his dinner.
Bread and wine, cold fowl, and meat, and fruit were brought him. He set to eating as if he were at a hunting-party, without noticing how he was stared at.
Among the eyes fixed on him was a pair burning because tears would not come. They were the queen's. It seemed to her that she could stay there forever, with her feet in her beloved's blood, living like a flower on the grave, with no nourishment but such as death affords.
She had suffered much lately, but never so as to see the king eating, for the position of affairs was serious enough to take away a man's appetite.
The Assembly, rather than protect him, had need of protection for itself. It was threatened by a formidable multitude roaring for the dethronement, and they obeyed by a decree. It proposed a National Convention, the head of the executive power being temporarily suspended from his functions. The Civil List was not to be paid. The king and family were to remain with the Assembly until order was restored; then they were to be placed in the Luxembourg Palace. Vergniaud told the deposed sovereign that it was the only way to save his neck.
This decree was proclaimed by torch-light that night.
The lights at the Tuileries fell on the ghastly scenes of the searchers and the mourners among the dead. Three thousand five hundred insurgents—to omit two hundred thieves shot by the rioters—had perished. This supposes as many wounded at the least. As the tumbrels rolled with the corpses to the working quarters, a chorus of curses went up against the king, the queen, their foreign camerilla, the nobles who had counseled them. Some swore revenge, and they had it in the coming massacres; others took up weapons and ran to the palace to vent their spite on the dead Swiss; others again crowded round the Assembly and the abbey where were prisoners, shouting "Vengeance."
The Tuileries presented an awful sight: smoking and bloody, deserted by all except the military posts which watched lest, under pretense of finding their dead, pillagers robbed the poor royal residence with its broken doors and smashed windows.
The post under the great clock, the main stairs, was commanded by a young captain of the National Guard, who was no doubt inspired by deep pity by the disaster, if one might judge by the expression of his countenance as each cart-load of dead was removed.
But the dreadful events did not seem to affect him a whit more than they had the deposed king. For, about eleven at night, he was busy in satisfying a monstrous appetite at the expense of a quartern loaf held under his left arm, while his knife-armed right hand unceasingly sliced off hunks of goodly size, which he inserted into a mouth opening to suit the dimensions of the piece.
Leaning against a vestibule pillar, he was watching the silent procession go by, like shades of mothers, wives and daughters, in the glare of torches set up here and there; they were asking of the extinct crater for the remains of their dear ones.
Suddenly the young officer started at the sight of one veiled phantom.
"It is the Countess of Charny," he muttered.
The shadow passed without seeing or hearing him.
The captain beckoned to his lieutenant.
"Desire," he said to him, on coming up, "yonder goes a poor lady of Doctor Gilbert's acquaintance, who is no doubt looking for her husband among the dead. I think of following her, in case she should need help and advice. I leave the command to you; keep good guard for both of us."
"Hang me if Doctor Gilbert's acquaintance has not a deucedly aristocratic bearing," remarked Lieutenant Desire Maniquet.
"Because she is an aristocrat—she is a countess," replied the officer.
"Go along; I will look out."
The Countess of Charny had already turned the first corner of the stairs, when the captain, detaching himself from his men, began to follow her at the respectful distance of fifteen paces. He was not mistaken. Poor Andrea was looking for her husband, not with the anxious thrill of doubt, but with the dull conviction of despair.
When Charny had been aroused in the midst of his joy and happiness by the echo of deeds in Paris, he had come, pale but resolute, to say to his wife:
"Dear Andrea, the King of France runs the risk of his life, and needs all his defenders. What ought I do?"
"Go where duty calls you, my dear George," she had replied, "and die for the king if you must."
"But how about you?" he asked.
"Do not be uneasy about me," she said. "As I live but in you, God may allow that we shall die together."
That settled all between those great hearts; they did not exchange a word further. When the post-horses came to the door, they set out, and were in town in five hours.
That same evening, we have seen Charny present himself for duty in his naval uniform at the same time that Dr. Gilbert was going to send for him.
