Volume Two—Chapter Five.

Volume Two—Chapter Five.A Procession.It was too plain to all now that everything must be yielded to the people, if lives were to be saved. As soon as it was light, Lafayette led into a balcony the commander of the Flanders regiment,—the body-guard,—with a huge tricolor in his hat, instead of the royal white cockade. All the soldiers of the regiment immediately mounted tricolor cockades, and were cheered by the mob. The king appeared on the balcony, with Lafayette, and they cheered him too; but some voices cried that he must go to Paris.The mob then demanded to see the queen. She asked for her children; and they were brought to her, probably not very willing to face the noisy multitude. She took Louis in her arms, and led his sister by the hand, and stepped out on the balcony, with Lafayette by her side. There was a shout, “No children!” It does not seem clear why the people would not have the children too; but the queen believed that it was intended that some one should shoot her as she stood, and that the children were not to be endangered. She gently pushed them back, and bade them go in, and then stepped forward in the sight of the people, with her hands and eyes raised to heaven. Lafayette took her hand, and, kneeling reverently, kissed it. This act turned the tide of the people’s feelings, and they cheered the queen. It was finely done of Lafayette, both for presence of mind and noble feeling.Here was the difference between the enraged people and their enlightened leaders. Lafayette was a friend of the people, and an enemy to tyranny: but he had not been ground down by poverty, reared in hunger and brutal ignorance, and taught to hate proud and selfish oppressors with a cruel hatred. Such was the difference between him and this wretched mob, whom we feel more disposed to pity than to blame, so great was their ignorance, and so terrible had been the sufferings of their lives. Lafayette’s eyes were opened by knowledge and reflection, while theirs were closed by passion and prejudice. They believed that all royal rulers were wicked, and the queen the most wicked of all; and that if she were but out of the way, with a few more, all would go right,—bread would be cheap, the nobility less extravagant and oppressive, and the king willing to govern by men of the people’s choice. Lafayette saw that all this was very foolish. He saw that nothing could be worse than the state of France,—the tyranny of the nobility,—the extravagance and frivolity of the court,—and the wretchedness of the people. He was for amending all this; but he knew that these sins and woes were the growth of many centuries, and that no one person, or dozen of persons, was to be blamed as the cause. He probably saw that the queen was as ignorant in one way as the mob in another; and was therefore to be pitied. She had never been taught what millions of people were suffering, and did not know how to frame her conduct so as to spare their irritated and wounded feelings: and therefore she had filled up her youth with shows and pleasures, and from year to year given to her dependents the means of enriching themselves at the expense of the poor, without being in the least aware of the mischief she was doing. It was in the knowledge of all this, in deep sorrow and compassion for both parties in this great quarrel, and with an earnest desire to bring them to bear with each other, that Lafayette kissed the queen’s hand in the balcony. His heart must have beat with hope and gladness when he heard the people immediately shout, “Long live the queen!”Again the cry was, “The king to Paris!” and still the king was as unwilling as ever to go. He wished to consult the Assembly about it, and sent to ask them to come, and hold their sitting in the palace. While they were deliberating whether to do so, the mob became so peremptory, so noisy, that the king dared no longer hesitate. He did the same thing now that no experience could teach him to avoid, in great affairs or small: he refused as long as possible what the people had set their hearts upon,—then hesitated, and at last had to yield, when it was no longer possible to show any good grace in the action. From his failures a lesson might be taken by all rulers of a nation which has learned to have a will of its own, and to speak it:—a lesson to grant with readiness and a good grace