In the night, while Gilbert was vainly trying to save Andrea, the Commune, unable to secure Danton's help, formed a committee of vigilance, including Marat, though he was not a member of the Commune. But his name enthroned murder, and showed the frightful development of his power.
The first order of this committee was to have twenty-four prisoners removed from the abbey, and brought before them at the mayor's offices—now the police prefecture building.
It was expected that they would be set upon in the streets, and the butchery there begun would be introduced into the prisons.
Marat's "barkers," as they were called, in vain, however, shouted as the hacks went along:
"Look at the traitors—the accomplices of the Prussians! There they go who are surrendering our towns, slaying our wives and babes, and will do it here if you leave them in the rear when you march to the border."
But, as Danton said, massacres are a scarce bird, and the incitement only brought out more uproar.
Fortune came to the ruffians' assistance.
At a crossing was a stage run up for the voluntary enlistments. The cabs had to stop. A man pushed through the escort and plunged his sword several times inside a carriage, drawing it out dripping with blood. A prisoner had a cane, and trying to parry the steel, he struck one of the guards.
"Why, you brigands," said the struck man, "we are protecting you and you strike us! Lay on, friends!"
Twenty scoundrels, who only waited for the call, sprung out of the throng, armed with knives tied to poles in the way of spears, and stabbed through the carriage windows. The screams arose from inside the conveyances, and the blood trickled out and left a track on the road-way.
Blood calls for blood, and the massacre commenced which was to last four days.
It was regularized by Maillard, who wanted to have every act done in legal style. His registry exists, where his clear, steady handwriting is perfectly calm and legible in the two notes and the signature. "Executed by the judgment of the people," or "Acquitted by the people," and "Maillard."
The latter note appears forty-three times, so that he saved that number.
After the fourth of September he disappeared, swallowed up in the sea of blood.
Meanwhile, he presided over the court. He had set up a table and called for a blank book; he chose a jury, or rather assistant judges, to the number of twelve, who sat six on either side of him.
He called out the prisoner's name from a register; while the turnkeys went for the person, he stated the case, and looked for a decision from his associates as soon as the accused appeared. If condemned, he said: "To Laforce!" which seemed to mean the prison of that name; but the grim pun, understood, was that he was to be handed over to "brute force."
Beyond the outer door the wretch fell under the blows of the butchers.
If the prisoner was absolved, the black phantom rose, laid his hand on the person's head, and said, "Put him out!" and the prisoner was freed.
When Maillard arrived at the Abbey Prison, a man, also in black, who was waiting by the wall, stepped forward to meet him. On the first words exchanged between them, Maillard recognized this man, and bowed his tall figure to him in condescension, if not submission. He brought him into the prison, and when the tribunal was arranged, he said:
"Stand you there, and when the person comes out in whom you are interested, make me a sign."
The man rested his elbow against the wall and stood mute, attentive, and motionless as when outside.
It was Honore Gilbert, who had sworn that he would not let Andrea die, and was still trying to fulfill his oath.
Between four and six in the morning, the judges and butchers took a rest, and at six had breakfast.
At half past the horrid work was resumed.
In that interval such of the prisoners as could see the slaughter out of a window reported by which mode death came swiftest and with the least suffering; they concluded it was by a stab to the heart.
Thereupon, some took turn after turn with a pocket-knife to cheat the slaughterers.
In the midst of this dreadful ante-chamber of death, one woman in deep mourning was kneeling in prayer and smiling.
It was the Countess of Charny.
Two hours yet passed before she was called as "Citizeness Andrea of Taverney, previously known as the Countess of Charny."
At the name, Gilbert felt his legs yield under him and his heart weaken.
A life, more important than his own, was to be debated, tried, and doomed or spared.
"Citizens," said Maillard, "the person about to appear before you is a poor woman who was devoted formerly to the Austrian, but with truly royal ingratitude, she paid her with sorrow; to that friendship she gave all—her property and her husband. You will see her come in, dressed in mourning, which she owes to the prisoner in the temple. Citizens, I ask you for the life of this woman."
The bench of judges nodded; but one said the prisoner ought to appear before them.
"Then, look," said the chief.
The door opening, they saw in the corridor depths a woman clad wholly in black, with her head crowned with a black veil, who walked forward alone without support, with a steady step. She seemed an apparition from another world, at the sight of which even those justices shuddered.
Arriving at the table, she lifted her veil. Never had beauty less disputable but none more pale met the eyes of man; it was a goddess in marble.
All eyes were fixed upon her, while Gilbert panted.
"Citizen"—she addressed Maillard in a voice as sweet as firm—"you are the president?"
"Yes, citizeness," replied the judge, startled at his being questioned.
"I am the Countess of Charny, wife of the count of that house, killed on the infamous tenth of August; an aristocrat and the bosom friend of the queen, I have deserved death, and I come to seek it."
The judges uttered a cry of surprise, and Gilbert turned pale and shrunk as far as he could back into the angle by the door to escape Andrea's gaze.
"Citizens," said Maillard, who saw the doctor's plight, "this creature has gone mad through the death of her husband; let us pity her, and let her senses have a chance to come back. The justice of the people does not fall on the insane."
He rose and was going to lay his hands on Andrea's head as he did when he pronounced those innocent; but she pushed aside his hand.
"I have my full reason," she said; "and if you want to pardon any one, let it be one who craves it and merits it, but not I, who deserve it not and reject it."
Maillard turned to Gilbert and saw that he was wringing his clasped hands.
"This woman is plainly mad," he said; "put her out."
He waved his hand to a member of the court, who shoved the countess toward the door of safety.
"Innocent," he called out; "let her go out."
