While all was festivity at Paris, gloom settled down on Versailles at eventide. With darkness came its retinue of fears and sinister visions, when suddenly uproar was heard at the end of the town.
The Queen shuddered and ran to a window which she opened with her own hand.
A hussar came up to the palace; it was a lieutenant sent by Charny who had gone on towards Paris to get the news. He reported that the King was safe and sound, and that he would arrive shortly.
Taking her two children by the hand, Marie Antoinette went down and out upon the grand staircase, where were grouped the servants and the courtiers.
Her piercing eye perceived a woman in white leaning on the stone balustrade and eagerly looking into the shadows:it was Countess Andrea, enrapt in expectation of her husband so that she did not see her royal mistress, or disdained to notice her.
Whether she bore the Queen rancor or merely yearned to see her husband, it was a double stab for the beloved of Charny.
But she had determined on the righteous course: she trod her jealousy underfoot; she immolated her secret joys and wrath to the sanctity of the conjugal oath. No doubt from heaven was sent this salutary love to raise her husband and children above all else. Her pride, too, lifted her above earthly desires and she could be selfish without deserving blame.
As the coach came up, she descended the steps, and when its door was opened, and Louis stepped out, she did not notice how the grooms and footmen hastened to tear off the rosettes and streamers of the new popular colors with which Billet and Pitou and others of the throng had decorated the vehicle and horses.
With an outcry of love and delight the Queen embraced the King. She sobbed as though she had fully expected never again to see him.
In her impulse of an overburdened heart, she did not remark the hand-grasp the Charnys exchanged in the darkness.
As the royal children kissed their father, the elder boy spied the cockade reddened by the torchlight on his father's hat and exclaimed with his childish astonishment:
"Oh, papa, what is on your white cockade—blood?"
It was the national Red.
Spying it herself, the Queen plucked it off with profound disgust as the King stooped as if to kiss his daughter but really to hide his shame. The mad woman did not think that she was insulting the nation, which would repay her at an early day.
"Throw the thing away," she cried, casting it down the steps so that all the escort tramped over it.
This strange transition extinguished her phase of marital love. She looked round for Charny without appearing to do so; he had fallen back into the ranks like a soldier.
"I thank you, my lord," she said to him, at last: "you have kept your promise to restore the King to me unhurt."
"Who is that?" inquired the sovereign: "Oh, Charny? But where is Gilbert, whom I do not see?"
"Come to supper," said the Queen to change the subject; "Go to the countess, my Lord Charny, and bring her. We shall have a family supper party, to-night."
She was the Queen again; but still she was vexed that the count, who had been sad, should cheer up at the prospect of his wife being in the company.
WHY THE QUEEN WAITED.
A little calm succeeded at Versailles the political and mental tempests which we have chronicled.
The King breathed again: and consoled himself with his regaled popularity for what his Bourbon pride had suffered in truckling to the Paris mob. The Nobility prepared to flee or to resist. The people watched and waited.
Assured that she was the butt of all the slings and arrows of hatred, the Queen made herself as inconspicuous as possible: she knew that for her party she was the centre of all hopes.
Since the King went to Paris she had not seen Dr. Gilbert, but the chance was offered her when they met in the vestibule of the royal apartments.
"Going to the King?" she challenged as he bowed deeply. "As physician or counsellor?" she continued with a smile betraying some irony.
"As doctor; it is my day on duty," he replied.
She beckoned him to follow her into a little sideroom.
"You see, sir," she began, "that you were wrong the other day when you assured me that the King ran no risk of murder. A woman was killed by a shot aimed at him and striking you, without injury. Who told me so? gentlemen of the escort who saw your button fly."
"I do not believe it was a crime, or, if so, one to be imputed to the people," returned Gilbert, hesitatingly.
"Who are we to attribute it to, then?" she demanded, fixing her eyes upon him.
"I have been studying the masses some time," he responded: "when in fury the mobs tear and slay like a tiger; but in cold blood, they seek no go-betweens. They want to make the blood fly with their own claws and fangs."
"As witness, Foulon and his son-in-law Berthier Savigny, accused of complicity in the Great Grain Fraud, and ripped to pieces by the crowd? and Flesselles, slain by a pistol! But the accounts of their atrocious executions may be untrue, we crowned heads are so engirt by flatterers."
"Madam, you do not believe any more than I, that Flesselles was killed by the mob. Others of higher degree were more interested in his death. As for the King, those who love their country believe he is useful to it, and these stand between him and the assassin eagerly."
"Alas," said she, "there was a time when a good Frenchman would have expressed his sentiments in better terms than those. It was not possible then to love his country without loving his rulers."
Gilbert blushed and bowed, feeling the thrill at his heart which the Queen could impart in her periods of winning intimacy.
"Madam, I beg to boast that I love the monarchy better than many."
"Are we not at an era when it is not enough to say so, but actions should speak?"
"Madam, I was your enemy yesterday, when you had me imprisoned, and now I am your servant."
"But whence the change? it is not in your nature, doctor, to change your feelings, opinion and belief so readily. You are a man with a deep-rooted memory; you know how to lengthen out your vengeance. Tell me the aim of your change?"
"Madam, you reproach me with loving my country too dearly."
"You love it so as to stoop to serve me, the foreigner? no I am a Frenchwoman—I love my country. You smile—but it is my country. I have adopted it. German by birth, I am French through the heart; but I love France through the King and the respect due the God which consecrated me to it. But I understand you; it is not the same thing. You love France purely and simply for France's sake."
"Madam, I cannot be outspoken without disrespect," replied the doctor.
"Oh," she said, "dreadful is this epoch when men pretending to be honorable isolate two principles that should never be parted, and have always marched forward together: France and her King. Is there not a tragedy in which a queen, abandoned by all, is asked: What remains? and she answers 'I!' Well, like Medea, I am here—and we shall see the outcome."
