The Parisians soon after showed that they knew little of the resources on which the supply of the wants of the state should depend, by having recourse to a measure which, however popular, was one of great folly;—folly to be exceeded only by an act of the populace which took place nearly at the same time.
The coffers of the government had long been empty. Loans of almost every kind, and under every species of pretence, had been raised upon the suffering nation, some of which proved failures in their primary object, while others, however great the proceeds in amount, seemed to be exhausted with somewhat the same speed as water that is poured into a sieve. Never money went away so fast before; and whilst the government was dismayed at its magic property of disappearance, the people grew more and more angry at what they thought the extravagance of their rulers. Neither of them took into the account the scarcity of most of the necessaries of life, and both regarded money as having the same value as ever,—as being, in itself, the thing required to supply the necessities of the state. To both it was equally inconceivable why, if so much had defrayed such and such expenses in former years, double the sum would go no way at all at present. The ministers and the court could only tremble at the necessity of owning the truth, while the people raged, and could be appeased only by court largesses for the relief of the starving: which largesses went as little way when they had changed hands as before. Neither party suspected that money, although scarce, had become very cheap through the still greater scarcity of other things; and in the absence of this necessary knowledge, everybody was eager about gold and silver.
The National Assembly had tried all means, first by themselves, and then with the assistance of Necker, to raise a supply, without which the affairs of the state could not, they believed, proceed; and all in vain. Then Necker had leave given him to pursue his own methods; and, popular as he was, no one had a doubt that he would succeed. But he failed, though he issued the most tempting proposals; offered the highest interest that ever was heard of, even in such an emergency; and exerted his utmost personal influence in favour of the loan. The subscription was not half filled: the reason of which was that many had no money, having spent it all in buying necessaries; and as many in France as had taken their money (much of it had gone into other countries) expected to want it themselves for the same purposes, or had not confidence enough in the stability of the government to take it for a creditor. So the king’s horses went on to eat borrowed hay or to want it; and the king’s servants to clamour for their wages; and the king’s tradesmen to decline orders on one pretence or another; and the police threatened to leave the home minister to keep order by himself; and state couriers went unwillingly forth on their journies; and business lagged in every department of the administration.
At this moment, it entered some wise head that, if people would not lend money, they might lend or give something else; not corn or hay, or any of the necessaries of life; for every one knew there was still less of these things than of money; but gold and silver in any form. It would have been hard to say what lasting good this could do amidst the impossibility of procuring the necessaries of which gold and silver are only the representatives: but no matter for that. Nobody was asked to explain the affair, and apparently none troubled themselves to think about it; so delighted were all with the new notion of giving away trinkets to save the state. The idea of a patriotic contribution was charming,—a contribution in which almost everybody could join; women and children, and persons of many degrees below the class of capitalists. The court joined: the gentlemen sacrificing nearly half their watches and seals, and the ladies adopting simplicity as a fashion, and sending away the jewellery they could not wear as Arcadian shepherdesses and Sicilian nymphs. The Assembly followed, every member thereof stooping down at the same moment to strip his shoes of their buckles, so that their act of patriotic devotion made really a very fine show. This gave the signal to the whole country, and all France was forthwith unbuckled in respect of the feet. She became also quakerlike as to the hands, for not a maiden but took out her lover’s hair from his parting gift, and flung the ring into the lap of the nation; not a wife that did not part with the token of her wifehood in the cause. Pecks of gold rings, bushels of silver buckles, with huge store of other baubles, were at once in the possession of the state; and the people no longer doubted that all would henceforth be well.
And what was really the event?—The gold answered the same purpose as it does when a basin full of it coined stands on the banker’s counter during a run. It satisfied the ignorant that all must be safe where there is so much wealth actually before one’s eyes. It hushed the clamours of the people for a little while; and made the servants of the government willing to go on somewhat longer upon credit; so that more industry and briskness prevailed for a time, at the risk of ultimate disappointment, and an aggravation of popular fury,—now diverted but not dispersed. A mob went about to levy these voluntary offerings, an act ludicrously inconsistent with their next proceeding; if, indeed, any of the events of this extraordinary time could be regarded as ludicrous.
They called at Charles’s house among others, whence, as it happened, no such offerings had yet gone forth. Charles had resisted Pauline’s wish to lend the queen her thimble, and Julien’s offer to pay his first tax with the silver-tipped riding-whip grandpapa had given him. Neither would he allow Marguerite’s few ornaments, all keepsakes, to be thrown away in any such manner. He would give the coat off his back to the state, he said, when it could do any service; but the proposed gifts could only help to make jewellery a drug, without supplying one more person with bread, or lessening by so much as one scruple the burdens of the state. He was disposed to be vexed when he came home one day, and found a short allowance of spoons at the dinner-table, the clock on the mantel-piece gone, and his wife as destitute of external ornament as any Arcadian shepherdess at Versailles. He laughed, however, at his wife’s apologies for having made a voluntary offering against her own will as well as his, and hoped that she would be as little the worse as the state would be the better for the sacrifice. Goldsmiths and jewellers of enterprise and capital would profit by the fancy, he observed, if nobody else did; and the many losers might find some comfort in sympathy with the very few winners.
The people, meanwhile, were bitterly complaining of famine, and the more gold was carried to the treasury, the more bread was bought up before the eyes of those who were deprived of it from its increased price. It mattered not that some was given away in charity by the king, and more, to suit his own purposes, by the duke of Orleans; the people were rendered unable to purchase it, and furnished with the plea of want, wherewith to make the streets of Paris echo. It would have been better to have let the exchange of wedding rings for bread be made without the interposition of the king or his ministers, even without taking into consideration the events which followed. A report was soon industriously spread that the bread furnished by court charity was of a bad quality. It was believed, like everything that was then said against the court; and the consequence was that an anomalous and melancholy sight was seen by as many as walked in the city. Clamorous, starving crowds besieged the bakers’ shops, and carried off all the bread from their ovens, all the flour from their bins; while the discontented among the mob politicians of the Orleans faction were on the way to snatch the food from the mouths of the hungry and throw it into the river, and to cut the sacks, and mix the flour with the puddles of the streets. Want and waste, faction and delusion were here seen in their direct extremes.