They who had the weapons ready parted before Andrea, lowered them unto this image of mourning. But, after having gone ten paces, and while Gilbert, clinging to the window bars, saw her going forth, she stopped.
"God save the king!" she cried. "Long live the queen, and shame on the tenth of August!"
Gilbert uttered a shriek and darted out into the yard. For he had seen a sword glitter, and swift as a lightning flash, the blade disappeared in Andrea's bosom. He arrived in time to catch her in his arms, and as she turned on him her dying gaze she recognized him.
"I told you that I would die in spite of you," she muttered. "Love Sebastian for both of us," she added, in a barely intelligible voice, and still more faintly continued: "You will have me laid to rest by him—next my George, my husband, for time everlasting?"
And she expired.
Gilbert raised her up in his arms, while fifty blood-smeared hands menaced him all at once.
But Maillard appeared behind him and said, as he spread his hands over his head:
"Make way for the true citizen Gilbert, carrying out the body of a poor crazed woman slain by mistake."
They stepped aside, and carrying the corpse of Andrea, the man who had first loved her, even to committing crime to triumph over her, passed amid the murderers without one thinking of barring the way, so sovereign was Maillard's words over the multitude.
Let us return to the somber edifice confining a king become mere man, a queen still a queen, a maid who would be a martyr, and two poor children innocent, from age if not by birth.
The king was in the temple, not the temple tower, but the palace of the Knights Templars, which had been used by Artois as a pleasure resort.
The Assembly had not haggled about his keep, but awarded a handsome sum for the table of one who was a hearty eater, like all the Bourbons. Not only did the judges reprimand him for his untimely gluttony during his trial, but they had a note made of the fact to be on record to our times.
In the temple he had three servants and thirteen attendants connected with the table. Each day's dinner was composed of four entrées—six varieties of roast meat, four fancy dishes, three kinds of stews, three dishes of fruit, and Bordeaux, Madeira, and Malvoisie wine.
He and his son alone drank wine, as the queen and the princesses used water.
On the material side, he had nothing to complain of; but he lacked air, exercise, sunshine, and shady trees.
Habituated by hunting in the royal forests to glade and covert, he had to content himself with a green yard, where a few withered trees scattered prematurely blighted leaves on four parterres of yellowed grass.
Every day at four, the royal family were "walked out" here, as if they were so many head of stall-fed cattle.
This was mean, unkind, ferocious in its cruelty; but less cruel and ferocious than the cells of the pope's dungeons where they had tried to drive Cagliostro to death, or the leads of Venice, or the Spielberg dungeons.
We are not excusing the Commune, and not excusing kings; we are bound to say that the temple was a retaliation, terrible and fatal, but clumsy, for it was making a prosecution a persecution and a criminal a martyr.
What did they look like now—those whom we have seen in their glory?
The king, with his weak eyes, flabby cheeks, hanging lips, and heavy, carefully poised step, seemed a good farmer upset by a great disaster; his melancholy was that of an agriculturist whose barn had been burned by lightning or his fields swept by a cyclone. The queen's attitude was as usual, stiff, proud, and dreadfully irritating. Marie Antoinette had inspired love of grandeur in her time; in her decline, she inspired devotion, but never pity; that springs from sympathy, and she was never one for fellow-feeling.
The guardian angel of the family was Princess Elizabeth, in her white dress, symbol of her purity of body and soul; her fair hair was the handsomer from the disuse of powder. The princess royal, notwithstanding the charm of youth, little interested any one; a thorough Austrian like her mother, her look had already the scorn and arrogance of vultures and royal races. The little dauphin was more winning from his sickly white complexion and golden hair; but his eye was a hard raw blue, with an expression at times older than his age. He understood things too well, caught the idea from a glance of his mother's eye, and showed politic cunning which sometimes wrung tears from those who tormented him.
The Commune were cruel and imprudent; they changed the watchers daily, and sent spies, under the guise of town officers. These went in sworn enemies to the king and came out enemies to the death of Marie Antoinette, but almost all pitying the king, sorrowing for the children, and glorifying the Lady Elizabeth. Indeed, what did they see at the prison? Instead of the wolf, the she-wolf and the whelps—an ordinary middle-class family, with the mother rather the gray mare and spitfire, who would not let any one touch the hem of her dress, but of a brood of tyrants not a trace.
The king had taken up Latin again in order to educate his son, while the queen occupied herself with her daughter. The link of communication between the couple was the valet, Clery, attached to the prince royal, but from the king's own servant, Hue, being dismissed, he waited on both. While hair-dressing for the ladies, he repeated what the king wanted to transmit, quickly and in undertones.
The queen would often interrupt her reading to her daughter by plunging into deep and gloomy musing; the princess would steal away on tiptoe to let her enjoy a new sorrow, which at least had the benefit of tears, and make a hushing sign to her brother. When the tear fell on her ivory hand, beginning to yellow, the poor prisoner would start back from her dream, her momentary freedom in the immense domain of thought and memories, and look round her prison with a lowered head and broken heart.
Weather permitting, the family had a walk in the garden at one o'clock, with a corporal and his squad of the National Guard to watch them. Then the king went up to his rooms on the third story to dine. It was then that Santerre came for his rigorous inspection. The king sometimes spoke with him; the queen never; she had forgotten what she owed to this man on the twentieth of June.
As we have stated, bodily needs were tyrannical in the king, who always indulged in an after-dinner nap; during this, the others remained silent around his easy-chair. Only when he woke was the chat resumed.
When the newsboys called out the news items in the evening, Clery listened, and repeated what he caught to the king.
After supper, the king went into the queen's room to bid her good-night, as well as his sister, by a wave of the hand, and going into his library, read till midnight. He waited before going off to sleep to see the guards changed, to know whether he had a strange face for the night-watcher.