Since that hour we know that he never quitted the queen.
Andrea had remained alone, shut in, praying; for a space she entertained the idea of imitating her husband, and claiming her station beside the queen, as he had beside the king; but she had not the courage.
The day of the ninth passed for her in anguish, but without anything positive. At nine in the morning next day she heard the cannon; it is needless to say that each echo of the war-like thunder thrilled her to the inmost fiber of her heart. The firing died out about two o'clock.
Were the people defeated, or the victors? she questioned, and was told that the people had won the day.
What had become of Charny in this terrible fray? She was sure that he had taken a leading part. On making inquiries again, she was told that the Swiss were slain, but most of the noblemen had got away.
But the night passed without his coming. In August, night comes late.
Not till ten o'clock did Andrea lose hope, when she drew a veil over her face and went out.
All along the road she met clusters of women wringing their hands and bands of men howling for revenge. She passed among them, protected by the grief of one and the rage of the other; besides, they were man-hunting that night, and not for women.
The women of both parties were weeping.
Arriving on the Carrousel, Andrea heard the proclamation that the rulers were deposed and safe under the wing of the Assembly, which was all she understood.
Seeing some carts go by, she asked what they carried, and was told the dead from the palace yards. Only the dead were being removed; the turn of the wounded would come later.
She thought that Charny would have fallen at the door of the rooms of the king or the queen, so she entered the palace. It was at the moment when Pitou, commanding the main entrance as the captain, saw, and, recognizing her, followed.
It is not possible to give an idea of the devastation in the Tuileries.
Blood poured out of the rooms and spouted like cascades down the stairs. In some of the chambers the bodies yet lay.
Like the other searchers, Andrea took a torch and looked at body after body. Thus she made her way to the royal rooms. Pitou still followed her.
Here, as in the other rooms, she sought in vain; she paused, undecided whither to turn. Seeing her embarrassment, the soldier went up to her.
"Alas, I suspect what your ladyship is seeking!" he said.
"Captain Pitou?" Andrea exclaimed.
"At your service."
"Yes, yes, I have great need of you," she said. Going to him, she took both his hands, and continued: "Do you know what has become of the Count of Charny?"
"I do not, my lady; but I can help you to look for him."
"There is one person who can tell us whether he is dead or alive, and where he is in either case," observed Andrea.
"Who is that, my lady?" queried the peasant.
"The queen," muttered Andrea.
"Do you know where she is?" inquired Pitou.
"I believe she is in the House, and I have still the hope that my Lord Charny is with her."
"Why, yes, yes," said Pitou, snatching at the hope for the mourner's sake; "would you like to go into the House?"
"But they may refuse me admission."
"I'll undertake to get the doors to open."
"Come, then."
Andrea flung the flambeau from her at the risk of setting fire to the place, for what mattered the Tuileries to her in such desperation? so deep that she could not find tears.
From having lived in the palace as the queen's attendant, she knew all the ways, and she led them back by short cuts to the grand entrance where Maniquet was on the lookout.
"How is your countess getting on?" he inquired.
"She hopes to find her lord in the House, where we are going. As we may find him," he added, in a low voice, "but dead, send me four stout lads to the Feuillants' gate, whom I may rely on to defend the body of an aristocrat as well as though a good patriot's."
"All right; go ahead with your countess; I will send the men."
Andrea was waiting at the garden end, where a sentry was posted; but as that was done by Pitou, he naturally let his captain pass.
The palace gardens were lighted by lamps set mostly on the statue pedestals. As it was almost as warm as in the heat of the day, and the slight breeze barely ruffled the leaves, the lamp-flames rose straight, like spear-heads, and lighted up the corpses strewn under the trees.
But Andrea felt so convinced that she should find her husband where the queen had taken refuge, that she walked on, without looking to either right or left. Thus they reached the Feuillants' gate.
The royal family had been gone an hour, and were in the record office, for the time. To reach them, there were two obstacles to pass: the guards and the royal attendants.