She passed out, in vexation, leaving Gilbert in stupor. By her fiery breath she had blown aside a corner of the veil beyond which simmered the hell-broth of the Anti-Revolution.
"Let us look to ourselves," thought Gilbert, "the Queen is nursing a scheme."
"Plainly nothing can be done with this man," muttered the sovereign, regaining her rooms. "He is a strong one, but he lacks devotion."
Poor princess, to whom servility is thought to be devotion!
Marie Antoinette felt the weight upon her most when alone.
As woman and queen, she had nothing to lean upon or help her support the crushing burden.
Doubt or wavering was on either hand. Uneasy about their fortune, the sycophants fled. Her relatives and friends brooded on exile. The proudest of all, Andrea, gradually drew aside from her, body and soul.
The noblest and dearest man of all, Charny, was wounded by her fickleness and was a prey to doubt.
She who was instinct and sagacity themselves, was fretted by the crisis.
"This pure, unalloyed heart has not changed, but it is changing," she reasoned.
A dreadful conviction for the woman who loved with passion, and insupportable for one who loved with pride, as the Queen did Charny.
Being a man, all that George understood was that the Queen was unfairly jealous of his wife. Nothing pains a heart incapable of false play so much as to be suspected of it. Nothing so points attention on the person unjustly accused of inspiring an attachment than jealousy. The suspected one reflects. It looks from the jealous heart to the one believed to be its rival.
Indeed, how suppose that a noble and elevated creature should be vexed over a trifle? What has a lovely woman to be worried about? what, the powerful lady?
Charny knew that Andrea had been the bosom friend of the Queen, and wondered why their love had cooled and the confidante stood away. He had to look to her and the idol lost so much of the eye-adulation as Andrea gained. By her unfairness and anger Marie Antoinette told Charny that he must feel less a lover for her. He sought for the cause, and naturally whither the Queen was frowning.
He pitied Andrea, who had married him by royal command, and was but nominally his wife.
Marie Antoinette's burst of affection in receiving her husband on his return from Paris had opened the eyes of the count.
He began to steel himself against her, and she, while ill-treating him, resumed showering favor on Andrea.
The latter submitted, without astonishment but also with no gratitude. Long since, she reckoned herself as belonging to her royal mistress and she let the Queen do what she liked.
The result was a curious situation, such as women act and comprehend best.
Andrea felt all her husband underwent, and she pitied him and showed her pity, from her love being of the angelic kind which is not fed on hope.
This compassion led to a gentle approach. She tried to comfort George without letting him see that she needed the same consolation. This was done with that delicacy called womanly because the softer sex best practice it.
Marie Antoinette, trying to reign by dividing, saw she was on the wrong road, and was forcing together the souls which she wanted to keep aloof.
Hence, in the silence of night and the lonesomeness, she felt such wrestlings with Giant Despair as must give the spirit a high idea of its power since it can struggle with so vast a might.
She would have succumbed had it not been for the diversion of politics.
In her pride she ascribed her decay to the depreciation she had let herself as a woman suffer lately. In her active mind, to think was to act.
She set to work without losing a moment, but unfortunately the work was for her perdition.
Seeing that the Parisians had turned into soldiers and appeared to intend war, she resolved to show them what war really is.
For two months the King had been striving to retain some shred of royalty: with the peerage and Mirabeau, he had tried to neutralize the democratic spirit effacing it in France. In this strife the monarch had lost all his power and part of his popularity; the Queen had gained the nickname of "Lady Veto." She had been known as The Austrian, then as Lady Deficit, on account of the hole in the Treasury attributed to her generosity to her favorites; now, Lady Veto; she was to bear lastly the title of The Widow Capet.
After the conflict in which the Queen had endeavored to engage her friends by showing them that they were endangered with her, she remarked that only sixty thousand passports had been applied for by the higher classes, fleeing to foreign parts. This had struck the Queen.
She purposed her own escape, so as to leave the true royalists in France to wage a civil war. Her plan was not bad, and it must have succeeded had it not been for the evil genius who was plotting behind the Queen. Strange destiny! this woman who inspired great devotion, nowhere could attach discretion.
It was known all over town that she intended to take to wing before she had settled herself: and from that time it was impracticable.
Meanwhile, the Flanders Regiment, famous for its royalist fervor, arrived at Versailles, asked for by the town council, as the guarding of the palace exceeded their powers at command.
It made a solemn entrance into the court-town, and received an ovation from the courtiers, other soldiers, and a band of young nobles who had set up a company of their own with a special uniform, to which were joined the Knights of St. Louis, officers on the retired list and adventurers.
Only one black spot marred the sky: Liege had revolted against the Austrian Emperor and this made it difficult for him to succor the daughter whom he had wedded to his brother on the French throne.
After the Flanders Regiment had been welcomed, the Lifeguards officers voted to give them a dinner: it was fixed for the First of October. As the King had no politics to trouble him, since the new government took all business on themselves, he passed the days in hunting. The Queen was applied to for the dinner to take place in the palace. She let the guards officers have the theatre, which was boarded over to make more room, and a hall adjoining.
She shut herself up alone, save for her children and Andrea, sad and thoughtful, where the toasts and the clink of glasses should not disturb her.
At the palace gates a crowd peeped in and sniffed the air, puffing the fumes of roasts and wines, from the large dinner table. It was imprudent to let the hungry inhale the vapor of good cheer and the morose hear songs and cheers of hope and joy.
The feast went on without any interruption, however. At the second course the Colonel of the Flanders Regiment proposed the regular toasts of the Royal Family, which were hailed so loudly that the Queen may have heard the echoes in her refuge.