At this time, Charles and Marguerite did not allow their children to go out under any guardianship but that of their father, as it was impossible to foresee what might happen in the streets before they could get home again. They were as safe as any could be at such a time;—safer than the few who ventured abroad in carriages at the risk of insult wherever they turned; safer than the sordidly fed and clad, who were seized upon by the agents of faction to augment their mobs, and be made the instruments of violence under the penalty of suffering it themselves. The parents and children were also safer together than separate; as a domestic party, abroad to take the air, presented as unsuspicious a group, and one as likely to pass unnoticed, as could well be imagined. Yet they had their occasional alarms; and when there was no cause to fear for themselves, were too often grieved and shocked at what they beheld inflicted on others.
“O papa!” cried Julien, one day, as they were walking; “what are they doing at Maigrot’s shop? I do believe the crowd is coming there next.”
Maigrot was a baker, well known to Charles’s family, and much beloved by the children, on account of the little hot cakes which seemed to be always ready to pop out of the oven and into their mouths, when they went with the servant to deliver orders or pay bills.
Instead of his usual smiling face, Maigrot was now seen in a state of desperate anxiety, as well as could be judged from the glimpse of him at his door, trying first to slip out, and then to force his way between the two men who were evidently placed at the entrance as guards till the mob should come up. Foiled in his attempt, Maigrot disappeared, and Charles thought that it might depend on whether there was a way of exit at the back of the house, whether his head would presently be carried on a pike, between two loaves of his own bread, or whether he would be kneading and baking in peace ten years hence. There seemed to be just time to run and give a word of advice to whomsoever might be waiting in the shop, and Charles ran forward to do so. He was prevented entering; but seeing Maigrot’s wife sinking and trembling behind the counter, and looking absolutely incapable of any resolution whatever, he called out to her to assist in emptying the flour bins and distributing the bread, and to fear nothing, and all would be well. The woman tossed off a glass of water which stood beside her, and rallied for the effort. In such effort lay the only resource of sufferers under violence in those days; for the magistracy were unable to afford assistance; or, if able, were not to be depended on. The shop was presently emptied and gutted, and its stock carried away, without, however, being in this instance preceded by the horrible display of a human head. Maigrot had escaped and actually joined in with the mob in time to see his own flour cast into the Seine. Nobody thought more of the baker, and he took advantage of this disregard to learn a great deal of his own doings which he did not know before. He now overheard that his flour was mixed with hurtful ingredients by order of his customer, the king; that an inferior kind was sold at high prices as the best; and that there were stores of meal concealed somewhere about his premises, to victual the soldiers who were to be brought to rule the city, and give the king his own way. All this was news to Maigrot, who was compelled to listen to these falsehoods in silence: more fortunate than many who had lost their lives as well as their good name under similar charges. A defender sprang up, however, when he least expected it.
Charles and his little son could not help following to look on, when the mob proceeded with the flour down to the river. They stood on the outskirts of the crowd, watching sack after sack as, with hoarse shouts, it was heaved into the water so as to make the heaviest splash possible. A new amusement presently occurred to some of the leaders; that of testing the political opinions of the passers by by the judgment they should pronounce on the quality of the flour. Those who declared it good must, of course, be parasites of the court; those who made mouths at it were the friends of the people; and the moment this point was settled, every gazer from a distance was hauled to the water’s edge to undergo the test; every approaching carriage was waylaid and stopped, and its inmates brought on the shoulders of the mob. Of course, all gave judgment on the same side;—a thing likely to happen without much dishonesty, when the raw flour was crammed into the mouth by foul and sometimes bloody hands. It would have been difficult to pronounce it very good under such circumstances of administration.
Among the most piteous looking of those under test was the marquis de Thou, who was taken from a non-descript sort of carriage, on his way, as he vowed, to the duke of Orleans, but certainly attended by more than one servant of the royal household. While prosecuting his explanations with gesture and grimace, uplifted as he was above the crowd, he looked so like a monkey riding a bear that a universal shout of mockery arose. He was lowered for a moment, out of sight; and the laugh rose louder than ever when he reappeared, held at arms’ length by a hundred hands, powdered all over like a miller. His position made the judgment he had to give all the more difficult, for it enabled him to perceive the royal servants watching him on one side, the duke of Orleans and some of his fiercest followers on another, and the pitiless mob around.
“Ah! it is very, very good food for the poor, without doubt,” he declared, while in full view of the court party, and with his mouth stuffed with a compound which had just been taken from a puddle underfoot. “Very fine nourishment for a good king to buy dear, and give away to a hungry people.—Ah! no more,—no more, I pray you! I shall presently dine, and it is enough. I cannot praise it more than I have done.—Ah! but” (seeing the duke frowning) “I do not say but it may be a little sour,—and somewhat bitter,—yes, O yes, and gritty,—and, O do not murder me, and I will also say hurtful.—And poisonous? Yes, no doubt it is poisonous,—clearly poisonous.—But, how bountiful of the king to think of how the poor should be fed!”
The marquis might think himself fortunate in getting off with a ducking in the yeasty flood, into which he was let down astride on a flour sack. While sneaking away through the crowd, after shaking his dripping queue, and drawing a long breath, he encountered Charles, whom he immediately recognised, and with inconsiderate selfishness, exposed to the notice of the crowd by his appeal.