what must be, or ought to be yielded, and to refuse with firmness what ought not to be granted. Louis the Sixteenth never could even get so far as to settle in his own mind what ought, and what ought not to be granted; and unhappily there was no one about him well-qualified to advise. The queen was firm and decided; but she was so deficient in knowledge that she was always as likely to guide him wrong as right. Now, however, there was no longer room for doubt. The king said from the balcony, “My children, you wish that I should follow you to Paris. I consent, on condition that you do not separate me from my wife and children.” He also stipulated that his guards should be well treated; to which the multitude consented.It was, however, far from their intention that the king shouldfollowthem to Paris. They did not mean to lose sight of him, for fear he should slip away. They caused General Lafayette to fix the hour at which the king would go. One o’clock was fixed.Till one, the royal grooms were preparing the carriages to convey the royal family and suite,—a long train of coaches. The servants in the palace were packing up what they could for so hurried a removal. The royal children did no lessons that day, I should think; for Madame de Tourzel, who was to go with them, must have been in great terror for the whole party. Lafayette was establishing what order he could, riding about, pale and anxious, to arrange what was called the Parisian army. For two nights (and what nights!) he had not closed his eyes. The people meantime searched out some granaries, and loaded carts with the corn, to take with them to Paris.A more extraordinary procession was perhaps never seen. Royal carriages, and waggons full of corn,—the king’s guards and the ragamuffin crowd; round the king’s carriage a mob of dirty, fierce fish-women and market-women, eating as they walked, and sometimes screaming out close at the coach-door, “We shall not want bread any more. We have got the baker, and the baker’s wife, and the little baker’s boy:”—such was the procession. There was another thing in it which the king and queen saw, but which we must hope the children did not,—the heads of two body-guards who had been killed early in the morning, in the quarrel which led to the attack upon the queen.The queen sat in her coach, seen by the vast multitude, for five long hours,—calm, dignified, and silent. From one till two the royal carriage had to stand, while the great procession was preparing to move; and it did not enter Paris till dusk,—till six o’clock. It was still raining,—a dull, drizzling rain. Louis could not have liked to hear himself talked about as he was, by the loud dirty women that crowded round the coach; nor to hear them speak to his mother. Some pointed to the corn-waggons, and told her they had got what they wanted, in spite of her. Some said, “Come now, don’t you be a traitor any more, and we will all love you.” There were two hundred thousand people in this procession.When they reached Paris, the royal family did not go straight home to the Tuileries. There was something to be done first. They had to go to the great city hall, to meet the authorities of Paris. The mayor received them, and welcomed them to the city; and the king replied that he always came with pleasure and confidence among his good people of Paris. In repeating what the king had declared to those assembled, the mayor forgot the word “confidence.” The queen said aloud, “Sayconfidence;—with pleasure and confidence.”Then there were many speeches made, during which poor little Louis, tired as he was, had to wait. Called up before five in the morning, and having sat so many hours in the carriage, with guns and pistols incessantly popping off, and yells and shouts from such a concourse of people, he might well be tired: but before they could go home, the king had to show himself in the balcony of the city hall, by torch-light, with a great tricolor cockade in his hat. It was just eleven o’clock before they got to their palace of the Tuileries.There everything was comfortless,—for there had been no notice of their coming. The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court, who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion. Probably Louis did not mind this,—glad enough to get to bed at all after such a long and dreary day. This was the 6th of October.