An officer stood up. He was a man of wit and courage who foresaw the issue of this banquet and was sincerely attached to the Royal Family; or else he was a plotter who tried to challenge the anti-popular opinion. He proposed the Health of the Nation.
It was hooted down, and the feast took its plain meaning—the torrent resumed its down-hill rush.
To forget the country might pass: but to insult it was too much; it would take revenge.
From that moment discipline was at an end: the privates hobnobbed with their superiors, and it was really a brotherly meeting.
What a pity that the unfortunate King and sorrowful Queen could not witness such a gathering!
Officious servants ran with exaggerated accounts of the festivities to Marie Antoinette and urged that she should go with the young heir to the throne by her side, in the monarch's absence.
"Madam, I entreat you to keep away," pleaded Count Charny. "I have come away from the scene; they are too excited to make it seemly for your Majesty."
She was in one of her sulky, whimsical moods and it suited her to tease Charny by going counter to his advice. She looked at him with disdain and was going to answer him tartly when he respectfully said:
"At least, see what the King says about it."
The King had just returned from hunting.
Marie Antoinette ran to meet him and dragging him with her, in his riding boots and dusty as he was, she led him away, without a glance at Charny, and crying:
"Come, my lord, to see a sight worthy of a King of France's regard!"
With her left hand, she led her son. The courtiers flowed before and after the trio: she reached the theatre doors just as the glasses were being emptied for the twentieth time to shouts of:
"God save the King! Long live the Queen!"
The applause burst like a mine exploding when the King and Queen and Prince Royal were seen on the floor. The drunken soldiers and heated officers waved their hats on their swords and shouted. The band began to play from the Opera of Richard Coeur-de-lion, Blondel's song of "Oh, Richard, oh, my King!" which so transparently alluded to the King in a kind of bondage that all voices took up the song.
The enthusiastic Queen did not see that the soldiers were intoxicated: the surprised King had too much good sense not to see more clearly, but he was weak and flattered by this reception, so that he let the general frenzy overcome him.
Charny, who had drunk nothing but water during the part of the banquet which he attended, stood pale at this participation of the Royal Family in what would now be a historical event by their presence.
But his apprehension was still greater when he saw his brother Valence, the hussar lieutenant, approach the Queen and speak to her when encouraged by a smile. It was consent, for she unpinned from her cap the cockade she was wearing and presented it to her imprudent Knight. It was not even a royal rosette, but that of Austria: the black insignia of the foreign foe! This was not rashness but treason to the country. So mad was the concourse that they to whom Valence Charny presented the black cockade, tore off their white ones and they who were wearing the tricolors trampled them under foot.
The exultation became so high that the august guests had pains to return to their rooms without trampling on those who prostrated themselves in their passageway.
All this might have been overlooked as the freak of an orgie, but after the Royal Family departed, the guests turned the banquet hall into a town taken by assault. The soldiers whooped and as the bugles blew the charge—against what enemy? the absent nation! they climbed the balconies where the ladies held over helping hands.
The first soldier to reach the boxes was a grenadier whom a nobleman decorated with the ribbon he was wearing in his buttonhole: the Order of Limburg, that is, of no value. But all the sham battle was fought under the Austrian colors while the national one was shouted down. Only a few dull protests were heard, drowned under the trumpet blasts, the hurrahs, and the music of the band. The tumult came menacingly to the crowd at the doors. Astonished at first, they were soon indignant as it was known that the tricolor had been spurned and the black streamer flaunted in its stead.
An officer of the National Guard had been badly beaten in the scuffle to uphold the honor of the latter, but it was not known that Charny, the Queen's favorite, had taken all the blame of the outrages on himself.
The Queen had returned to her rooms, dazed by the scene. A swarm of flatterers and adulators assailed her.
"See the true spirit of your troops," they said. "When the fury of the mob is bragged of, think how it would melt away in the blast of this wild ardor of the military for monarchical ideas."
She was still under the illusion that this fire would spread over the kingdom from the palace, at her will, when, next day, receiving the National Guard to whom she had promised to distribute their new flags, she made this address:
"I am happy to make this presentation. The Nation and the army ought to love the King, as we love them both. I was delighted with the rejoicing yesterday!"
At these words, emphasized by her glittering glance and sweetest voice, the crowd grumbled while the soldiers applauded noisily.
"She upheld us," said one party while the other muttered: "We are betrayed!"
"Am I not brave?" she asked of Charny who looked on with sorrow and listened with terror.
"To the point of folly," he replied with a deeply clouded face.
THE ARMY OF WOMEN.
The Queen was reposing after the day of felicitation. She had her janissaries around her, her cohort of young bravoes, and having reckoned up her foes, she was wishful for the onslaught.
Had she not the defeat of the Fourteenth of July, the Loss of the Bastile, to avenge?
She treated Andrea with the former friendship for a time deadened in her bosom. But Charny? she only looked where he was when she was forced to give him an order. But thiswas no spite against the family, for it was noticed that she paid special attention to young Valence Charny, the hussar who had been given her Austrian rosette at the officers' dinner.
Indeed, as he was crossing the gallery to announce to the Master of the Buckhound's that the King would go hunting that day, Marie Antoinette who came out of the chapel, perceived him and greeted him.
"The King goes hunting?" she repeated; "what a mistake when the weather is threatening—is it not, Andrea?"
"Yes," answered the lady of honor absently.
"Where will the chase be?"
"In Meudon Wood, my lady."
"Well, accompany him and watch over him."
At this moment the head of the Charnys appeared. He smiled to Andrea and remarked:
"That is advice which my brother will bear in mind during the dangers to the King as well as during his pleasures."
At the sound of the voice, for she had not seen him coming, Marie Antoinette started and rejoined with studied rudeness:
"I should have been astonished if that speech had come from any but your lordship, for it contains a foreboding."