“Ah, my friend, here is a condition I am in! For our old friendship’s sake,—for the sake of our vicinity in Guienne, aid me!”
“Do not answer him. Take no notice,” whispered Maigrot from behind; “’tis as much as your life is worth.”
But Charles could not be inhuman. He gave the old man his arm to conduct him to the carriage which he intended to order to his own house. Before he had well turned his back, however, a piercing shriek from Julien made him look round. The mob were about to carry the boy towards the sacks.
“Do not be alarmed, my dear,” said he. “Taste the flour, and say whether you think it good; and I will come to you in a moment to do the same.”
Julien shrieked no more, but he looked ruefully in his father’s face, when Charles returned. As soon as he had gulped down his share and could speak, he said he had never tasted raw flour before, but it was not so good as the hot cakes that were made of it sometimes.—The boy escaped with being only laughed at.—His father’s turn came next.
Charles stipulated, when laid hold of, to be allowed to feed himself, and refused laughingly to taste what came out of the puddle till his neighbours should have separated the mud from the flour. With a very oracular look, he then proceeded from sack to sack, tasting and pronouncing, apparently unmoved by the speculations he heard going on all round him as to whether he was a royalist from about the court, or a spy from Versailles, or only an ignorant stranger from the provinces. When he had apparently made up his mind, he began a sort of conversation with those nearest to him, which he exalted by degrees into a speech.
“When I,” he observed, “I, the very first, opened a prisoner’s cell in the Bastille——”
He was interrupted by loud cheers from all who heard; and this drew the attention of more.
“——I found,” continued Charles, “a mess of wholesome food in that horrible place. Every other kind of poison was there,—the poison of damps and a close atmosphere; the poison of inactivity which brings on disease and death; the poison of cruelty by which all the kindly feelings are turned into bitterness in the soul of the oppressed; and the poison of hopelessness, by which the currents of life are chilled, and the heart of the captive is sunk within him till he dies. All these poisons we found in every cell; but to all their inmates was denied that quicker poison which would have been welcome to end their woes. Some, we know, have lived thirty-five years under this slow death, while a very small mixture of drugs with their bread would have released them in fewer hours. That this quicker method was ever used, we have no proof; that it was not used in the case of those whom we released, we know, not by their state of health alone; for that, alas! was not to be boasted of;—but by the experience of some of us. When we were heated with toil and choked with dust, we drank the draughts which the prisoners left untasted in their cells. When a way was made among the ruins, women came to see what a work their husbands had achieved; and when their children craved food, rather than return home before all was finished, they gave their little ones the bread which the captives had loathed. Many thus ate and drank; and I appeal to you whether any evil came of that day; whether the sleep of the next night was not sound as became the rest which succeeds to an heroic effort. No one was poisoned with the food then provided by the government; and yet that horrible dungeon was the place, if there be any, for poison to do its work. And if not attempted there, will it be here? Here, where there are a million of eyes on the watch to detect treasons against the people? Here, where there are hundreds of thousands of defenders of the public safety? No, fellow citizens: this is not the kind of treason which is meditated against us. There are none that dare practise so directly on your lives. But there is a treason no less fatal, though more disguised, which is even at this moment in operation against you. You ask me two questions;—whether this food is of a bad quality; and whether you are not half-starved; and both these evils you ascribe to your rulers.—To the first I answer, that this food is, to the best of my judgment, good; and, whether good or bad, that the government has nothing to do with it, since it forms no part of the stores that the king has bought up for distribution. It is flour of the same harvest, the same field, the same mill, the same bin, that I and mine have been supplied from; and it has nourished me well for the work I have had to do; for letting in the light of day upon the foulest dungeon that ever deformed the earth,—for watching over those who have been released from it,—for attending to the proceedings of the Assembly,—for meditating by night and consulting by day how the rights of the people may best be attained and secured. Keep the same food to strengthen you for the same purposes. Do not forget your other complaint;—that you are starving: and remember that however much this may be owing to the misrule and courtly extravagance you denounce, the grievance will not be removed by your feeding the fishes with that which your children are craving. I spoke of another kind of treason than that which you suspect, and I see about me too many tokens of its existence;—the treason which would not poison but starve you.
“Of the motives of this treason I have nothing to say, for I am wholly ignorant of them. I only insist that there can be no truly patriotic aim under the project of depriving you of the food which is at best but scantily supplied. Do you find in the most plentiful seasons that we have corn enough to make sport with in the river? Are your houses even then so filled with grain that, after feeding your children and domestic animals, you have enough left for the eels of the Seine? Is it to give you this over-supply that the peasantry of the provinces live under roofs of rushes, and couch upon beds of straw? Tell me,—is there in the happiest of times such a superfluity that no Frenchman has a want or wish for more?”
Furious cries of denial rose from all sides, joined with curses upon the government which year by year, by its extravagance, snatched the hard-earned bread from the labourer’s hands.