It was too plain to all now that everything must be yielded to the people, if lives were to be saved. As soon as it was light, Lafayette led into a balcony the commander of the Flanders regiment,—the body-guard,—with a huge tricolor in his hat, instead of the royal white cockade. All the soldiers of the regiment immediately mounted tricolor cockades, and were cheered by the mob. The king appeared on the balcony, with Lafayette, and they cheered him too; but some voices cried that he must go to Paris.

The mob then demanded to see the queen. She asked for her children; and they were brought to her, probably not very willing to face the noisy multitude. She took Louis in her arms, and led his sister by the hand, and stepped out on the balcony, with Lafayette by her side. There was a shout, “No children!” It does not seem clear why the people would not have the children too; but the queen believed that it was intended that some one should shoot her as she stood, and that the children were not to be endangered. She gently pushed them back, and bade them go in, and then stepped forward in the sight of the people, with her hands and eyes raised to heaven. Lafayette took her hand, and, kneeling reverently, kissed it. This act turned the tide of the people’s feelings, and they cheered the queen. It was finely done of Lafayette, both for presence of mind and noble feeling.

Here was the difference between the enraged people and their enlightened leaders. Lafayette was a friend of the people, and an enemy to tyranny: but he had not been ground down by poverty, reared in hunger and brutal ignorance, and taught to hate proud and selfish oppressors with a cruel hatred. Such was the difference between him and this wretched mob, whom we feel more disposed to pity than to blame, so great was their ignorance, and so terrible had been the sufferings of their lives. Lafayette’s eyes were opened by knowledge and reflection, while theirs were closed by passion and prejudice. They believed that all royal rulers were wicked, and the queen the most wicked of all; and that if she were but out of the way, with a few more, all would go right,—bread would be cheap, the nobility less extravagant and oppressive, and the king willing to govern by men of the people’s choice. Lafayette saw that all this was very foolish. He saw that nothing could be worse than the state of France,—the tyranny of the nobility,—the extravagance and frivolity of the court,—and the wretchedness of the people. He was for amending all this; but he knew that these sins and woes were the growth of many centuries, and that no one person, or dozen of persons, was to be blamed as the cause. He probably saw that the queen was as ignorant in one way as the mob in another; and was therefore to be pitied. She had never been taught what millions of people were suffering, and did not know how to frame her conduct so as to spare their irritated and wounded feelings: and therefore she had filled up her youth with shows and pleasures, and from year to year given to her dependents the means of enriching themselves at the expense of the poor, without being in the least aware of the mischief she was doing. It was in the knowledge of all this, in deep sorrow and compassion for both parties in this great quarrel, and with an earnest desire to bring them to bear with each other, that Lafayette kissed the queen’s hand in the balcony. His heart must have beat with hope and gladness when he heard the people immediately shout, “Long live the queen!”

Again the cry was, “The king to Paris!” and still the king was as unwilling as ever to go. He wished to consult the Assembly about it, and sent to ask them to come, and hold their sitting in the palace. While they were deliberating whether to do so, the mob became so peremptory, so noisy, that the king dared no longer hesitate. He did the same thing now that no experience could teach him to avoid, in great affairs or small: he refused as long as possible what the people had set their hearts upon,—then hesitated, and at last had to yield, when it was no longer possible to show any good grace in the action. From his failures a lesson might be taken by all rulers of a nation which has learned to have a will of its own, and to speak it:—a lesson to grant with readiness and a good grace what must be, or ought to be yielded, and to refuse with firmness what ought not to be granted. Louis the Sixteenth never could even get so far as to settle in his own mind what ought, and what ought not to be granted; and unhappily there was no one about him well-qualified to advise. The queen was firm and decided; but she was so deficient in knowledge that she was always as likely to guide him wrong as right. Now, however, there was no longer room for doubt. The king said from the balcony, “My children, you wish that I should follow you to Paris. I consent, on condition that you do not separate me from my wife and children.” He also stipulated that his guards should be well treated; to which the multitude consented.

It was, however, far from their intention that the king shouldfollowthem to Paris. They did not mean to lose sight of him, for fear he should slip away. They caused General Lafayette to fix the hour at which the king would go. One o’clock was fixed.

Till one, the royal grooms were preparing the carriages to convey the royal family and suite,—a long train of coaches. The servants in the palace were packing up what they could for so hurried a removal. The royal children did no lessons that day, I should think; for Madame de Tourzel, who was to go with them, must have been in great terror for the whole party. Lafayette was establishing what order he could, riding about, pale and anxious, to arrange what was called the Parisian army. For two nights (and what nights!) he had not closed his eyes. The people meantime searched out some granaries, and loaded carts with the corn, to take with them to Paris.

A more extraordinary procession was perhaps never seen. Royal carriages, and waggons full of corn,—the king’s guards and the ragamuffin crowd; round the king’s carriage a mob of dirty, fierce fish-women and market-women, eating as they walked, and sometimes screaming out close at the coach-door, “We shall not want bread any more. We have got the baker, and the baker’s wife, and the little baker’s boy:”—such was the procession. There was another thing in it which the king and queen saw, but which we must hope the children did not,—the heads of two body-guards who had been killed early in the morning, in the quarrel which led to the attack upon the queen.

The queen sat in her coach, seen by the vast multitude, for five long hours,—calm, dignified, and silent. From one till two the royal carriage had to stand, while the great procession was preparing to move; and it did not enter Paris till dusk,—till six o’clock. It was still raining,—a dull, drizzling rain. Louis could not have liked to hear himself talked about as he was, by the loud dirty women that crowded round the coach; nor to hear them speak to his mother. Some pointed to the corn-waggons, and told her they had got what they wanted, in spite of her. Some said, “Come now, don’t you be a traitor any more, and we will all love you.” There were two hundred thousand people in this procession.