Pitou, as commanding the Tuileries, had the password, and could therefore conduct the lady up to the line of gentlemen.
The former favorite of the queen had but to use her name to take the next step.
On entering the little room reserved for her, the queen had thrown herself on the bed, and bit the pillow amid sobs and tears.
Certainly, one who had lost a throne and liberty, and perhaps would lose her life, had lost enough for no one to chaffer about the degree of her despair, and not to seek behind her deep abasement if some keener sorrow still did not draw these tears from her eyes and sobs from her bosom.
Owing to the respect inspired by this supreme grief, she had been left alone at the first.
She heard the room door open, but as it might be that from the king's, she did not turn; though she heard steps approaching her pillow, she did not lift her head from it.
But suddenly she sprung up, as though a serpent had stung her.
A well-known voice had simply uttered the single word, "Madame."
"Andrea?" cried Marie Antoinette, rising on her elbow. "What do you want?"
"I want the answer God demanded of Cain when He said, 'What have you done with your brother'?"
"With this difference," returned the queen, "That Cain had killed his brother; whereas I—so gladly—would give not only my existence, but ten lives, to save his dear one."
Andrea staggered; a cold sweat burst out on her forehead, and her teeth chattered.
"Then he was killed?" she faltered, making a great effort.
"Do you think I am wailing for my crown?" demanded the fallen majesty, looking hard at her. "Do you believe that if this blood were mine"—here she showed her dyed foot—"I should not have washed it off?"
Andrea became lividly pale.
"Then you know where his body is?" she said.
"I could take you to it, if I were allowed to go forth," said the prisoner.
Andrea went out at the door by which Pitou was waiting.
"Captain," she said, "one of my friends, a lady of the queen's, offers to take me where the count's body is. May she go out with me?"
"On condition that you bring her back whence she came," said the officer.
"That will do."
"Comrade," said Pitou to his sentry, "one of the queen's women wants to go out to help us find the body of a brave officer of whom this lady is the widow. I will answer for her with my head."
"That is good enough for me, captain," was the reply.
The anteroom door opened and the queen appeared, but she had a veil wound round her head. They went down the stairs, the queen leading.
After a twenty-seven hours' session, the House had adjourned, and the immense hall, where so much noise and so many events had been compressed, was dumb, void, and somber as a sepulcher.
The queen called for a light. Pitou picked up an extinguished link, lighted it at a lantern, and handed it to her, and she resumed the march. As they passed the entrance door, the queen pointed to it.
"He was killed there," she said.
Andrea did not reply; she seemed a specter haunting one who had called her up.
The queen lowered the torch to the floor in the lobby, saying: "Behold his blood."
Andrea remained mute.
The conductress went straight to a closet attached to the "Logographe" box, pulled the door open, and said, as she held up the light to illumine the interior:
"Here is his body."
Andrea entered the room, knelt down, and taking the head upon her knee, she said:
"Madame, I thank you; this is all I wanted of you."
"But I have something to ask you—won't you forgive me?"
There fell a short silence, as though Andrea were reflecting.
"Yes," she replied, at length, "for I shall be with him on the morrow."
The queen drew a pair of scissors from her bosom, where they were hidden like a weapon to be used in an extremity.
"Then would you kindly—" She spoke almost supplicatingly, as she held out the joined blades to the mourner.
Andrea cut a lock of hair from the corpse's brow, and handed it and the instrument to the other. She caught her hand and kissed it, but Andrea snatched away hers, as though the lips of her royal mistress had scorched her.
"Ah!" muttered the queen, throwing a last glance on the remains, "who can tell which of us loved him the most?"
"Oh, my darling George," retorted Andrea, in the same low tone, "I trust that you at least know now that I loved you the best!"
The queen went back on the way to her prison, leaving Andrea with the remains of her husband, on which a pale moonbeam fell through a small grated window, like the gaze of a friend.