“This is all true,” replied Charles, “and is in course of being reformed: but when did even a tyrannical government inflict upon you such evils as you are this day inflicting upon yourselves? When has it robbed the shops of one of the most useful class of men among you, and carried away boat-loads of the food for which thousands are pining, and destroyed your means of life before your eyes? A worse enemy than even a weak king and a licentious court is making sport of your miseries, and overwhelming you with such as cannot be repaired. Yes! let it not hurt your pride to hear of woes that cannot be repaired; for even the power of the sovereign people is not unlimited, great as you have proved it to be. You have abolished servile parliaments, and obtained a virtuous assembly of representatives. You have swept away the stronghold of oppression, and can tread with free steps the turf from which its very foundations have been extracted. You have rejected a constitution which was an insufficient warrant for your liberties, and are in the way to obtain universal assent to that noble Declaration of Rights which shall become the social contract of every civilized nation.—All these things, and others which would have been called impossibilities ten years ago, you have achieved. But there are impossibilities remaining which more truly deserve the name. You cannot prevent multitudes dying when famine is in the land; you cannot call up a new harvest before the seed has sprouted; you cannot insist upon supplies from other lands which are already drained. You can waste your resources, but you cannot recall them. With however much pride or levity you may at this hour fling away the staff of your life, you cannot retard the day when you will sink for want of it,—when you will kneel in the mud by the brink of this very current, and crave the waters to give up what you have buried in them, or to drown your miseries with your life.—Will you suffer yourselves thus to be made sport of? Will you permit yourselves to be goaded into madness, in order that you may be ready for madmen’s deeds? Will you throw away what is in your own hands, that others may reduce you to crave the small pittance which will remain in theirs? Those who have incited you to the deeds of this day take very good care that all our granaries shall not be emptied. They reserve a few, that you may at length,—when all their schemes are ripe,—be their tools through your literal dependencedependence on them for bread.—Disappoint this plot as far as you can. It is now too late to keep plenty in your own hands; but baffle the approaches of famine to the last moment; for with hunger comes slavery; or, if you will not have slavery, death; and in either case, your country must surrender your services at the very moment when she wants them most.—Where is the patriotism of bringing things to this pass?—Where also is the justice of condemning unheard so useful a class of men as those from whom you have taken their property without accusation, and, in many cases, their lives, on nothing better than suspicion of their having communicated with the court?—We must respect rights, as well as frame a Declaration of them. We must cherish the innocent and useful of society, if we wish to restrain those who are neither the one nor the other. Let there be a contrast between the oppressors and the friends of the people. Let tyrants tremble, while industrious citizens dwell in peace.”
It was now easy to wind up the discourse to the point contemplated. Charles proposed that Maigrot should be permitted, under proper guardianship, to bake a provision of loaves out of this very flour; and if they proved good, that all that remained of his property should be restored to him. The crowd rather relished the idea of waiting the operation, in full prospect of a batch of hot rolls gratis as the result, and the proposal was received with acclamations.—Charles immediately singled out Maigrot, as he stood on the outskirts of the mob, requested him to lead the way homewards, put a loaf into each arm of his little son, swung a sack of flour on his own shoulders, and headed the most singular of all the extraordinary processions which attracted the gaze of Paris in those times.
The duke of Orleans made no opposition. He saw that the game was up for this day, and departed in an opposite direction, having no particular wish to hear the verdict which he knew would be passed upon the bread, or to witness the exultation of the baker.—Before night, Maigrot not only felt his head safe upon his shoulders, but was the most eminent baker in Paris; and, if he had but had any flour remaining, might have boasted such a business as he had till now never thought of aspiring to.
The endeavours of individuals like Charles to make the people wise were of little avail, however successful at the moment, in opposition to influences of a different character which were perpetually at work upon the mob of Paris. The obstinacy of the king in refusing to sign the declaration of rights, the imbecility of the ministry, the arts and clamours of the leaders of different parties, and, above all, the destitution of which they took advantage, overcame all principles of subordination, all sentiments of loyalty, and filled the people with a rage which rendered them as blind to their own interests as unjust towards those of the ranks above them. Riot and waste spread and grew from day to day, and the wise saw no more prospect of relief than the foolish of danger.
The king had been told, on the day the Bastille was taken, that his capital was in a state of revolution; but, nearly three months afterwards, he was still wondering what the event might mean; talking over with the queen the kindnesses he had always intended showing to his people, and assuring the people’s parliament that the best thing he could do for them was to preserve his dignity and prerogative. He could still at Versailles ride abroad unmolested in the mornings, feast his body-guard in the middle of the day, and look on while the ladies of the court were dancing in the evening, and sleep the whole night without hearing the drums and larums which kept all Paris awake; and could not therefore believe that all would not come right, when the people should have been persuaded of the atrocious unreasonableness of the Declaration they wanted him to sign. When he heard that they drowned their flour in hatred of him, he did all he could think of in ordering that more should be given them; and when the queen discovered that which every one would have kept from her,—that she was hated,—she curled her proud lip, and reared her graceful head, and thought that the citizens must be ignorant indeed if they fancied they could understand her springs of action, or believed that they could intimidate her. With the dauphin at her knee, she expatiated to the ladies of her court on the misfortune of kings and queens having any connexion at all with the people beneath them, whom it was at all times difficult to manage, and who might, as now, cause serious trouble, and interfere materially with the peace of royalty. She had at that moment little idea how the peace of royalty was to be invaded this very day.
A murmur of horror and looks of dismay penetrated even into the presence of her majesty, when tidings arrived of the approach of an army of women from Paris.
“Of women!” cried the gouvernante of the dauphin. “Is it because they can crave bread with a shriller wail?”
“Of women!” exclaimed the lady Alice de Thou. “They come to plead for the rights of their children. I remember when they brought the little ones in their arms after the storm, and we gave them all we had.”
“Of women!” said the queen, thoughtfully. Then, with fire in her eyes, she continued, looking steadfastly on the trembling chamberlain who brought the news, “Since they are women, it is my head they want. Is it not so? Speak. Are they not come for me?”
As soon as the chamberlain could speak, he muttered that he feared they were indeed not women, but ruffians in disguise.
“Aye, just so,” observed the queen. “Their womanhood is emblematical; and the hint of their purpose is not lost upon me. I hope they are indeed men, and can handle arms. I would take my death more willingly, being shot at as a mark, than being torn to pieces by the foul hands of the rabble. A death-blow from afar rather than a touch from any one of them!”