This unchanging life lasted till the king left the small tower—that is, up to September 30th.
It was a dull situation, and the more worthy of pity as it was dignifiedly supported. The most hostile were softened by the sight. They came to watch over the abominable tyrant who had ruined France, massacred Frenchmen, and called the foreigners in; over the queen who had united the lubricities of Messalina to the license of Catherine II.; but they found a plain old fellow whom they could not tell from his valet, who ate and drank heartily and slept soundly, playing piquet or backgammon, teaching Latin and geography to his boy, and putting puzzles to his children out of old newspapers; and a wife, proud and haughty, one must admit, but calm, dignified, resigned, still handsome, teaching her daughter tapestry-work and her son his prayers, speaking gently to the servants and calling them "friends."
The result was that the more the Commune abased the prisoner, and the more he showed that he was like any other man, the more other men took pity on their fellow-man.
Still, all who came into contact with the royal family did not feel the same respect and pity. Hatred and revenge were so deeply rooted in these, that the sight of the regal misery supported with domestic virtues, only brought out rudeness, insults, and actual indignities.
On the king saying that he thought a sentry was tired, the soldier pressed his hat on the more firmly, and said, in the teeth of the monarch:
"My place here is to keep an eye on you and not for you to criticise me. Nobody has the right to meddle with my business, and you least of all."
Once the queen ventured to ask a town officer where he came from.
"I belong to the country," he loftily replied, "at least, as much of it as your foreign friends have not taken possession of."
One day a municipal officer said to Clery, loud enough for the king to overhear: "I would guillotine the lot of them if the regular executioner backed out."
The sentinels decked the walls, where the royals came along to go into the garden, with lines in this style: "The guillotine is a standing institution and is waiting for the tyrant Louis."—"Madame Veto will soon dance on nothing."—"The fat hog must be put on short rations."—"Pull off the red ribbon he wears—it will do to strangle his cubs with."
One drawing represented a man hanging, and was labeled: "Louis taking an air-bath."
The worst tormentors were two lodgers in the temple, Rocher, the sapper, and Simon, the notorious cobbler. The latter, whose harsh treatment of the royal child has made him noted, was insult personified. Every time he saw the prisoners, it was to inflict a fresh outrage.
Rocher was the man whom we saw take up the dauphin when Charny fell, and carry him into the House; yet he, placed by Manuel to prevent harm befalling the captives, resembled those boys who are given a bird to keep—they kill time by plucking out the feathers one by one.
But, however unhappy the prisoners were, they had yet the comfort that they were under the same roof.
The Commune resolved to part the king from his family.
Clery had an inkling of the intention, but he could not get at the exact date until a general searching of the prisoners on the twenty-ninth of September gave him a hint. That night, indeed, they took away the king into rooms in the great tower which were wet with plaster and paint and the smell was unbearable.
But the king lay down to sleep without complaining, while the valet passed the night on a chair.
When he was going out to attend to the prince, whose attendant he strictly was, the guard stopped him, saying:
"You are no longer to have communications with the other prisoners; the king is not to see his children any more."
As they omitted to bring special food for the servant, the king broke his bread with him, weeping while the man sobbed.
When the workmen came to finish the rooms, the town officer who superintended them came up to the king with some pity, and said:
"Citizen, I have seen your family at breakfast, and I undertake to say that all were in health."
The king's heart ached at this kind feeling.
He thanked the man, and begged him to transmit the report of his health to his dear ones. He asked for some books, and as the man could not read, he accompanied Clery down into the other rooms to let him select the reading matter. Clery was only too glad, as this gave an opportunity of seeing the queen. He could not say more than a few words, on account of the soldiers being present.
The queen could not hold out any longer, and she besought to let them all have a meal in company.
The municipal officers weakened, and allowed this until further orders. One of them wept, and Simon said:
"Hang me if these confounded women will not get the water-works running in my eyes. But," he added, addressing the queen, "you did not do any weeping when you shot down the people on the tenth of August."
"Ah!" said the queen; "the people have been much misled about our feelings toward them. If you knew us better, you would be sorry, like this gentleman."
So the dinner was served in the old place; it was a feast, for they gained so much in one day, they thought. They gained everything, for nothing more was heard of the Commune's new regulation; the king continued to see his family daily, and to take his meals with them.
One of these days, when he went in, he found the queen sweeping up the dauphin's room, who was unwell. He stopped on the sill, let his head sink on his breast, and sighed:
"Ah, my lady, this is sorry work for a Queen of France, and if they could see from Vienna what you are doing here! Who would have thought that, in uniting you to my fate, I should ever bring you so low?"
"Do you reckon it as nothing," replied Marie Antoinette, "this glory of being the wife of the best and most persecuted of men?"
This was spoken without an idea there were hearers; but all such sayings were picked up and diffused to embroider with gold the dark legend of the martyr king.
One morning, while these events were occurring at the temple, a man wearing a red shirt and cap to match, leaning on a crutch to help him to hobble along, called on the Home Secretary, Roland. The minister was most accessible; but even a republican official was forced to have ushers in his ante-chamber, as went on in monarchical governments.
"What do you want?" challenged the servant of the man on the crutch.
"I want to speak with the Citizen Minister," replied the cripple.
Since a fortnight, the titles of citizen and citizeness had officially replaced all others.
"You will have to show a letter of audience," replied the domestic.
"Halloo! I thought that was all very fine fun in the days when the tyrant ruled, but folks ought to be equals under the Republic, or at least not so aristocratic."
This remark set the servant thinking.
"I can tell you that it is no joke," continued the man in red, "to drag all the way from Versailles to do the Secretary of State a service and not to get a squint of him."