When they reached Paris, the royal family did not go straight home to the Tuileries. There was something to be done first. They had to go to the great city hall, to meet the authorities of Paris. The mayor received them, and welcomed them to the city; and the king replied that he always came with pleasure and confidence among his good people of Paris. In repeating what the king had declared to those assembled, the mayor forgot the word “confidence.” The queen said aloud, “Sayconfidence;—with pleasure and confidence.”

Then there were many speeches made, during which poor little Louis, tired as he was, had to wait. Called up before five in the morning, and having sat so many hours in the carriage, with guns and pistols incessantly popping off, and yells and shouts from such a concourse of people, he might well be tired: but before they could go home, the king had to show himself in the balcony of the city hall, by torch-light, with a great tricolor cockade in his hat. It was just eleven o’clock before they got to their palace of the Tuileries.

There everything was comfortless,—for there had been no notice of their coming. The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court, who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion. Probably Louis did not mind this,—glad enough to get to bed at all after such a long and dreary day. This was the 6th of October.

Volume Two—Chapter Six.The Dauphin at Paris.In the morning of the 7th, some magistrates came, bringing upholsterers with them, and asked the king how he would be pleased to be lodged. They were ready to dispose and furnish the palace as he liked. He answered gruffly that others might lodge as they pleased, he had nothing to say to it. He was apt to be sulky occasionally, in his most prosperous days; and it was natural that he should be more so now. Sometimes, when the queen made anxious inquiries about the state of affairs, he answered, “Madam, your affair is with the children.” He knew that he was, in fact, a prisoner in his own capital; and that it must at any rate be long before he could leave it. He was losing the fine hunting season; and there was no saying when he might hunt again. This grieved him very much. He sent for his locksmith, and did a little filing, now and then; but he was losing his pleasure in everything.Some of the women who had walked by the royal carriage yesterday came this morning, and stationed themselves before the queen’s windows, requesting to see her. One of them told her that she must send away all bad advisers, and love the people. The queen replied that she had loved the people when she lived at Versailles, and that she should go on to love them now. They repeated to her some reports that they had heard against her,—that she had wished in the summer that Paris should be fired upon; and that she would yesterday have fled to the frontiers, if she had not been prevented. She replied that they had heard these things, and believed them; and that while some people told and others believed what was not true, the nation and the king would never be happy. One woman then spoke a few words of German: but the queen interrupted her, saying that she was now so completely a French woman, that she had forgotten her German. This delighted the women much; for some of the jealousy of the queen which existed was on account of her being a foreigner. They clapped their hands; and asked for the ribbons and flowers out of her hat. She took them off with her own hands, and gave them to the women. They divided them to keep; and they remained half an hour shouting, “Long live Marie Antoinette! Long live our good queen!”It was found, during the whole long period of her residence where she now was, that everybody who talked with the queen liked her;—her bitterest enemies were heard to shout as these women did, when once they had heard her speak; and soldiers, who had spoken insultingly of her before they knew her, were ready to lay down their lives for her when they became her guards. The reason of this was, not merely that she was beautiful, and that she spoke in a winning manner, when she knew how much depended upon her graciousness;—it was chiefly because the ignorant and angry people had fancied her a sort of monster, determined upon her own indulgence at all cost, and even seeking their destruction, and delighting in their miseries. When, instead of this monster, they found a dignified woman, with sorrow in her beautiful face, and gentleness in her voice, they forgot for the time the faults she really had, and the blameable things she had really done. When again reminded of these, in her absence, the old hatred revived with new force; they were vexed that she had won upon them, and ended by being as cruel as we shall see they were.She found, this morning, how frightened her little boy had been, the day before. There was some noise in the court-yard of the palace. Louis came running, and threw himself trembling into her arms, crying, “O, mamma, is to-day going to be yesterday again?” When they were settled, and everything was done to make him as happy as a child should be, he did not forget what he had seen and heard. He not only walked with his mother, or with Madame de Tourzel, in the garden of the Tuileries, but he had a little garden of his own, railed in, and a little tool-house for his spade and rake. There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes, feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread. Still he did not forget what he had seen and heard. One day, his father saw the boy looking at him very gravely and earnestly. The king asked him what he was thinking about. Louis said he wanted to ask a very serious question, if he might; and the king gave him leave.