All present, except the chamberlain, were loud in their protestations against the possibility of any such danger. It was inconceivable; it was barbarous; it was horrific; it was a thing unheard of; in short, it was absolutely inconceivable. The chamberlain mournfully admitted that the whole was indeed inconceivable to all who had not witnessed the procession, like a troop of furies from the regions below, taking their way through every savage district on the earth, and swelling their ranks with all that could be gathered up of hideous and corrupt. That her majesty’s sacred person should fall into such hands——
All now began to urge flight, and the queen was for a moment disposed to listen; but finding that the king was out shooting, had been sent for, and was expected every instant, she resolved to wait his arrival, and then it was too late. The poissardes, real and pretended, had by that time rushed into the place, filled the streets, stopped up the avenue, and taken up a position of control in the Chamber of Assembly. The king reached the palace through a back entrance, in safety, but it was in vain to think of leaving it again.
A hasty council was summoned, consisting of the royal family, and a few confidential servants, whose attachment to the persons of majesty might set against the enervating terror which had seized upon the ministers, and prevented their exerting any influence over these new and appalling circumstances. Within the circle, rapid consultation went on in low voices, while some kept watch at the doors. When discussing the necessity of signing the declaration of rights,—which was one of the demands of the mob without,—the queen’s manner and tone were perceived suddenly to change, and she appeared to make light of the danger under which even her spirit had quailed but just before.
“Be careful;” she whispered to the person next her. “There is a creature of the duke of Orleans in the room. I wonder how he got in.”
The lady Alice, who was watching her, followed the glance of her eye, and saw that it rested on one whom she little expected to see.
“Madam!” she exclaimed, “it is my father!”
“Yes, my child; come to share your loyalty, now that the women below have made him afraid. If the palace is stormed, he must find a refuge once more under the Orleans provision-carts, which are, I suppose, in waiting, as usual. We must give him no news to carry; and Alice, as soon as he is gone, I must have your head-dress to wear, as the best protection while your father points the way to us. I would not, however, be so cruel, my child, as to deck you with mine. You would lose your pretty head in a trice, and then the marquis would altogether go from us. It is through you that we are still favoured with his countenance occasionally.”
Alice’s tearful eyes had besought mercy for her parent long before the queen seemed disposed to yield it. While the adherence of the noblesse to the royal cause was regarded as a matter of course, and therefore not rewarded with extraordinary gratitude, all symptoms of halting or defection were observed with scorn, and commented on without reserve by the haughty woman who regarded her rank and empire as natural, instead of conventional, and would as soon have dreamed of being denied the use of her limbs and senses as the privileges of royalty.
It was through her influence that the king refused to sign the declaration till the last moment,—when he was compelled to do so at a tremendous sacrifice of regal dignity;—at the bidding, namely, of twelve poissardes who forced their way into the presence with the deputies from the Assembly, and under the compulsion of threats of what might be expected from the army of eighteen thousand men who had marched from Paris during the afternoon, under the enforced command of Lafayette.
Never was anything beheld more dreary than the aspect, more disgusting than the incidents of this day and night. The skies frowned upon the scene, and wind and rain added to the difficulty of what was achieved, and the horror of what was witnessed. The deputies and their attendants, the poissardes, appeared in the king’s presence, covered with mud and drenched with rain; the House of Assembly was crowded with women, who came in for shelter, taking their seats among the members, now eating and drinking, and now lifting up an outcry to drown the voice of an unpopular deputy; the fires of the bivouacs in the streets were quenched with torrents of rain, again and again, and the peaceable inhabitants were in fear of being compelled at length to throw open their gates to the rabble. The leading figure of the mob, however, had a peculiar reason for disliking the weather, as he took care to show everybody. He was a gaunt-looking ruffian, with a high pointed cap, and grotesque garb, well armed, but especially proud of an axe which he carried, ready for immediate use at the slightest hint from the leaders of the mob. With all his fear,—the only fear he seemed capable of,—that it should be rusted with the wet, and he thus delayed in his vocation, he could not refrain from brandishing it over his head, and displaying it in sight of the sentinels, and such of the body-guards as looked out now and then from the palace. This ruffian took his stand immediately under the king’s window, prepared a cannon as a convenient block, and waited impatiently for victims. He could not be persuaded to quit his post for shelter; but he did once step aside for brandy. On his return, he found two poissardes sitting astride on his cannon, face to face, tossing off their drams, and devouring the rations which their prompting demon had taken care to provide. The executioner warned them off, and prevailed by the offer of a better seat within five minutes. A hint was enough to show them his meaning. He just pointed towards an approaching group, consisting of an unfortunate soldier with whom some of the mob had picked a quarrel as he was going to his post for the night,—and his captors. The victim looked dogged. He saw the cold metal block on which the axe was presently to ring his death-stroke: he saw the fidgetty executioner, and the fierce women, gathering round, munching their suppers as if his life-blood was the draught they looked for to wash down the last mouthful: he saw that no help was within reach or call. He saw all this, and seemed disposed to take quietly, though sullenly, what was inevitable. He stood firm while they pulled off his stock; he moved forwards when they pushed him; he kneeled when they pressed upon his shoulders; but some impatience in their manner of doing so excited his passions in a moment to their utmost strength. Before they could keep him down, he was not only on his feet again, but bounding high in the air, grappling with the executioner for the axe, kicking, trampling, buffeting all who laid hands on him, and creating a hubbub which brought the king to the window above, and conveyed to the senses of the ladies a knowledge of what was passing. It was a short struggle; but a struggle it was to the last, and force alone could subdue the victim. One virago clutched the hair of his head, and others held down his feet. When his blood flowed on the ground, and mixed with the puddles of rain, one or two stooped down to see how the eyes rolled and the nostrils yet quivered, while, on the other side the block, the executioner, mindful of his promise, tossed the headless body to a little distance, so that his friends might sit on it to finish their meal. What are the invisible issues of life there was no one present to think, during the whole scene, unless the victim himself might have been conscious of his thoughts darting that way; but such was the visible issue of a life which a stupendous and delicate natural apparatus had been appointed to create, sustain, and develop. It had originated in the deepest passions of human nature; been maintained by appliances, both natural and moral, which the keenest powers can barely recognize, and not estimate; and developed for objects of which man has only the remotest ken. Such was the visible issue of this mighty series of operations. That the handy work of Providence should ever have been thus crushed, and its mysteries thus boldly made sport of, may in time appear as incredible as it would now seem that children had ever been encouraged to pull planets from their spheres in mockery, and quench the milky way,—supposing such power to have been left in their hands. In the latter case, who would be answerable for the profanation? Surely those who taught mockery in the place of reverence. Who then was answerable in the former case? Those who made the perpetrators ignorant through oppression, and savage by misrule. The responsibilities of a certain order through many centuries were called to judgment during the brief period before us; and the sentence of condemnation not only went forth on the four winds to the farthest corners of the globe, but shall be repeated down to those remote ages when it shall be forgotten on earth, though recorded in heaven, that man ever shed the blood of man.