Andrea saw her husband blanch, but he bowed without retort. He noticed her surprise that he bore it so patiently, for he quickly said:
"I am most unhappy that I can no longer speak to the Queen without offense."
"The 'No longer' was spoken with a fine actor's due stress on the important words in a line.
"Speech is only bad when the intention is so," snapped the Queen, through her teeth, locked with anger.
"The ear hears hostilely when the mind is hostile," was the repartie of Charny, more aptly than politely.
"I shall wait to reply till the Count of Charny is happier in his attacks," went on the Queen.
"And I shall wait to attack till the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty is more happy in servitors than lately."
Andrea grasped her husband's hand hastily and prepared to go out of the gallery with him, when a glance from her mistress retained her.
"In short, what doesyour husbandhave to say to me?" she inquired.
"Sent to Paris yesterday by the King, I found it in great turmoil."
"Yes, the Parisians are going to pull down the Bastile! The Dutch have taken Holland! Anything fresher, my lord?"
"It is true that they are pulling down the prison, but that affords them nothing but stones and they want for bread."
"Let them be hungry," said the Queen. "What are we to do in the matter since others rule the roost?"
"There was a day when the Queen was the first to be compassionate in times of general distress," said the count; "when she went up into the garrets and the prayers of those she helped rose from the garrets unto God."
"Yes, and I have been nicely repaid for this pity for others," returned the lady bitterly. "One of my worst miseries came from my going into a garret."
She alluded, of course, to the incident of the "Queen's Necklace," already described in this series.
"Because your Majesty was once deceived, is all humanity to be measured by that bushel? Oh, how our gracious lady was loved at that period!"
She darted a flaming look at him.
"To be brief," she said, "what is happening in the capital? Only tell me what you have actually seen, for I want to depend on the accuracy of your words."
"I saw people packed on the waterside waiting for the flour boats; others crowding the bakers' doors, waiting for bread. A famishing people—husbands watching their wives sadly, mothers mourning over their babes. Their fists were clenched and shaken in the direction of Versailles. Alas, I fear that the dangers which my brothers and I are ready to brave, and under which we may die, will not long be forthcoming——"
The Queen had leaned on a window sill and with a view of expressing unconcern, she looked out instead of towards the count. They saw her start, and she exclaimed:
"Andrea, who is this rider?—he seems by his speed to bear news in hot haste."
Andrea went up, but almost instantly retreated, turning pale, and gasped in reproach:
"To call me to see him?"
Charny had looked also, and he said:
"It is Dr. Gilbert."
"So it is," said Marie Antoinette in such a tone that it was not possible to tell whether she had or had not visited on Andrea her personal spite.
Gilbert arrived with the sequel to the ominous scenes which Charny described. The famished women had started for Versailles; they were escorted by ragamuffins willing to be shielded by their petticoats and ripe for any deeds.
"Seven or eight thousand women," repeated the Queen when Gilbert had delivered his message of coming woe. She spoke with scorn.
"But they have been reinforced to double that number on the way. They are hungry and come to ask bread of the King."
"Just what I feared," said Charny.
"What is to be done?"
"Prepare the King to receive them," suggested Gilbert.
"Why expose him?" she expostulated, with that bravery and personal consciousness of her traits and of her husband's weakness which ought not to be exhibited before strangers.
But were Charny and Gilbert strangers—one destined to guard the King, the other the Queen?
The count replied for both, having resumed all his command, for he had sacrificed his pride.
"Madam, Dr. Gilbert is right; the King is still loved, he will make a speech and disarm these furies."
"But who will apprise the King? he is in Meudon Woods and the ways may be blocked."
"Will your Majesty see in me not the courtier but the man of war?" returned the Count, simply. "A soldier is made to be slain."
He did not wait for an answer or to hear the sigh, but rapidly went out and, mounting a guardman's horse, sped away for Meudon.
The sky was menacing and rain began to dot the dust, but Versailles was filling with people who had heard a noise like approaching thunder.
The soldiers took up their muskets slowly and the horseguards got into the saddle with the hesitation of the soldier when his adversaries are beneath his notice.
What could be done against women who had thrown down their weapons on the road and had scarce the power to drag themselves into the town? Half way they had divided eight loaves found at Sevres—thirty-two pounds of bread among seven thousand!
Maillard had accompanied them and induced the last who were armed to lay aside their weapons at the first houses of the place. He suggested that they should sing "Long live Henry Fourth!" to show that they had no ill feelings against royalty. They sang in a feeble whine.
Great was the amazement at the palace, where the harpies and Furies were expected, to see the tottering singers, hunger giving the giddiness of intoxication, pressing their haggard, thinned, livid, blotched and dusty faces against the gilded bars of the gates, and hanging on by their bony hands. From the weird groups came wails and howls while the dull eyes emitted sparks.
Now and again the hands let go the bars to be brandished in threat or held out imploringly.
It was a gloomy sight.
"What do you want?" challenged St. Priest, Minister of Paris.
"Bread," was the cry.
"When you had but one master you were never hungry," he replied testily; "you see how you stand since you have twelve hundred."
He came away, yelled at while he ordered the gates to be kept closed. But they had soon to be opened to a deputation from Parliament which Maillard had obtained. Unfortunately, Valence Charny with the guards had ridden against the mob. Two women of the twelve with the deputation werewounded, to whom Charny who had returned to announce the arrival of the King, and Gilbert rushed to assist.
"Open the doors," called out the King. "A palace is a sanctuary—it must receive all callers."
"An asylum for all but the kings and queens," muttered Marie Antoinette.
Deputy Mounier spoke for the deputation while a flowergirl who had started this woman's war by beating the "fall in" on a drum, undertook to address the King. Unfortunately she was so weak that she fainted after gasping:
"Bread, my lord!"
"Help," cried the King.