“I want to know,” said Louis, “why all the people who used to love you so much are now so angry with you. I want to know what you have done to put them in such a passion.”The king took him upon his knee, and said,—“My dear, I wished to make the people happier than they were before. I wanted money to pay the expenses of our great wars. I asked it of the parliament, as the kings of France have always done before. The magistrates who composed the parliament were unwilling, and said that the people alone had a right to consent that this money should be given. I called together at Versailles the principal people of every town, distinguished by their rank, their fortune, or their talents. These were called the States-General. When they were assembled, they required of me things which I could not do, either for my own sake or yours; as you are to be king after me. Wicked persons have appeared, causing the people to rebel; and the shocking things that have happened lately are their doing. We must blame them and not the people.”So spoke Louis the Sixteenth to his young son: and from these words (among other evidence) we learn how little he was aware of the true causes and nature of the great Revolution which was taking place. It appears that he really thought this revolution was owing to the acts of the last few months, and not to the long course of grinding oppression which had begun hundreds of years before he was born. He believed that the violence he witnessed was owing to the malice of a few “wicked persons,” and not to the exasperation of a nation,—the fury of many millions of sufferers against a few hundreds of the rich and powerful. This was not the first time of the king’s showing how little he understood of what was taking place and what ought to be done. When it was absolutely necessary to the peace of the kingdom to have a minister who would relieve the people of the heaviest taxes, the king removed such a minister, and thought he was doing what he could to make up for this, by retrenching some expenses in the palace. For instance, it had always been the custom for the two first bed-chamber women of the queen to have for their own all the wax-lights placed daily in the whole suite of royal apartments, whether lighted or not. These they sold for many hundred pounds a year. When the king began to retrench, he took from these women the wax-light privilege; and the candles which were not lighted one evening served for the next. The ladies were not pleased at being thus deprived of a large part of their income; but this, with the few other retrenchments made by the royal family, was right. All these retrenchments were nothing, however, in comparison with what was wanted. The peasantry still had to pay the grievous land-tax, even when they were reduced to eat boiled nettles and grass. The poor still had to buy the quantity of dear salt ordered by law, even when they had no meat to eat it with. The labouring man and his sons, weakened by hunger and spent with toil, still had to turn out and work upon the roads, without wages, while wife and young children were growing savage with want in their ruined hut. It was all very well for the king and queen to burn fewer wax-lights; but far happier would it have been could the monarch have seen and known that the thing wanted was to relieve the poor from these heavy oppressions; and that his duty was to uphold a minister who would do it, even if every rich and noble person quitted his court, and turned against him. This, however, was not to be expected; for the king and queen lived amongst, and were acquainted with, not the poor, but the noble and the rich, and heard only what they had to say.It is not known whether little Louis was ever told what the poor suffer. It is probable that he heard something of it; for his elder brother and sister certainly had, upon one occasion. It was the queen’s custom to give her children a stock of new playthings on New Year’s Day. One very hard winter, she and the king heard of the sufferings of the poor in Paris from cold; and the king ordered a large quantity of wood to be purchased with his money, and given away. The queen commanded the toy-man to bring the new toys, as usual, on New Year’s eve, and spread them out in one of her apartments. She then led the children in, showed them the playthings, and said these were what she meant to have given them; but that she had heard that so many poor families were perishing with cold, that she hoped they would be willing to do without new toys, and let the money go for fuel for the poor. The children agreed, and the toy-man was sent away, with a present of money, to console him for the disappointment of having sold nothing. It is probable that Louis also, when old enough to understand, was told of the sufferings of the poor: but it is difficult to give an idea of what want really is to children who have half-a-dozen ladies and footmen always at their orders, and who are surrounded with luxuries which seem to them to come as naturally as the light of day, and to belong to them as completely as their own limbs and senses. We have all heard of the little French princess who, when told by her governess how many of the poor were dying of starvation, in a hard season, said, she thought that was very foolish; and that, rather than starve, she would eat bread and cheese. She had no idea that multitudes never tasted anything better than the coarsest black dry bread; and that it was for want of this that many were perishing. How should she know? She had never seen the inside of a poor man’s hut, or tasted any but the most delicate food.Louis wished to know what he ought to do, now that the people were so angry with his father. The queen told him that he must behave civilly and kindly to the magistrates, when they came; to the officers of the people’s army,—the National Guard,—and to everybody that belonged to Paris. Louis took great pains to do this: and when he had an opportunity of speaking kindly to the mayor, or any other visitor, he used to run up to his mother, and whisper in her ear, “Was that right?”—He once said a thing which pleased the mayor of Paris very much. The mayor showed him the shield of Scipio, which was in the royal library, and asked him which he liked best, Scipio or Hannibal. The boy answered that he liked best him who had defended his own country.At this time he read, not only of Scipio and Hannibal, but much besides. The royal family, out of spirits, and not knowing what would happen next, led a very quiet life in the Tuileries, from the 6th of October, when they were brought there, till the beginning of the next summer.During this season, the queen never went to the theatre. She gave no concerts, or large entertainments: and only received the court twice a week, where everybody came wearing white lilies, and bows of white ribbon, while tricolor cockades were sold at all the corners of the streets; and the National Guards stopped all who did not show red and blue colours. The queen went to mass, and dined in public with the king, twice a week, and joined small card-parties in the evenings. The Princess de Lamballe, who had returned to resume her office in the palace, gave gay parties; and the queen went a few times, but soon felt that, in her circumstances, a private life was more