"Oh, you come to do Citizen Roland a service, do you?"
"To show up a conspiracy."
"Pooh! we are up to our ears in conspiracies. If that is all you came from Versailles for, I suggest you get back."
"I don't mind; but your minister will be deuced sorry for not seeing me."
"It is the rule. Write to him and get a letter of audience; then you will get on swimmingly."
"Hang me if it is not harder to get a word in to Minister Roland than to his majesty Louis XVI. that was."
"What do you know about that?"
"Lord help your ignorance, young man; there was a time when I saw the king whenever I pleased; my name would tell you that."
"What is your name? Are you King Frederick William or the Emperor Francis?"
"No; I am not a tyrant or a slave-driver—no aristo—but just Nicholas Claude Gamain, master of the masters of my trade of locksmithery. Did you never hear of Master Gamain who taught the craft to old Capet?"
The footman looked questioningly at his fellows, who nodded.
"Then it is another pair of shoes. Write your name on a sheet of paper, and I will send it in to the Home Secretary."
"Write? It is all very easy to say write, but I was no dabster at the pen before these villains tried to poison me; and it is far worse now. Just look how they doubled me up with arsenic."
He showed his twisted legs, deviated spine, and hand curled up like a claw.
"What! did they serve you out thus, poor old chap?"
"They did. And that is what I have come to show the Citizen Minister, along with other matters. As I hear they are getting up the indictment against old Capet, what I have to tell must not be lost for the nation."
Five minutes afterward, the locksmith was shown into the official's presence.
The master locksmith had never, at the height of his fortune and in the best of health, worn a captivating appearance; but the malady to which he was a prey, articular rheumatism in plain, while twisting his limbs and disfiguring his features, had not added to his embellishments. The outcome was that never had an honest man faced a more ruffianly looking rogue than Roland when left alone with Gamain.
The minister's first feeling was of repugnance; but seeing how he trembled from head to foot, pity for a fellow-man, always supposing that a wretch like Gamain is a fellow to a Roland, led him to use as his first words:
"Take a seat, citizen; you seem in pain."
"I should rather think I am in pain," replied Gamain, dropping on a chair; "and I have been so ever since the Austrian poisoned me."
At these words a profound expression of disgust passed over the hearer's countenance, while he exchanged a glance with his wife, half hidden in the window recess.
"And you came to denounce this poisoning?"
"That and other things."
"Do you bring proof of your accusations?"
"For that matter, you have only to come with me to the Tuileries and I will give you piles of it. I will show you the secret hole in the wall where the brigand hid his hoard. I ought to have guessed that the wine was poisoned that the Austrian sneaked out to offer me, a-saying, with her wheedling voice: 'Here you are, Gamain! drink this glass of wine; it will do you good now the work is done.'"
"Poisoned?"
"Yes; everybody knows," continued Gamain, with sullen hate, "that those who help kings to conceal treasures never make old bones."
"There is something at the bottom of this," said Mme. Roland, coming forward at his glance; "this was the smith who was the king's tutor. Ask him about the hole in the wall."
"The press?" said Gamain, who had overheard. "Why, I am here to lay that open. It is an iron safe, with a lock-bolt working both ways, in which Citizen Capet hid his private papers and savings."
"How did you come to know about it?"
"Did he not send for me to show him how to finish the lock, one he made himself, and of course would not work smoothly?"
"But this press would be smashed and rifled in the capture of the Tuileries."
"There is no danger of that. I defy anybody in the world to get the idea of it, barring him and me."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure and certain. It is just the same as when he left the Tuileries."
"What do you say to all this, Madeleine?" asked Roland of his wife, when they had listened to Gamain's story, told in his prolix style.
"I say the revelation is of the utmost importance, and no time must be lost in verifying it."
The secretary rang for his carriage, whereupon Gamain stood up sulkily.
"I see you have had enough of me," he grumbled.
"Why, no; I only ring for my carriage."
"What! do ministers have carriages under the Republic?"
"They have to do so, to save time, my friend. I call the carriage so that we shall be quickly at the Tuileries. But what about the key to the safe?—it is not likely Louis XVI. left it in the key-hole."
"Why, certainly not, for our fat Capet is not such a fool as he looks. Here is a duplicate," he continued, drawing a new key from his pocket; "I made it from memory. I tell you I am the master of my craft. I studied the lock, fancying some day—"
"This is an awful scoundrel," said Roland to his wife.
"Yes; but we have no right to reject any information coming to us in the present state of affairs in order to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Am I to go with you?" asked the lady.
"Certainly, as there are papers in the case. Are you not the most honest man I know?"
Gamain followed them to the door, mumbling:
"I always said that I would pay old Capet out for what he did to me. What Louis XVI. did was kindness."
On the seventh of November the Girondists began the indictment against the king, assisted by the fatal deposit of papers in the iron safe, although those were missing which were confided to Mme. Campan. After Gamain's opening the press, which was to have so severe an effect on the prisoners in the temple, Roland had taken them all to his office, where he read them and docketed them, though he vainly searched for the evidence of Danton's oft-cited venality. Besides, Danton had resigned as Minister of Justice.
This great trial was to crown the victory of Valmy, which had made the defeated King of Prussia almost as angry as the news of the proclamation of the Republic in Paris.
This trial was another step toward the goal to which men blundered like the blind, always excepting the Invisibles; they saw things in the mass, but not in detail. Alone on the horizon stood the red guillotine, with the king at the foot of the scaffold on which it rose.
In a materialistic era, when such a man as Danton was the head of the indulgent party, it was difficult for the wish not to be outrun by the deed; yet only a few of the Convention comprehended that royalty should be extirpated, and not the royal person slain.