Andrea ran up with her smelling bottle and Charny gave the Queen a reproachful glance for not having thought of this act.
Turning pale, she retired to her own rooms.
"Get the coaches ready," she said: "the King and I are going to Rambouillet."
Meanwhile the flowergirl, finding herself in the King's arms on coming to her senses, screamed with bashfulness and tried to kiss his hand.
"I will give you a kiss, my pretty one," he said; "you are well worth it."
"Oh, how good you are! so you will give the order that the grain shall come into Paris to stop the famine?"
"I will sign the order, my child," the King said, "though I am afraid it will do no good."
Sitting at a table he was about to write when a discharge of fire arms followed a solitary shot.
A second charge of cavalry had been made on the women and a man of their supporters had fired a gun to break the arm of Lieutenant Savonnieres of the Guards. He was going to strike a young soldier who was defending with naked hands a woman who had dropped behind him for protection. The bullets from the Lifeguards' carbines had killed one woman; the mob replied and two soldiers were knocked off their horses.
At the same time shouts of "Make room for the Guns!" were heard as the Men of St. Antoine's Ward dragged up threefield-pieces which they levelled at the palace gates. Luckily the rain had damped the priming powder and the match.
Suddenly a whisper came to Gilbert without his knowing who spoke.
"General Lafayette is half an hour's march away and coming."
It was a valuable hint.
Gilbert ran and caught one of the horses of the dismounted guards, and as he dashed off the other followed his stable-companion. Hearing the hoofs, Gilbert thought he was pursued and looked back over his shoulder. He saw the animal caught by the reins and his throat cut; then the people fell on the carcase with knives and cut it up.
While Gilbert was racing to meet Lafayette, who arrived with the National Guards, the King was signing the acceptation of "the Resolution of the Rights of Man," for Mounier, and the older to let grain pass into Paris for Louison Champry the flowergirl.
As the first drum beats were heard of the National Guards entering Versailles, the King felt his arm respectfully touched: it was by Andrea.
"Sire, the Queen supplicates your Majesty not to wait for the Parisians, but take the head of your Lifeguards and the Flanders Regiment which will cut their way through."
"Is this your advice, Count Charny?"
"Yes, Sire, if without stopping, you cross the frontier; otherwise, you should stay."
The King shook his head; he stayed, not from having courage but because he had not strength to go.
"A runaway King," he muttered. "Tell the Queen to depart alone," he said to Andrea who went on her errand.
Five minutes afterwards the Queen came and stood by her husband's side.
"I have come to die with you," she said unaffectedly.
"How handsome she is now;" muttered Charny, but she heard him for she started.
"I believe, in all truth, that it is better to die than live!"
"Sire," said Dr. Gilbert, running in, "fear nothing now—General Lafayette is here."
The King did not like Lafayette, but there his feelings stopped, while the Queen hated him and let her hate be seen. She took three steps back, but the King stayed her with an imperative gesture.
The courtiers formed two groups; Charny and Gilbert stood next the King. Steps were heard up to the door of many persons, but all alone General Lafayette entered. As he did so, some voice exclaimed:
"Here comes Cromwell."
"No, sir," said the marquis smiling, "Cromwell would not have walked unguarded into the presence of Charles First!"
Louis XVI. turned to those imprudent friends who had made an enemy of the man hurrying to his relief.
"Count," he said to Charny, "I remain. Now that General Lafayette is here, there is nothing to fear. Retire the troops on Rambouillet. The National Guards will take the outposts and the Lifeguards the palace. Come, general, he said to Lafayette, "I have to confer with you. Come with us, Doctor." he added to Gilbert.
"We must get away to-day," thought the Queen, "to-morrow it will be too late."
As she was going to her own rooms, she was lighted by a red glare outside the palace; the mob had made a barbecue of the soldiers horses.
THE NIGHT OF HORRORS.
The night went by quietly. At midnight the Queen had tried to go out to the Trianon Palace but the National Guards had refused to let her pass. When she spoke of feeling fear, they answered that she was safer here than any other place.
She felt encouraged indeed on her return home by having her most faithful guards around her. At the door was Valence Charny, leaning on the carbine used by the Lifeguards as well as the dragoons in those days. It was not the habit of theindoor guards to carry swords on duty. "Oh, it is you, Viscount, always faithful?" she said.
"Am I not at my post, where my brother set me, while he is by the King. He is the head of our family, and his place is to die before the head of the kingdom."
"Yes,"said the royal lady with marked bitterness, "you only have the right to die for the Queen."
"It will be a great honor for me if God permits me to accomplish that duty," said the young man bowing.
"What has become of the countess?" she asked, returning after making a step to go, for a suspicion had stung her in the heart.
"She came past, ten minutes ago, and is having her bed made in your Majesty's ante-chamber."
The Queen bit her lip: it was impossible to surprise the Charnys in default in matters of duty: "Thank you, sir," she said with a winning nod and wave of the hand, "for so well guarding the Queen. Thank your brother from me for so well guarding the King."
In the ante-room Andrea was respectfully awaiting her.
"I thank you as I have thanked the viscount, and your husband through him."
Andrea made a courtesy and moved aside for her to go by. The Queen did not ask her to follow, for this cold devotion which lasted unto death put her ill at ease.
Gilbert had gone away with General Lafayette who had been twelve hours on horseback and was ready to drop. At the gates they saw Billet, who had come with the National Guards, ready to follow Gilbert like a dog, to the end of the world.
All was quiet, we repeat, up to three in the morning.
Then arrived a second army from town. The other was composed of women and came for bread; this one came for vengeance and was composed of friends. The leaders were Marat, a hideous, long-legged hunchbacked dwarf named Verriere, who came to the surface from the mud when society was stirred, and the Duke of Aiguillon, disguised as a fishfog.