One or two more such murders on the cannon and at the palace gates had not the effect of alarming the court or the really patriotic leaders of the people so far as to keep them on the watch through the night. The king believed that all was safe when he had given the signature which it was the professed object of the expedition to obtain. The queen was assured by Lafayette that the people were wearied, and that nothing was to be apprehended till morning; and the general himself reposed in his hotel in full confidence of the security of all parties. All were not, however, thus satisfied. Some of the deputies refused to withdraw from their chamber; and while all was sleep and silence in the palace, except where some watchful ear caught the soft tread of the sentinels in the corridors, and the pattering of the rain without, and at intervals, some tidings from the passing gust, of revelry in the streets,—while armed ruffians sang their songs, or snored in their dreams round the watch-fires where the shrill-voiced poissardes were broiling their rations, or heating their strong liquors,—a few of the wiser deputies sat, each in his place, with folded arms, and in perfect silence, while the light of a single lamp fell on their uncovered heads and thoughtful countenances, and foresight was invisibly presenting to each pictures of that which was about to befall their monarchy and themselves. Revellers, legislators, and sentinels were not the only ones who watched. One or two, who did not partake the general’s confidence in the people thus strangely congregated, wandered from watch-fire to watch-fire, and about the precincts of the palace, to be in readiness to warn Lafayette of the first symptoms of movement.
Among these was Charles, whose anxiety had been awakened by the aspect of Paris after the departure of the army for Versailles. It was well known that Lafayette’s generalship on this occasion was enforced; and not all the apparatus of triumph amidst which the troops marched out,—not all the drumming, and military music, and display of flags amidst the rain, and echo of shouting heard above the strong winds, could remove the impression of the hollowness of all this rejoicing,—the desperation of this defiance. When the sights and sounds were gone, a deep gloom settled down upon Paris. The shops were shut, the streets were silent, except where the waggons, laden with meat, bread, and brandy, converged towards the Versailles road, or where groups of two or three observers whispered their anticipations to each other, mindful of none but political storms, and questioning only whether the sun of royalty would not this night have a crimson setting, to rise upon their state no more.
Charles had been among these observers, and the tidings he brought home made his wife anxious to depart from this revolutionary city, and take refuge in their country possessions. She would be ready to go at any moment, she declared, and when would there be so favourable a time as when the place was half emptied of its inhabitants, the police otherwise engaged than in watching the proceedings of private individuals, and all fear at an end of any attack upon the wine-stores? Charles was half disposed to listen to the scheme, though his views of what was likely to happen differed as widely from his wife’s as the prevailing tone of mind by which they were influenced. Marguerite feared the worst: her husband hoped all might yet be well, and thought it, at all events, a good thing that something decided must arise out of the present crisis. He determined to follow the march to Versailles, and to return as soon as he could anticipate the event, to bid Marguerite stay and make herself easy, or to carry her, her father and children into Guienne. While she was packing up the few necessaries she meant to take with her, and persuading all the household but herself to go early to rest, Charles was reconnoitring the proceedings of such as were preparing a terrible retribution for those under whose tyranny they had suffered.
He was no spy; being devoted to no party, and acting for his own honest purposes; and he therefore used no concealment. He conversed with the riotous poissardes on public injuries, conferred with the deputies on public order, and exchanged a few words with the sentinels on the probability of an attack on the palace in the morning. The horrible threats breathed over the fires against the queen, the brutal exultation which appeared through mysterious and slang expressions respecting the royal household, made him wonder at the apparent defencelessness of the palace. He was by no means satisfied that all was safe till morning, and said so to a little muffled up man whom he found standing in the shadow, close by the great iron gates. He could not make out whether this man was a mere looker on, like himself, or a watch appointed by either party.
“Is it your own choice to be out to-night, sir; or are you occupying a post? Because, in the first case I would direct you where you might see more of the state of things than here; and, in the other, I would strongly recommend your appealing to the general for support.”
“Alas! yes. I am sent hither,” replied the quavering voice of the muffled up person. “None would willingly be abroad this night, and all my desire is to be left unobserved in this shadow at present;—unless, indeed, some friend should pass who might protect me, and from whom I might learn that which I am sent to ascertain.—You seem, sir, to be an orderly, honest man. Can you tell me whether the duke,—whether Orleans is at hand?”