Royalty was a somber abstraction, a menacing mystery of which men were weary, a whited sepulcher, fair without, but full of rottenness.
But the king was a different matter; a man who was far from interesting in his prosperity, but purified by misfortune and made great by captivity. Even on the queen the magic of adversity was such that she had learned, not to love—for her broken heart was a shattered vase from which the precious ointment had leaked out—but to venerate and adore, in the religious sense of the word, this prince, though a man whose bodily appetite and vulgar instincts had so often caused her to blush.
Royalty smitten with death, but the king kept in perpetual imprisonment, was a conception so grand and mighty that but few entertained it.
"The king must stand trial," said the ex-priest Gregoire to the Convention; "but he has done so much to earn scorn that we have no room for hatred."
And Tom Paine wrote:
"I entreat you to go on with the trial, not so much of this king as the whole band of them; the case of this individual whom you have in your power will put you on the track of all. Louis XVI. is useful as showing the necessity of revolutions."
So great minds like Paine and great hearts like Gregoire were in tune on this point. The kings were to be tried, and Louis might even be allowed to turn state's evidence.
This has never been done, but it is good yet to do. Suppose the charge against the Empress Catherine, Pasiphæ of the north; who will say there would not come out instruction to the world from such a revelation?
To the great disappointment of the Rolands, we repeat, the papers in the iron safe did not compromise Dumouriez and Danton, while they earned Gamain a pension, little alleviating the pangs of his ailment, which made him a thousand times regret the guillotine to which he consigned his master. But they injured the king and the priests, showing up the narrow mind, sharp and ungrateful, of Louis, who only hated those who wanted to save him—Necker, Lafayette, and Mirabeau. There was nothing detrimental to the Girondists.
Who was to read the dread indictment? Who was to be the sword-bearer and float over the court like the destroying angel? St. Just, the pet of Robespierre, a pale young man with womanly lips, who uttered the atrocious words. The point was that the king must be killed. The speech made a terrible impression; not one of the judges but felt the repeated word enter his soul like steel. Robespierre was appalled to see his disciple plant the red flag of revolution so far ahead of the most advanced outposts of republicanism.
As time progressed, the watch over the prisoners was closer, and Clery could learn nothing; but he picked up a newspaper stating that Louis would be brought before the bar of the House on the eleventh of December.
Indeed, at five that morning the reveille was beaten all over Paris. The temple gates were opened to bring in cannon; but no one would tell the captives the meaning of the unusual stir.
Breakfast was the last meal they partook of in company; when they parted, the prince was left playing a numerical game with his father, who kept the truth from him.
"Curse sixteen," said the boy, on losing three times running; "I believe you are bad luck!"
The king was struck by the figure.
At eleven the dauphin was removed and the king left in silence, as the officials did not intrude, for fear he would question them. At one o'clock Santerre arrived with officers, and a registrar who read the decree calling "the prisoner Louis Capet" before the House.
The king interrupted to say that Capet was not his name, but that of an ancestor. He stopped the reading on the grounds that he had read it in the papers.
As it was raining, they had a carriage in which to carry him.
On alighting, Santerre laid his hand on his shoulder and led him to the same spot at the bar, by the same chair, where he had taken the oath to the Constitution.
All the members save one had kept their seats as he entered; this one saluted him. The astonished king recognized Gilbert. He wished him good-day.
"Are you acquainted with Doctor Gilbert?" asked Santerre.
"He was my physician once, so I hope no ill feeling will be harbored because he was polite to me."
The examination began. Unfortunately, the glamour of misfortune vanished before duplicity; not only did the king answer the questions put to him, but he did so badly, stammering, hesitating, trying to evade direct issues, chaffering for his life like a pettifogger arguing a party-fence case in a county court.
The king did not appear at his best in broad day.
The examination lasted five hours. Though he refused refreshment offered, he asked a grenadier for a piece of the bread he saw him eating.
On crossing the yard to step into the carriage, the mob sung with marked emphasis the line of the "Marseillaise" about "the impure blood should fertilize our furrows."
This made him lose color.
The return was miserable. In the public hack, swaying on the black, pestiferous, vile pavement, while the mob surged up to the windows to see him, he blinked his eyes at the daylight; his beard was long, and his thin hair of a dirty yellow hue; his thin cheeks fell in folds on his wrinkled neck; clad in a gray suit, with a dark-brown overcoat, he mumbled with the Bourbon's automatic memory: "This is such and such a street."
On remarking that Orleans Street had been changed to Egalite, on account of the duke having dropped his titles, though that did not save him from the guillotine, he fell into silence, and so returned into prison.
He was not allowed to see his family, and had to go to bed without the meal with them.
"Ah, Clery!" he said to his man, as he undressed him, "I little dreamed what questions they were going to put to me."
Indeed, almost all the inquiry was based on the contents of the iron safe, which he did not suspect was discovered, from having no idea that Gamain had betrayed him.
Nevertheless, he soon sunk to sleep with that tranquillity of which he had given so many proofs, and which might be taken for lethargy.
But the other prisoners did not bear the separation and the secrecy so tamely.
In the morning the queen asked to see her husband, but the only arrangement offered was that the king might see his children on condition that they should not see their mother or aunt any more. The king refused this plan.
Consequently, the queen had her son's bed put in her rooms, and she did not quit him till removed for trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal, as her husband was by the Convention.
Clery, however, worked communications with a servant of the princesses named Turgy. They exchanged a few words, and passed notes scratched with pins on scraps of paper, on the ladies' side; the king could write properly, as he had writing materials supplied since his trial commenced.
By means of a string, collected from the pieces around the packets of candles, Clery lowered pens, ink, and paper to Princess Elizabeth, whose window was below that of the valet's room.