They came like camp-followers after a battle to fire and pillage.
There had been plenty of killing to do at the Bastile but no plunder, and they reckoned to make up for that at Versailles.
At half-past five in the morning, five or six hundred of this riff-raff forced or scaled the great gate: a sentinel had fired an alarm shot, which slew one of the assailants.
Divided as by a giant swordstroke, the plunderers broke into two gangs, one aiming at the royal plate; the other at the crown jewels. One stormed the Queen's apartments, the other made for the chapel where the King's were.
The sea rose like a high tide.
The guards of the King at that hour were the regular sentry watching at the door, and an officer who rushed out of the ante-chamber with a halberd snatched from the hands of the frightened Swiss porter.
"Who goes there?" challenged the sentinel three times, while leveling his carbine.
The officer knew what excitement would result from firearms being shot off there in the private apartments, so he beat up the gun with his halberd and barred the stairs with it clear across as he faced the intruders.
"What do you want?" he challenged them.
"Oh, dear, nothing of course," jeered several voices. "We are old friends of her Majesty, so let us pass."
"You are pretty friends to bring war here!"
There was no reply but an ominous laugh. A man seized the ax-headed spear and tried to wrest it from the officer and as he would not let go, he bit his hand. The officer tore the weapon away, shortened it so as to use it as an ax and split the cannibal's skull with one chop. But the violence of the blow broke the staff in two, made for ornament rather than use as it was.
The officer remained armed with two weapons in one, the ax and the spear. While he used both effectively, the sentinel opened the ante-chamber door and called for help. Half-a-dozen guardsmen ran out.
"To the rescue of Lord Charny, gentlemen," shouted the sentry.
Swords flashed in the light of a lamp in the lobby, and the assailants were given some work to do on either side of Charny. Cries of pain were heard and the blood spirted, while theruffians rolled down the marble steps which they streaked with gore.
The ante-room door opened and the sentry called out:
"By order of the King, gentlemen, return."
The guards profited by the momentary confusion of these foes to execute the retreat, with Charny the last to enter the haven. The door was hardly closed behind him and the two large bolts shot into the sockets before a hundred blows sounded on it. But they piled up the furniture against it so that it would hold out for ten minutes.
During that time reinforcements might arrive.
Meanwhile the second gang had darted towards the Queen's apartments; but the stairs were narrow and only two can go up abreast. It was in the corridor that Valence Charny watched.
He fired when his challenge was not replied to.
The door opened and Andrea appeared, having heard the shot.
"Save her Majesty," cried the young man, "they are after her life. I am alone against fifty, but never mind, I shall hold the door as long as I can. Make haste!"
The assailants stole upon him and he banged the door to, shouting:
"Fasten the bolts! I shall live long enough to give the Queen time to flee."
Turning around he ran two wretches through with his bayonet.
The Queen had heard all this, and Andrea found her afoot when she entered her bedroom. Two of her ladies hastily dressed her, and urged her into the private way, while Andrea, always calm and indifferent to danger for herself, bolted each door by which they passed.
At the junction of the communication of the two royal apartments, a man was waiting. It was Charny, covered with blood.
"The King?" cried Marie Antoinette, on seeing this. "You promised to save him."
"He is saved," replied the count.
Looking through the doorways and not seeing among the members of the Royal Family and others, his wife, he was going to ask about her when a glance from the Queen stopped him. He had no need to speak for her gaze plunging into his heart had read his wish.
"Rest easy—she is coming," she said.
She ran to the little prince whom she took in her arms.
Closing the last door, Andrea came into the Bulls-eye Hall like the rest. She and her husband exchanged no word, their smiles were ample. Strange! those long parted hearts began to yearn for one another since danger surrounded them.
"The King is looking for you, madam," replied Charny to the Queen's inquiries: "he was going to your rooms by one corridor while you came to his by another."
They heard the assassins yelling: "Down with the Austrians! Death to Messalina! no more of Lady Veto! let us throttle her—let her hang!"
A couple of pistol-shots were heard at the same time and two holes were bored in the door. One bullet whizzed close to the young prince's head and buried itself in the hangings.
"Oh, heavens, we shall all die," screamed the Queen falling on her knees.
At a sign from Charny, the Lifeguardsmen formed a shelter for her and the royal children.
The King now joined them, pale of face and his eyes full of tears: he was calling for the Queen as she had for him. On seeing her, he ran into her arms.
"Saved," exclaimed she.
"By the count," replied the monarch, indicating Charny: "And has he saved you, too?"
"It was his brother," said she.
"My lord, we owe more to your family than we can ever repay," observed the sovereign.
The Queen blushed as she met Andrea's glance and turned her head aside. The blows on the door resounded.
"Gentlemen, we must hold the post for an hour," said the count. "It will take that time to kill us seven if we hold out stoutly. It is not likely that help will not have come for their Majesties."
With these words he caught hold of an immense sideboard and, his example being followed, a head of shattered furniture formed a wall in which the guards cut loopholes to shoot through. The Queen prayed over her children, stifled their wailing and tears.
The King retired into a closet adjoining, to burn papers which ought not to fall into strange hands. The door was chopped at till pieces fell off every instant, and through the gaps blood pikes were thrust and jagged bayonets which tried to dart death. At the same time, bullets found holes in the breastwork and furrowed the plaster on the gilded ceiling.
At length a bench on top of the sideboard fell down; the buffet lost one panel and bloody arms were plunged in through the orifice to make the crevice larger. The guards had burnt the last cartridge, though not vainly, for through the channel dead bodies were seen strewing the lobby. At the shrieks of the ladies who supposed death was to leap in at the breach, the King returned.
"Sire," said Charny, "shut yourself up with the Queen in the most remote room. Fasten all the doors after you. At each door let two of us stand. I ask to be the last and guard the last. I warrant we shall keep them off for two hours: they take forty minutes full to get through this."