suitable. One evening she returned to her apartments in great agitation. An English nobleman had been exhibiting a large ring which he wore, containing a lock of Oliver Cromwell’s hair. She looked with horror upon Cromwell, as a regicide; and she thought the English nobleman meant to point out to her what kings may come to when their people are discontented with them. It was probable that the gentleman meant no such thing: but he was guilty of a very thoughtless act, which gave a great deal of pain.The queen’s mind was so full of the revolution, that she found she could not fix her attention upon books. Work suited her best; and she sat the greater part of the morning working, with the Princess Elizabeth, at a carpet intended for one of their apartments. After breakfast she went to the king, to converse with him, if he was so inclined. She then sat by, at work, while the children did their lessons, which was the regular employment of the morning. They all walked in the palace gardens; and the queen returned to her work after dinner. She could talk of nothing but the revolution: and was extremely anxious to know what everybody thought of her,—particularly persons in office. She was for ever wondering how it was that those who hailed her with love and joy, when she came as a bride from Germany, should so fiercely hate her now. It is a pity that she did not now learn to know and trust Lafayette. It might have saved her, and all who belonged to her; but she was prejudiced against him from his being a friend of the people, and in favour of great changes in the government.Thus the winter passed wearily on. If the people of Paris were jealous of the queen’s wish to get away, and suspicious of her meaning it, if possible, they were not far wrong. Some or other of the nobles and clergy were continually planning to carry the royal family, either to Rouen (a loyal city) or to the frontiers, to meet the king’s brother and friends, and the army they were raising. It would probably have been done, but for the king’s irresolution. He would neither speak nor stir about it.One night in March, at ten o’clock, when the children were asleep in bed, the king and queen were playing whist with his next brother and sister-in-law (who had not gone away), and the Princess Elizabeth was kneeling on a footstool beside the card table, looking on. Monsieur Campan, one of the most trusty of the queen’s attendants, came in, and said, in a low voice, that the Count d’Inisdal had called to say that everything was planned for an escape. The nobles who had contrived it were collected to guard and accompany the king;—the National Guard about the palace were gained over;—post horses were ready all along the road;—the king had only to consent, and he might be off before midnight. The king went on playing his cards, and made no answer. “Did you hear,” said the queen, “what Campan has been telling us?”“I hear,” said the king; and still went on playing. After a while, the queen observed, “Campan must have an answer of some kind.” Then, at length, the king spoke. “Tell the Count d’Inisdal,” said he, “that I cannot consent to be carried off.” The queen repeated, “The king cannotconsentto be carried off,” meaning it to be clearly understood that he would be very glad to go, if it could be so done as that he might say afterwards that he had had nothing to do with the plan. The Count d’Inisdal was very angry at the message. “I see how it is,” said he. “We, the king’s faithful servants, are to have all the danger, and all the blame, if the scheme fails.” And off he went.The queen would not give up her hopes that the nobles would understand how glad the royal family would be to go, and would come for them. She sat till past midnight wrapping up her jewels to carry away; and then desired the lady who assisted her not to go to bed. The lady listened all the night through, and looked out of the window many times; but all was still, and no one but the guards was to be seen. The queen observed to this lady that they should have to fly. There was no saying to what lengths the rebellious people would go, she declared, and the danger increased every day.There was indeed no respite from apprehensions of danger. About a month after, on the 13th of April, there was a good deal of agitation in Paris, from the debates in the Assembly having been very warm, and such as to make the people fear that the king would be carried away. Lafayette promised the king that if he saw reason to consider the palace in danger, he would fire a great cannon on a certain bridge. At night, some accidental musket-shots were heard near the palace, and the king mistook them for Lafayette’s cannon. He went to the queen’s apartments. She was not there. He found her in the Dauphin’s chamber, with Louis in her arms. “I was alarmed about you,” said the king. “You see,” said she, clasping her little son close, “I was at my post.”While thus suffering, and certainly not learning to love the people more on this account,—while distrusting Lafayette, and knowing no one else who could give them the knowledge and advice which would have been best for them, the royal family were confirmed in their worst prejudices and errors by letters which reached them from a distance. Those who wished to write to them in their distress were naturally those who sympathised most with them, and least with the people. One instance shows how absurd and mischievous such a correspondence was. The Empress Catherine of Russia wrote to the queen, “Kings ought to proceed on their course without troubling themselves about the cries of the people, as the moon traverses the sky without regard to the baying of dogs.” Whether the queen saw the folly of these words, and thought of the proper answer to them,—that a king is a man, like those who cry to him for sympathy, but the moon is not a dog,—we do not know; nor whether she perceived the insolent wickedness of the sentence; but she saw the unfeeling absurdity of writing this to a king and queen who were actually prisoners in the hands of their subjects. If the king had been active, decided, and equal to the dangers of the times, he would have made use of this winter in Paris to go among his people, and learn for himself what was the matter, what they wanted, and how much could be done for peace and good government: and then this correspondence from a distance might have done no harm: but, indolent and passive as he was, everything seemed to conspire to prevent all mutual understanding between him and the nation.