Without knowing who she was, Pitou conducted Marie Antoinette, and saw her safely lodged. Relieved of his responsibility toward the soldier on guard, he went out on the terrace to see if the squad he had asked of Maniquet had arrived. The four were waiting.
"Come in," said Pitou.
Using the torch which he had taken from the queen's hands, he led his men to the room where Andrea was still gazing on her husband's white but still handsome face in the moonshine. The torch-light made her look up.
"What do you want?" she challenged of the Guards, as though she thought they came to rob her of the dead.
"My lady," said Pitou, "we come to carry the body of Count Charny to his house in Coq-Heron Street."
"Will you swear to me that it is purely for that?" Andrea asked.
Pitou held out his hand over the dead body with a dignity of which he might be believed incapable.
"Then I owe you apology, and I will pray God," said Andrea, "in my last moments, to spare you and yours such woe as He hath afflicted me with."
The four men took up the warrior on their muskets, and Pitou, with his drawn sword, placed himself at the head of the funeral party. Andrea walked beside the corpse, holding the cold and rigid hand in her own. They put the body on the countess's bed, when that lady said to the National Guardsmen:
"Receive the blessings of one who will pray to God for you to-morrow before Him. Captain Pitou," she added, "I owe you more than I ever can repay you. May I rely on you for a final service?"
"Order me, madame."
"Arrange that Doctor Gilbert shall be here at eight o'clock in the morning."
Pitou bowed and went out. Turning his head as he did so, he saw Andrea kneel at the bed as at an altar.
At eight precisely next day, Gilbert knocked at the house-door of the Countess of Charny.
On hearing of her request made to Pitou, he had asked him for full particulars of the occurrence, and he had pondered over them.
As he went out in the morning, he sent for Pitou to go to the college where his son and Andrea's, Sebastian, was being educated, and bring him to Coq-Heron Street. He was to wait at the door there for the physician to come out.
No doubt the old janitor had been informed of the doctor's visit, for he showed him at once into the sitting-room.
Andrea was waiting, clad in full mourning. It was clear that she had neither slept nor wept all the night through; her face was pale and her eyes dry. Never had the lines of her countenance, always indicative of willfulness carried to the degree of stubbornness, been more firmly fixed.
It was hard to tell what resolution that loving heart had settled on, but it was plain that it had come to one. This was comprehended by Gilbert at a first glance, as he was a skilled observer and a reasoning physician.
He bowed and waited.
"I asked you to come because I want a favor done, and it must be put to one who can not refuse it me."
"You are right, madame; not, perhaps, in what you are about to ask, but in what you have done; for you have the right to claim of me anything, even to my life."
She smiled bitterly.
"Your life, sir, is one of those so precious to mankind that I should be the first to pray God to prolong it and make it happy, far from wishing it abridged. But acknowledge that yours is placed under happy influences, as there are others seemingly doomed beneath a fatal star."
Gilbert was silent.
"Mine, for instance," went on Andrea; "what do you say about mine? Let me recall it briefly," she said, as Gilbert lowered his eyes. "I was born poor. My father was a ruined spendthrift before I was born. My childhood was sad and lonesome. You knew what my father was, as you were born on his estate and grew up in our house, and you can measure the little affection he had for me.
"Two persons, one of whom was bound to be a stranger to me, while the other was unknown, exercised a fatal and mysterious sway over me, in which my will went for naught. One disposed of my soul, the other of my body. I became a mother without ceasing to be a virgin. By this horrid event I nearly lost the love of the only being who ever loved me—my brother Philip.
"I took refuge in the idea of motherhood, and that my babe would love me; but it was snatched from me within an hour of its birth. I was therefore a wife without a husband, a mother without a child.
"A queen's friendship consoled me.
"One day chance sent me in a public vehicle with the queen and a handsome young gallant, whom fatality caused me to love, though I had never loved a soul.