The King hesitated; it seemed so shameful to step from room to room, closing doors on brave men left to die for him. He would not have drawn back but for the Queen. If she had not had her children with her she would have stayed beside him.
But, alas! king or subject, all have a flaw in the iron heart, through which pierces terror when boldness elopes.
The King was about to give the order to retreat when the arms were suddenly retracted, the spears and bayonets disappeared and the shouts and thwarts were silenced. In the instant of stillness all waited with parted lips, listening ears and held breath.
The tramp of regular troops was heard.
"The National Guard!" shouted Charny.
"My Lord Charny!" bellowed a hearty voice on the other side of the door.
"Farmer Billet," cried Charny as a well-known face showed itself. "Is it you, my friend?"
"Yes; my lord. Where is the King, and the Queen?"
"Here, safe and sound."
"God be thanked! This way, Dr. Gilbert!"
Two woman's hearts thrilled variously at this name: Andrea's and the Queen's. Charny, turning instinctively, saw both turn pale; he sighed as he shook his head.
"Open the doors, gentlemen," cried the King. "Here are friends."
The Lifeguardsmen hurried to tear down the remains of the barrier. During their work the voice of Marquis Lafayette was heard:
"Gentlemen of the National Guard, I pledged my word last night to the King that nothing appertaining to his Majesty should incur harm. If you allow his Lifeguards to be hurt, you break my word of honor, and I shall no longer be worthy of being your chief."
When the obstacles were removed, the two first persons seen were General Lafayette and Gilbert: a little to their left was Billet, delighted at having had a part in the King's deliverance. It was he who had gone and roused up the general for this deed.
"Long live the King—long live the Queen!" roared Billet. "Ah, if you had stayed in Paris this would not have happened."
"General, what do you advise?" asked the King of the marquis.
"I think you should show yourself at the window."
Gilbert nodded, and Louis walked straight to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony.
"Long live the King!" was the universal shout. "Come to Paris:" added others. While a few, but the most dreadful ones: "Let us have the Queen out here!"
All shivered; the King lost color as did Gilbert and Charny.
She looked at Lafayette, who said:
"Fear nothing!"
"All alone?" she questioned.
With the charming manners he preserved to old age, Marquis Lafayette gently detached the clinging children from their mother and urged them out upon the balcony. He offered his hand to Marie Antoinette, adding:
"If your Majesty will rely on me, all will go well."
He led her out on the balcony above the Marble Courtyard, a sea of enflamed human heads. The yell that burst forth at sight of the Queen was immense but none could say whether it was threat or joy. Lafayette bent and kissed her hand. This time, applause rent the air, for the meanest there did homage to beauty and womanhood.
"Strange people:" muttered the Austrian: "but what about my Lifeguards—can you do nothing for them?"
"Let me have one of them."
Charny drew back, for he had offered himself as the scapecat for the officers' revelry of the First October and he did not want amnesty. Andrea took his hand and also stood back. Again those two had understood each other; and the Queen flashed her eye. With panting bosom she gasped in a broken voice:
"Another."
A guardsman obeyed who had not his captain's reasons. Lafayette led him out on the balcony, put his own tricolored cockade in his hat and shook his hand.
"Bravo, Lafayette! the Lifeguards are not a bad sort."
A few voices remonstrated, but they were drowned by the cheers.
"All is over and the fine weather sets in," said the general. "For the calm not to be broken again, one final sacrifice is necessary. Come to Paris."
"General, you may announce that I shall depart for the capital in an hour, with the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family."
This order seemed to remind Charny of something he had forgotten and he sprang away with alacrity. The Queen followed him, both guided by tracks of blood. The Queen shut her eyes and groping for support met the hand of Charny, which led her on. Suddenly she felt him shudder.
"A dead man," she shrieked, opening her eyes.
"Will your Majesty excuse me taking away my arm? I find what I sought: the remains of my brother Valence."
Here lay the unfortunate young man whom the head of the Charnys had ordered to let himself be slain for the Queen's sake. He had punctiliously obeyed.
BILLET'S SORROW.
At the time when the Queen and her consort were leaving Versailles, never more to return under its roof, the following scene was taking place in one of its inner yards, damp with the rain which a bitter fall gale was beginning to dry up.
Over a dead body a man clad in black was bending: a man in the Royal Lifeguards uniform knelt on the other side. Three paces off stood a third person, with fixed eyes and closed hands.
The body was of a young man not more than twenty-three, all of whose blood seemed to have poured out through ghastly wounds in the head and chest. His furrowed and livid white breast appeared yet to heave with the disdainful breath of hopeless defense. The head thrown back and the mouth open in pain and anger, recalled the fine figure of speech of the Ancient Romans:
And with a long-drawn wail the spirit fled to the abode of shades.
The man in black was Gilbert: the Lifeguards officer, Count Charny; the bystander, Billet.
The corpse was Viscount Valence Charny's.
Gilbert regarded it with that fixed gaze which suspends the fleeing soul in the dying and seems in the dead, able to recall the fled one.
"Cold and rigid; he is dead, and really dead," he said at last.
Charny uttered a hoarse groan and pressing the corpse in his arms, emitted so heart-rending a sob that the physicianshuddered and Billet went off a little to hide his head in a corner of the quadrangle. Suddenly the mourner raised the body, set it against the wall in a sitting posture and slowly came away, but looking to see if it would not revive and follow him.
Gilbert remained on one knee, resting his chin on his hand thoughtfully, appalled and motionless.