In the morning of the 7th, some magistrates came, bringing upholsterers with them, and asked the king how he would be pleased to be lodged. They were ready to dispose and furnish the palace as he liked. He answered gruffly that others might lodge as they pleased, he had nothing to say to it. He was apt to be sulky occasionally, in his most prosperous days; and it was natural that he should be more so now. Sometimes, when the queen made anxious inquiries about the state of affairs, he answered, “Madam, your affair is with the children.” He knew that he was, in fact, a prisoner in his own capital; and that it must at any rate be long before he could leave it. He was losing the fine hunting season; and there was no saying when he might hunt again. This grieved him very much. He sent for his locksmith, and did a little filing, now and then; but he was losing his pleasure in everything.

Some of the women who had walked by the royal carriage yesterday came this morning, and stationed themselves before the queen’s windows, requesting to see her. One of them told her that she must send away all bad advisers, and love the people. The queen replied that she had loved the people when she lived at Versailles, and that she should go on to love them now. They repeated to her some reports that they had heard against her,—that she had wished in the summer that Paris should be fired upon; and that she would yesterday have fled to the frontiers, if she had not been prevented. She replied that they had heard these things, and believed them; and that while some people told and others believed what was not true, the nation and the king would never be happy. One woman then spoke a few words of German: but the queen interrupted her, saying that she was now so completely a French woman, that she had forgotten her German. This delighted the women much; for some of the jealousy of the queen which existed was on account of her being a foreigner. They clapped their hands; and asked for the ribbons and flowers out of her hat. She took them off with her own hands, and gave them to the women. They divided them to keep; and they remained half an hour shouting, “Long live Marie Antoinette! Long live our good queen!”

It was found, during the whole long period of her residence where she now was, that everybody who talked with the queen liked her;—her bitterest enemies were heard to shout as these women did, when once they had heard her speak; and soldiers, who had spoken insultingly of her before they knew her, were ready to lay down their lives for her when they became her guards. The reason of this was, not merely that she was beautiful, and that she spoke in a winning manner, when she knew how much depended upon her graciousness;—it was chiefly because the ignorant and angry people had fancied her a sort of monster, determined upon her own indulgence at all cost, and even seeking their destruction, and delighting in their miseries. When, instead of this monster, they found a dignified woman, with sorrow in her beautiful face, and gentleness in her voice, they forgot for the time the faults she really had, and the blameable things she had really done. When again reminded of these, in her absence, the old hatred revived with new force; they were vexed that she had won upon them, and ended by being as cruel as we shall see they were.