“Orleans being the most honest and orderly of men, hey, marquis?” said Charles, laughing. “So you are sent out by lady Alice for tidings, and you wait here for them till Orleans passes by—Is it not so?”
“Ah! what can I do? These canaille will smother me again with flour, or drag me to the cold cannon;” and here the little man shivered, and his teeth chattered. “Do but bring me to Orleans, my good sir, or get me a re-entrance into the palace, and I will——I will——This morning air is so raw! and I am——I am——not fit for enterprise.”
Charles fully agreed with him; but having no interest to get a royal spy housed before his errand was done, he could only tell him that, to the best of his belief, Orleans was lingering about the road between Versailles and Paris, or hanging somewhere on the outskirts of the encampment to witness the issue, without being implicated.
“Ah! how he is happy in comparison with me!” cried the poor marquis. “I have never, sir, meddled with politics——”
“Further than as all the noblesse have operated,” interrupted Charles. “I mean in stimulating the people to meddle with politics. You have wrought at second hand, marquis, hitherto. Now is your time for taking your part finally, and acting in it.”
“Alas! what evils come of any one interfering in such affairs but ministers and deputies! Let them act, and let us be neutral. This is all I ask.”
“Aye, but, marquis, it is too late to ask this; because there has been great mistake about what is, and what is not, being neutral. I dare say you believed yourself neutral when you lay sleeping in bed, while your peasantry were keeping the frogs quiet in your ponds. I dare say you had no thought of politics in your boar hunts, or when three fathers of families were sent to the galleys for alarming the lady Alice’s brooding doves. Yet you were all the while——”
The marquis’s light blue eyes were now seen by the lamp light to be opened upon Charles with such an expression of vacant wonderment that it was plain there was no use in proceeding. He evidently had yet to learn the true province of politics; and, for his part, he thought the merchant must have drunk a little too deep in his own wine, to be talking of peasants and pigeons in connexion with an insurrection in Paris.—He would never have had courage to leave his nook by himself; but now that he had met a face that he knew, it required more courage to remain there by himself, and he therefore hooked Charles by the arm, and said he would be wholly guided by him. Charles would rather have dispensed with his attachment, but could not shake off the old man into darkness and helplessness, if he himself preferred venturing into the light of the watch-fires, and upon the threshold of Lafayette’s lodging, whither he was warned he would be conveyed.
If the marquis had carried a bold front, nothing would have happened to him, any more than to his companion; but his slouched hat, halting gait, and shrinking deportment at once drew attention upon him. The consequence was that he heard double the number of threats, and imprecations ten times more horrid than had met Charles’s ears before. If he had now regained entrance into the palace, he could have told that which would have made even the queen’s fiery blood run cold, and have given the whole household a foretaste of worse horrors than even those of the ensuing day.
When they had arrived at the last of the line of fires, the marquis believed his purgatory to be nearly over, and indulged himself in a few ejaculations of thankfulness on the occasion. He was overheard, seized, dragged to the light, his coat torn open, and his hat pushed back. The queue looked suspicious; the manner of speech, mixed up, as even these people could perceive, of high breeding and imbecility, gave assurance that he was a court adherent; to which there was to be opposed only his own and Charles’s assurance that he was a companion and friend of Orleans. The knot of drinkers hesitated whether to cut off his head or let him go, and the marquis stood panting with open lips and closed teeth, when an amiable creature, partly masculine in her attire, and wholly so in her address, proposed a half measure.
“If he is one of them,” she observed, “we shall find him again in the palace presently; so let us mark him.”
With the word, she seized the poor man’s nose with the left hand, a burning stick with the right, and branded his forehead with a cross; then pushed him away, and turned to Charles, offering to drink to him in his own liquor, the choicest in Paris, if Orleans said true. She pointed at the same time to a waggon near, on which, to his amazement, Charles saw piled wine-casks with his own mark, and brandy-bottles sealed with his own seal.
Perceiving at a glance that his cellars must have been forced since he left home, and that all further resistance would be useless, he determined to yield to his wife’s desire to quit Paris; and he hastened to discharge his duty of rousing and warning the general, before turning his back on this scene of disorder.
Lafayette was up in a moment, and, though still trusting in the peaceable disposition of the people, dressed himself hastily, that he might be among them by daybreak. Before he could leave his hotel, however, warning sounds came from the direction of the palace, and messengers succeeded one another rapidly, stating that an attack was being made on the great iron gates, that blood had already been shed, and that the lives of the whole royal family seemed to be at the people’s mercy. The general threw himself upon a horse which happened to be standing saddled below, and galloped off, before Charles could recommend the marquis de Thou to his protection, should he happen to find him in the hands of the populace. His own anxiety to get home was such as ill to brook any delay, and to admit little other interest of any kind; but chance threw him once more in the path of the old man.