Hence the family had news of one another daily.
On the other hand, the king's position was morally much worse since he had appeared before the Convention.
It had been surmised that he would either refuse to answer any interrogation, like Charles I., whose history he knew so well; or else that he would answer proudly and loftily in the name of royalty, not like an accused criminal, but a knight accepting the gage of battle.
Unfortunately, Louis was not regal enough to do either act. He so entangled himself that he had to ask for counsel. The one he named fearing to accept the task, it fell to Malesherbes, who had been in the Turgot Ministry, a commonplace man in whom little did any suspect contempt for death. (On the day of his execution, for he was beheaded, he wound up his watch as usual.) Throughout the trial he styled the king "Sire."
Attacked by a flow of blood to the head, the king asked for Dr. Gilbert to be allowed to attend him, but the application was refused, and he was brutally told that if he drank cold water he would not have such a fullness of blood. As he was not allowed a knife to carve his food, unless a servant did it before the guards, so he was not let shave but in the presence of four municipal officers.
On the evening of the twenty-fifth he wrote his will, in which he said that he did not blame himself for any of the crimes of which he was accused. He did not say that they were false. This evasive response was worthy the pupil of the Duke of Vauguyon.
In any case, the twenty-sixth found him ready for any fate, death included.
His counsel read the defense, which was a purely legal document. It seems to us that if we had been charged with it, we should not have spoken for the law, but let St. Louis and Henry IV. defend their descendants from the crimes of their intermediate successors.
The more unjust the accusation, the more eloquent should have been the rejoinder.
Hence the Convention asked, in astonishment:
"Have you nothing more to say in your defense?"
He had nothing to say, and went back to the temple. When his defender called in the evening, he told him of a number of gentlemen who were pledged to prevent the execution.
"If you do not know them personally," said the king to Lamoignon Malesherbes, "try to come in touch with them and tell them that I will never forgive myself for blood shed on my behalf. I would not have it spilled to save my throne and life, when that was possible; all the more reason for me not allowing it now."
The voting on the 16th of January, 1793, was on three points:
Is Louis guilty? Shall there be an appeal from the Convention to the people? State the penalty.
To the first question was the answer of 683 voices, "Yes."
To the appeal question, 281 ayes and 423 noes.
The third decision of the penalty was subdivided into death, imprisonment, banishment, or death, with the people allowed to reduce it to imprisonment.
All tokens of approval or displeasure were prohibited, but when a member said anything but death, murmurs arose.
Once there were groans and hisses when a member spoke for death—when Philippe Egalite cast his vote for the execution of his kinsman.
The majority for death was seven, and Vergniaud uttered the sentence with deep emotion.
It was three on the morning of the twentieth, Sunday.
The illustrious culprit was up when Malesherbes bore him the news.
"I was sure of it," he said, shaking hands with his defender. "For two days I have been trying to find if I have merited my subjects' reproach for what I have done in the course of my reign. I swear to you in all sincerity, as a man about to appear before his Maker, that I have always wished the happiness of my people, and have not framed a wish contrary to it."
The death-warrant was officially read to him, and he was allowed to choose his own confessor.
The name of one had been already written down by Princess Elizabeth, whose confessor this Abbe Edgeworth was.
This worthy priest, of English origin, had escaped the September massacres and was hiding out at Choisy, under the name of Essex, as the Princess Elizabeth knew, and where to find him.
He came to the call, though he believed that he would be killed within an hour of the dreadful scene.
He was not to quit the prisoner till he quitted the world.
The king was allowed to take farewell of his family in the dining-room, where the glass door allowed the guards still to keep him in sight. They knew the trial had taken place, but not the particulars, with which he supplied them. He dwelt particularly on the fact that Petion had not pressed for the death penalty, and that Gilbert had voted to spare his life.
Heaven owed the poor prisoner some comfort, and it came in the love of the queen.
As has been seen in our story, the queen easily let the picturesque side of life attract her. She had that vivid imagination which makes women imprudent even more than disposed; she had been imprudent all her life in her friendship and in her loving.
Her captivity saved her in a moral point of view; she returned to the pure and holy domestic virtues from which youthful passions had led her; and as she could do nothing without extravagance, she fell to loving passionately, in his distress, this royal consort whose vulgar traits were all she could see in the days of felicity. In their first disasters she saw a dullard, almost cowardly, without impulse or resolution; at the temple she began to see that the wife had not only misjudged the husband, but the queen the monarch. She beheld one calm and patient, meek but firm under outrages; all the worldly dryness in her was melted, and turned to the profit of better sentiments.
The same as she had scorned too deeply, she loved too fondly.
"Alas!" the king said to his confessor, "to think that I love so dearly and am loved so much."
In their last interview, the queen seemed to yield to a feeling akin to remorse. When she found that she could not be alone with her lord, she drew him into a window recess, where she would have fallen on her knees at his feet; but he understood that she wanted to ask his forgiveness, so he stayed her and drew his will from his pocket to show her the lines:
"I pray my wife to forgive all the woes I have led her to suffer and the sorrows caused her in the course of our union, as she may be sure that I cherish no ill feeling toward her, if she should think that she had reason to blame herself in any way."
Marie kissed his hands, for while there was full pardon, there was great delicacy, too, in the rest of the phrase.
So this royal Magdalen might die tranquil, late as came her love for her husband, it won her divine and human mercy, and her pardon was bestowed on earth, not in a mysterious whisper as an indulgence, of which the king felt ashamed, but openly and publicly.
Who would reproach her who went toward posterity with the double crown of the martyr and her husband's forgiveness?
The poignant farewell lasted nearly two hours before the condemned went out to his priest.
As day began to break, the drums were beaten throughout the town; the bustle and the sound penetrated the old tower and chilled the blood of the priest and Clery.