Then Billet quitted the nook and came to him, saying, as he no longer heard the wails of the count which had made his heart ache:
"Alas, Dr. Gilbert, this is really civil war, and what you foretold is coming to pass. Only, the trouble comes sooner than I believed and perhaps sooner then you calculated. I have seen villains slaughter wicked men: I have trembled in all my limbs and felt a horror for such monsters. But yet the men who were killed so far were worthless. Now, as you predicted, they are killing honest folk. They have killed Viscount Charny; I do not shudder but I grieve; I do not feel so much horror for the murderers as fear for myself. The young gentleman has been fouly done to death, for he was only a soldier and fought; he ought not to have been butchered."
He uttered a sigh from his vitals.
"To think that I knew him when a child," he continued: "I can see him now, riding along on his little grey pony, carrying bread round to the poor on behalf of his mother. He was a fine pink and white-faced child, with big blue eyes, who was always laughing.
"Well, it is queer! since I have seen him laying there, bleeding and disfigured, it is no longer as a corpse that I think of him, but as the pretty boy with the basket on his left arm and a purse in his right hand. Really, Dr. Gilbert, I believe that I have had enough of this kind of thing, and I do not care to see any more of it, for as all you foretold is a-coming true, I shall be seeing you die, and then——"
"Be calm, Billet," said the physician, shaking his head gently, "my hour has not struck."
"But mayhap mine has. Down yonder the harvest is rotting; the land is laying unplowed; and my family languisheswhom I love, and ten times more fondly since I have seen this corpse for which his family will weep."
"What are you driving at, Billet? Do you suppose that I am going to pity your fate?"
"Oh, no," answered the farmer simply; "but as I must cry out when I am in pain, and as crying out leads to nothing, I want to relieve myself in my own way. In short, I want to go home on my farm, Master Gilbert."
"What, again?"
"Look ye, a voice down there is calling me home."
"That voice is prompting you to desertion, Billet."
"I am no soldier to desert, sir."
"What you want to do is worse than desertion in a soldier."
"I should like that explained, doctor."
"You come to Paris to overthrow an old house and you turn away before the building is down."
"For fear it will tumble on my friends, yes, doctor."
"Rather, to save yourself."
"Why, there is no law against taking care of Number One," said Billet.
"A pretty calculation! as if the stones might not bound in falling and rolling, and kill the runaway at a distance."
"Oh, you know I am not to be scared."
"Then you will remain, for I have need of you here, my dear Billet."
"My folks also have need of me at home."
"Billet, Billet, I thought you had agreed with me that a man has no home when he loves his country."
"I should like to know if you would talk like that if your son Sebastian lay there in that young gentleman's stead?"
He pointed to the corpse.
"Billet, a day will come when my son will see me laid out like that," was the stoical response.
"So much the worse for you, doctor, if he is as cold as you over it."
"I hope he will bear it better than me and be all the firmer from having had my example."
"Then you want to inure the youth to seeing blood flow. At his tender age, to be accustomed to fires, murders, gibbets, riots, night attacks; to see queens insulted and kings badgered; and when he is cool like you and steel like a sword-blade, do you expect he will love and respect you?"
"No; I do not want him to see any such sights, which is why I have sent him down to Villers Cotterets along with Ange Pitou though I almost regret it at present."
"You say you are sorry for it to-day, why to-day?"
"Because he would have seen the fable of the Lion and the Mouse put in action, which would be reality to him henceforth."
"What do you mean, Dr. Gilbert?"
"I say that he would have seen a brave and honest farmer come to town, one who can neither read nor write; who never dreamed that his life could have any influence, good or bad over the highest destinies: he would have seen that this man, who was about to quit Paris, as he wishes once more to do—contribute efficaciously towards saving the King, the Queen and the two royal children."
"How is this, Dr. Gilbert?" asked Billet, staring.
"How sublimely innocent you are! I will tell you. Did you not awake at the first noise in the night, guess that the tumult was a tempest about to break on the royal residence and run to arouse General Lafayette, for the general was sleeping."
"That was natural enough; he had been riding about for twelve hours; he had not been abed for four-and-twenty."
"You led him to the palace," continued Gilbert; "you led him into the thick of the scoundrels, crying: "Back, villains, the revenger is upon ye!" "
"That's right enough; I did that."
"Well, Billet, my friend, you see that you have great compensation; though you could not prevent this young gentleman from being butchered, you did perhaps stay the great crime of the slaughter of the royal family. Ingrate, would you leave your country's service just when such a mighty reward was yours?"
"But who would know anything about it when I never suspected it myself?"
"You and I, Billet; is not that enough?"
The farmer meditated for a while before he said as he held out his hand to the physician:
"I guess you are right, doctor. But, you know, man is a weak, selfish, unsteady creature; you are the only one who is just the other style. What made you so?"
"Misfortune," replied the other, with a smile filled with more grief than a sob.
"Lord, how singular—I thought misfortune soured a man."
"Weak men, yes."
"But if I were to meet misfortune and it was to make me wicked?"
"You may meet misfortune but you will never become wicked. I answer for that."
"Then," sighed Billet, "I shall stay and see the game out. But I shall show the white feather more than once, like this."
"But I shall be at hand to uphold you."
"So be it," said the farmer. Throwing a lazy look on Viscount Charny's body, which servants came to remove, he said: "What a vastly pretty boy he was, with his laughing eye, when he rode along on his little grey with the basket and the purse—poor little master Charny!"
Poor Billet! he had not the mesmerist's prophetic soul, and he could not dream what events we have to trace, now that the King and Queen have started to Paris to follow the road marked by the Revolution's redhot plowshare; now that Charny begins to see what a winsome and noble wife he has; now that our minor characters are standing out; now that poor Ange Pitou, quitting Paris with regret is going to play a grand part in the drama of his own country—our romance is but well on the way. We shall meet our dear old friends and alas! we shall fight our stubborn old enemies in the pages of the continuation to this book, under the title of "The Hero of the People."
THE END.