As he was making the best of his way towards the Paris road, stemming the tide of people that was rushing towards the palace, he was suddenly jostled and thrown down by an impulse in the contrary direction. Nor was he the only one. Many were bruised, some trampled, while a fugitive burst through the throng, followed by a knot of pursuers, who overthrew all that came in their way, while their mingled curses and laughter contrasted strangely with the panting cry of the pursued. Some cried out that it was the king; others uttered imprecations against him as one of the hated guards; while Charles saw, amidst his tattered, scared, and helpless condition, that it was no other than the poor marquis. His desperation gave the hunted man strength to clear the mob, and to fly some way beyond, till he reached the trees of the avenue, where there was an end of his safety unless some better aid was brought him than his own failing strength. His enemies dogged him, surrounded him;—some brandishing pitchforks, others large knives, and not a few firing off their muskets to give a new impulse to his terror. This sight was intolerable to Charles, who saw in such cruelty none of the palliations which he had admitted in the case of some former acts of violence. Forgetting all but what was before his eyes, he snatched a pike, threw himself in front of the pursuit, reached the victim just as he fell exhausted at the foot of a tree, and stood astride over him, with one hand in an attitude of defence, while the other beckoned to the people to listen. He shouted amid the din, and the few words which were heard by those nearest to him served his purpose of diverting their thoughts from immediate murder. He told them that, in the name of the marquis’s tenantry, he demanded that the marquis should be placed in the custody of the Assembly of deputies, to answer for an infringement of the new laws by which the property of the peasantry was protected. He told them that the general was gone to the palace, to mediate between the queen and the poissardes, and as it would be a pity that those who heard him should be absent from so interesting a spectacle, he and one or two more would take charge of the criminal, and convey him before the sitting deputies. A well-timed roll of the drums and discharge of musketry confirmed his appeal, and drew away his auditors, so that in a few moments, when the last lingerers had gratified themselves with pricking their victim a little with the points of their various weapons, Charles found himself alone with the almost lifeless old man.
On hearing that his further existence probably depended on his reaching the assembly while the mob was engaged elsewhere, the marquis made an effort to rise and walk, and found himself so much less hurt than frightened that he accomplished the transit with small difficulty. Such a deplorable object was never before presented to the Assembly, at least under the title of a marquis. He had scarcely a shred of clothing under the soldier’s cloak which Charles had borrowed from a sentinel at the door. His powdered hair was dripping with rain, and his face smeared with blood. He wept bitterly; murmuring, in the tones of a woman, his wonder as to what he could have ever done to offend the people, and how the world could have grown so cruel and ungrateful. The Assembly had little leisure at this time, and were glad to accept Charles’s offer of conveying the prisoner away, and his guarantee that the marquis should set out for his estate in the provinces without delay, and not return till the troubles of the capital were at an end. The marquis was little disposed to make opposition.
“Take me away,” he said, “though I only fly from one doom to another. You say my tenants are enraged against me; and I say that they will drink my blood. The vile are sovereigns in these days, and the noble have the knife at their throats from day to day. O, if they had killed me under the tree, it would have been over; but now it is still to come. O save me! Do not leave me! Make me your servant. Employ me as you will; but do not let them kill me!”
Charles recommended that the old man should in fact travel into Guienne as his servant, and take possession of his chateau or not, according to the apparent disposition of the peasantry when they should arrive.—Not a moment was to be lost in proceeding to Paris, if the departure of the family was to take place while the populace and the troops were engaged at Versailles, and the whole attention of the magistracy was directed upon what was passing there.
An empty cart was found in which to stow the marquis, while his protector walked by its side. They left behind them the most fearful spectacles of that day,—the murder of some of the guards, the narrow escape of the queen, the brutal joy of the mob at the enforced consent of the royal family to be conveyed to Paris, and the beginning of that dreadful march itself, as anomalous, as disgusting, as any spectacle that was ever presented as a pageant. But, one circumstance which signalized that march, they were also witnesses to. Half-way between Versailles and Paris, on a mound planted with trees, a figure was seen, moving behind the stems, and peeping forth at every sound of wheels or footsteps. It was Orleans, who had stationed himself here to watch the issue of his plot,—the return of the expedition, with the bodies of his royal cousins, dead or alive.
With some difficulty, he was persuaded to come down and speak to his humble servant the marquis; and when he did greet him, it was with something very like a smile at his crest-fallen appearance, and querulous complainings.
“My good friend, these are strange times,” he observed. “I should think your valet has hardly had time to attend to you this morning. However, you will find plenty unoccupied at Paris to renew your powder.—O, you wish to go at once, and shoot on your own territory. Well; perhaps you are wise, since our kind of shooting here is not exactly to your taste. You must take care, however; for I hear that more bullets fly from behind the hedges there than in the open fields. Farewell, my dear sir, for I see your companion is impatient. He wants to be keeping guard over his wine-cellars. I wish him an ample fortune out of the wines therein contained at this moment.”
Charles’s impatience was not only on account of his own affairs. He distrusted Orleans so far as to be vexed that the marquis whispered to him their plan of escape. There was no particular sign of interest in the duke’s countenance at the relation; and it only remained to be hoped that no harm would come of this unnecessary confidence. The marquis was far from thinking it unnecessary, as a word from the duke would procure passports for the whole family. This word Orleans was prevailed upon to write, and furnished with it, the marquis poured out his gratitude more vehemently than, but a few months before, he would have supposed possible; and then bade his vehicle proceed, watching from a distance how the duke once more passed the enclosure, and took his station among the trees as before.
The cellars were found to be indeed more than half emptied; and of the casks that remained, one or two were staved, to drown the gunpowder and other combustibles. No attack had been made upon the house, and Marguerite had sufficiently got the better of her terrors, to be ready for immediate departure. No obstacle arose, and Steele, with Pierre under him, consented to remain in charge of the property till Charles could return, after having deposited his family in security.
The marquis made a rather singular-looking valet, with a manner alternating between superciliousness and awkward deference,—a strutting gait when he forgot what he was about, and a cringing one when he happened to cast a glance upon his dress. He passed muster very well, however, as a battered old soldier turned valet; his strut passing for regimental paces, and his cringe being ascribed to the honourable wounds he was supposed to bear. M. Raucourt took off the attention of all who might be disposed to make remarks, by telling everybody that he was going to see his olive groves. The party travelled with more speed than the dismal procession from Versailles; so that before the royal family was mournfully ushered into the Hotel de Ville at dusk, Charles and his household were some leagues on their journey southwards.