At nine o'clock the noise increased and the doors were loudly flung open. Santerre came in, followed by town officers and soldiers, who formed a double row.
The king received the priest's blessing and a prayer for support, and called for his hat, as all the others had kept their hats on. Seeing that Clery had his overcoat ready for fear he would be cold, and the shiver would be taken for that of fright, he said:
"No; nothing but my hat."
He took advantage of the act to shake his hand for the last time.
"Let us go, gentlemen," he said, with the tone of command so rarely used by him.
In crossing the first yard, he turned two or three times to wave a farewell to his dear ones.
With the priest he stepped into a hack, and the procession started, leaving the queen no hope save for a rescue on the road. That of a respite had already vanished.
She fell into a chair, sobbing: "To think of his going without saying good-bye!"
The streets were foggy and deserted, as all citizens were forbidden to be about unless belonging to the armed militia, and there were no faces up at the windows.
All the prisoner saw was a forest of pikes and bayonets, with a large drum corps before the party and cavalry around.
The clamor prevented the king talking with the confessor, who read his prayer-book.
At St. Denis Gate the king lifted his head, for the uproar was marked by a change in the shouts. A dozen young men, sword in hand, rushed through the retinue and shouted:
"Rescue! This way, those who would save the king!"
One Baron de Batz, an adventurer, had engaged three thousand bravoes to make this attempt, but only a handful responded when he sounded the signal-cry. This forlorn hope of royalty, meeting no reply, retreated and slipped away in the confusion.
The incident was of such slight importance that the carriage did not stop; it was at its journey's end when it did.
One of the three brothers Sanson, the Paris executioners, came to open the door.
Laying his hand on the abbe's knee, the king said, in the tone of a master:
"Gentlemen, I recommend this gentleman to you. Take care of him after my death, for he has done nobody harm."
He threw off his coat, not to be touched by the headsman. One had a rope to bind his hands, but he said he would not submit to it. A hand-to-hand fight would rob the victim of all the merit of six months' calmness, courage, and resignation, so the confessor advised him to yield, particularly as one of the Sansons, moved with pity, offered to substitute a handkerchief.
He held out his hands resignedly, saying:
"Do as you like. I shall drain the chalice to the dregs."
The scaffold steps were high and slippery, and he had the priest's arm for support, but on the top step he escaped, so to say, from the spiritual guide, and went to the further end of the platform.
He was flushed in the face, and had never appeared more hale or animated.
The drums began to beat, but he imposed silence by a look as, with a lusty voice, he said:
"I die innocent of all the crimes imputed to me. I forgive the authors of my death, and I pray God that this blood shall not fall on France."
"Strike up, drums!" roared a voice long believed to be Santerre's, but was that of Beaufranchet, Count Oyat, illegitimate son of Louis XV., and a courtesan, the prisoner's natural uncle.
The drums beat, and the king stamped his foot in vain.
"Do your duty!" yelled the pikemen to the executioners, who threw themselves on the king.
He returned with slow steps under the knife, of which he had designed the proper shape only a year ago.
He glanced at the priest who was praying at a corner of the scaffold.
Behind the two upright beams a scuffle went on. The tilting flap fell into place, and the prisoner's head appeared in the ominous gap. A flash, a dull, chopping sound was heard, and a large jet of blood spouted forth.
Then, one of the death's-men taking up the head, sprinkled the by-standers with the dripping fluid. At this sight the pikemen whooped and rushed to dye their weapons in the blood, which they ran to show the town, with shouts of "Long live the Republic!"
For the first time this cry found no echo, though it had oft thrilled hearers with joy. The Republic had a stain on the brow which nothing ever could efface. As a great diplomatist said, it had committed worse than a crime—a blunder.
Thus died, on the 21st of January, 1793, King Louis XVI. He was aged thirty-nine years. He had reigned eighteen, and was over five months a prisoner. His last wish was not accomplished, for his blood not only fell on France, but over the whole of Europe.
On the evening of this awful day, while the pike-bearers were scouring Paris through streets illuminated but deserted, to exhibit rags dyed in blood, with shouts of "The tyrant is dead! behold his blood!" two men whose dress was different, sat in silence in a room in a house in St. Honore Street.
Dressed in black, one was sitting at a table, with his head resting on his hand, plunged into deep reverie, if not grief. The other, wearing a countryman's dress, strode up and down, with wrinkled forehead, gloomy eye, and folded arms. Every time his crossing line brought him by the table, he cast a glance on the thinker.
At last the countryman stopped and said, as he fixed his eye on the other:
"Come, now, Citizen Gilbert, am I a brigand because I voted for the king's death?"
The man in black raised his head, shook his melancholy brow, and said, holding out his hand to his companion:
"No, Billet, you are no more a brigand for that than I am an aristocrat for voting the other way. You voted according to your conscience, and I to mine. It is a terrible thing to take away from man that which you can not restore."
"So it is your opinion that despotism is inviolable," returned Billet, "liberty is revolt, and there is no justice on earth except such as kings, that is, tyrants, dispense? Then what remains for the people, the right to serve and obey? Do you, Gilbert, the pupil of Rousseau, say that?"
"No, Billet, for that would be an impiety against the people."
"Come," said the farmer, "I am going to talk to you with the roughness of my plain good sense, to which I do not mind your answering with all the sharpness of your fine wit. Do you admit that a nation, believing itself oppressed, should have the right to disestablish its church, lower or even demolish the throne, fight and make itself free?"
"Not a doubt of it."
"Then it has the right to gather in the spoils of the victory?"
"Yes, Billet; but not to compass such things with murder and violence. Remember that it is written, 'Thou shalt not kill thy neighbor.'"