"He fell in love with the queen. I became the confidante in this amour. As I believe you have loved without return, Doctor Gilbert, you can understand what I suffered. Yet this was not enough. It happened on a day that the queen came to me to say: 'Andrea, save my life; more than life—my honor!' It was necessary that I should become the bride of the man I had loved three years without becoming his wife. I agreed. Five years I dwelt beside that man, flame within, but ice without; a statue with a burning heart. Doctor, as a doctor, can you understand what my heart went through?
"One day—day of unspeakable bliss—my self-sacrifice, silence, and devotion touched that man. For six years I loved him without letting him suspect it by a look, when he came all of a quiver to throw himself at my feet and cry: 'I know all, and I love you!'
"Willing to recompense me, God, in giving me my husband, restored me my child. A year flew by like a day—nay, an hour, a minute. This year is all I call my life.
"Four days ago the lightning fell at my feet. The count's honor bid him go to Paris, to die there. I did not make any remark, did not shed a tear; I went with him. Hardly had we arrived before he parted from me. Last night I found him, slain. There he rests, in the next room.
"Do you think I am too ambitious to crave to lie in the same grave? Do you believe you can refuse the request I make to you?
"Doctor Gilbert, you are a learned physician and a skillful chemist. You have been guilty of great wrongs to me, and you have much to expiate as regards me. Well, give me a swift sure poison, and I shall not merely forgive you all, but die with a heart full of gratitude to you."
"Madame," replied Gilbert, "as you say, your life has been one long, dolorous trial, and for it all glory be yours, since you have borne it nobly and saintly, like a martyr."
She gave an impatient toss of the head, as if she wanted a direct answer.
"Now you say to your torturer: 'You made my life a misery; give me a sweet death.' You have the right to do this, and there is reason in your adding: 'You must do it, for you have no right to refuse me anything,' Do you still want the poison?"
"I entreat you to be friend enough to give it me."
"Is life so heavy to you that it is impossible for you to support it?"
"Death is the sweetest boon man can give me; the greatest blessing God may grant me."
"In ten minutes you shall have your wish, madame," responded Gilbert, bowing and taking a step toward the door.
"Ah!" said the lady, holding out her hand to him, "you do me more kindness in an instant than you did harm in all your life. God bless you, Gilbert!"
He hurried out. At the door he found Pitou and Sebastian, waiting in a hack.
"Sebastian," he said to the youth, drawing a small vial attached to a gold chain from inside his clothes at his breast, "take this flask of liquor to the Countess of Charny."
"How long am I to stay with her?"
"As long as you like."
"Where am I to find you?"
"I shall be waiting here."
Taking the small bottle, the young man went in-doors. In a quarter of an hour he came forth. Gilbert cast on him a rapid glance. He brought back the tiny flask untouched.
"What did she say?" asked Gilbert.
"'Not from your hand, my child!'"
"What did she do then?"
"She fell a-weeping."
"She is saved," said Gilbert. "Come, my boy," and he embraced him more tenderly than ever before. In clasping him to his heart, he heard the crackling of paper.
"What is that?" he asked, with a nervous laugh of joy. "Do you by chance carry your compositions in your breast-pocket?"
"There, I had forgotten," said the youth, taking a parchment from his pocket. "The countess gave it me, and says it is to be deposited in the proper registry."
The doctor examined the paper. It was a document which empowered, in default of heirs male, to the titles of Philip de Taverney, Knight of Redcastle, Sebastian Emile Gilbert, son of Andrea Taverney, Countess of Charny, to wear that title honorarily until the king should make it good to him by favor of his mother's service to the Crown, and perhaps award him the estates to maintain the dignity.
"Keep it," said Gilbert, with a melancholy smile; "as well date it from the Greek kalends! The king, I fear, will nevermore dispose of more than six-feet-by-three of landed property in his once kingdom of France."
Gilbert could jest, for he believed Andrea saved.
He had reckoned without Marat. A week after, he learned that the scoundrel had denounced the favorite of the queen, and that the widowed Countess of Charny had been arrested and lodged in the old Abbey Prison.