"But the king was no neighbor of mine," returned Billet; "he was my enemy. I remember what my poor mother read me in the Bible of what Samuel said to the Israelites who asked him to appoint a king."
"So do I, Billet; and Samuel anointed Saul—he did not kill him.
"Oh, I know that if I get to arguing with you in book learning, I shall lose. So I simply ask you, were we right to take the Bastile?"
"Yes."
"When the king took away our right to hold a meeting, were we right to meet in another place?"
"You were."
"Had we the right, when the king gathered foreign troops at Versailles to feast them and overawe us, to take him away from among them and lodge him in Paris?"
"Yes."
"To bring him back when he tried to run away from the country?"
"Yes."
"Then we had a right to shut him up where he was so little out of mischief that he continued to correspond with the invader. Ought we not have brought him before the court for trial, to doom him, and—"
"Ay, to banish, to perpetually imprison, all except death, because, guilty in the result, he was not so in the intention. You judge him from the people's standing, Billet; but he acted like the son of kings. Was he a tyrant, as you call him? No. An oppressor of the people? No. An accomplice of aristocrats and an enemy of freedom? No."
"Then you judge him as royalty would?"
"No; for then he would have been acquitted."
"But you did so by voting for his life."
"No; with life imprisonment. Granting he was not your neighbor, but your enemy, he was a vanquished one, and ought not to have been slain in cold blood. That is not execution, but immolation. You have conferred on royalty something like martyrdom, and made justice seem vengeance. Take care! In doing too much, you have not done enough. Charles of England was executed, but his son reigned. But James II. was banished, and his sons died in exile. Human nature is humane, and you have alienated from the Republic for fifty or a hundred years the immense proportion of the population judging revolutions by their feelings. Believe me, my friend, Republicans ought most to bewail the death of Louis, for the blood will fall on them, and cost the Republic its life."
"There is some truth in what you say, Gilbert," said a voice at the door.
"Cagliostro!" exclaimed both debaters, turning with the same impulse.
"Yes; but there is also truth in what Billet said."
"That is the trouble in it," sighed Gilbert; "the cause we plead has two faces, and each, as he looks upon it, can say he is right."
"But he ought also to admit that he may be wrong."
"What is your opinion, master?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, your opinion?" said Billet.
"You have been trying the accused over again, but you should test the sentence. Had you doomed the king, you would have been right. You doomed the man, and you were wrong."
"I don't understand," said Billet.
"You ought to have slain the king amid his guards and courtiers, while unknown to the people—when he was to them a tyrant. But, after having let him live and dwell under the eyes of the private soldier, the petty civil servant, the workman, as a man, this sham abasement elevated him, and he ought to have been banished or locked up, as happens to any man."
"I did not understand you," said Billet to the doctor, "but I do the Citizen Cagliostro."
"Just think of their five months' captivity molding this lump—who was born to be a parish beadle—into a statue of courage, patience, and resignation, on a pedestal of sorrow; you sanctified him so that his wife adored him. Who would have dreamed, my dear Gilbert," said the magician, bursting into laughter, "that Marie Antoinette would ever have loved her mate?"
"Oh, if I had only guessed this," muttered Billet, "I would have slain him before! I could have done it easily."
These words were spoken with such intense patriotism that Gilbert pardoned them, while Cagliostro admired.
"But you did not do it," said the latter. "You voted for death; and you, Gilbert, for life. Now, let me give you a last piece of advice. You, Gilbert, strove to be a member of the convention to accomplish a duty; you, Billet, to fulfill vengeance; both are realized. You have nothing more to do here. Be gone."
The two stared at him.
"To-morrow, your indulgence will be regarded as a crime, and on the next day your severity as bad. Believe me, in the mortal strife preparing between hatred, fear, revenge, fanaticism, few will remain unspotted; some will be fouled with mud, some with blood. Go, my friends, go!"
"But France?" said the doctor.
"Yes, France?" echoed Billet.
"Materially," said Cagliostro, "France is saved; the external enemy is baffled, the home one dead. The Revolution holds the ax in one hand and the tri-colored flag in the other. Go in tranquillity, for before she lays them down, the aristocracy will be beheaded, and Europe conquered. Go, my friends, go to your second country, America!"
"Will you go with me, Billet?" asked the doctor.
"Will you forgive me?" asked Billet.
The two clasped hands.
"You must go at once. The ship 'Franklin' is ready to sail."
"But my son?"
Cagliostro had opened the door.
"Come in, Sebastian," he said; "your father calls you."
The young man rushed into his father's arms, while Billet sighed.
"My carriage is at the door," said Cagliostro. Then, in a whisper to the doctor while Billet was asking news of the youth, he said, emphatically:
"Take him away; he must not know how he lost his mother. He might thirst for revenge."
Gilbert nodded and opened a money drawer.
"Fill your pockets," he said to Billet.
"Will there be enough in a strange country?" he asked.
"Bless you! with land at five dollars an acre, cleared, we can buy a county. But what are you looking round for?"
"For what would be no use to me, who can not write."
"I see; you want to send good-bye to Pitou. Let me."
"What have you written?"
"My dear Pitou,—We are leaving France—Billet, Sebastian, and I—and send you our united love. We think that as you are manager of Billet's farm, you do not need anything. One of these days we may write for you to come over and join us.
"Your friend,
"Gilbert."
"Is that all?" asked the farmer.
"There is a postscript," said the writer, looking the farmer in the face as he said:
"Billet hopes you will take the best of care of Catherine."
Billet uttered a cry of gratitude and shook Gilbert's hand again.
Ten minutes afterward, the post-chaise carried far from Paris Gilbert and his friend and the son of Andrea of Charny.