She found, this morning, how frightened her little boy had been, the day before. There was some noise in the court-yard of the palace. Louis came running, and threw himself trembling into her arms, crying, “O, mamma, is to-day going to be yesterday again?” When they were settled, and everything was done to make him as happy as a child should be, he did not forget what he had seen and heard. He not only walked with his mother, or with Madame de Tourzel, in the garden of the Tuileries, but he had a little garden of his own, railed in, and a little tool-house for his spade and rake. There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes, feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread. Still he did not forget what he had seen and heard. One day, his father saw the boy looking at him very gravely and earnestly. The king asked him what he was thinking about. Louis said he wanted to ask a very serious question, if he might; and the king gave him leave.

“I want to know,” said Louis, “why all the people who used to love you so much are now so angry with you. I want to know what you have done to put them in such a passion.”

The king took him upon his knee, and said,—

“My dear, I wished to make the people happier than they were before. I wanted money to pay the expenses of our great wars. I asked it of the parliament, as the kings of France have always done before. The magistrates who composed the parliament were unwilling, and said that the people alone had a right to consent that this money should be given. I called together at Versailles the principal people of every town, distinguished by their rank, their fortune, or their talents. These were called the States-General. When they were assembled, they required of me things which I could not do, either for my own sake or yours; as you are to be king after me. Wicked persons have appeared, causing the people to rebel; and the shocking things that have happened lately are their doing. We must blame them and not the people.”

So spoke Louis the Sixteenth to his young son: and from these words (among other evidence) we learn how little he was aware of the true causes and nature of the great Revolution which was taking place. It appears that he really thought this revolution was owing to the acts of the last few months, and not to the long course of grinding oppression which had begun hundreds of years before he was born. He believed that the violence he witnessed was owing to the malice of a few “wicked persons,” and not to the exasperation of a nation,—the fury of many millions of sufferers against a few hundreds of the rich and powerful. This was not the first time of the king’s showing how little he understood of what was taking place and what ought to be done. When it was absolutely necessary to the peace of the kingdom to have a minister who would relieve the people of the heaviest taxes, the king removed such a minister, and thought he was doing what he could to make up for this, by retrenching some expenses in the palace. For instance, it had always been the custom for the two first bed-chamber women of the queen to have for their own all the wax-lights placed daily in the whole suite of royal apartments, whether lighted or not. These they sold for many hundred pounds a year. When the king began to retrench, he took from these women the wax-light privilege; and the candles which were not lighted one evening served for the next. The ladies were not pleased at being thus deprived of a large part of their income; but this, with the few other retrenchments made by the royal family, was right. All these retrenchments were nothing, however, in comparison with what was wanted. The peasantry still had to pay the grievous land-tax, even when they were reduced to eat boiled nettles and grass. The poor still had to buy the quantity of dear salt ordered by law, even when they had no meat to eat it with. The labouring man and his sons, weakened by hunger and spent with toil, still had to turn out and work upon the roads, without wages, while wife and young children were growing savage with want in their ruined hut. It was all very well for the king and queen to burn fewer wax-lights; but far happier would it have been could the monarch have seen and known that the thing wanted was to relieve the poor from these heavy oppressions; and that his duty was to uphold a minister who would do it, even if every rich and noble person quitted his court, and turned against him. This, however, was not to be expected; for the king and queen lived amongst, and were acquainted with, not the poor, but the noble and the rich, and heard only what they had to say.

It is not known whether little Louis was ever told what the poor suffer. It is probable that he heard something of it; for his elder brother and sister certainly had, upon one occasion. It was the queen’s custom to give her children a stock of new playthings on New Year’s Day. One very hard winter, she and the king heard of the sufferings of the poor in Paris from cold; and the king ordered a large quantity of wood to be purchased with his money, and given away. The queen commanded the toy-man to bring the new toys, as usual, on New Year’s eve, and spread them out in one of her apartments. She then led the children in, showed them the playthings, and said these were what she meant to have given them; but that she had heard that so many poor families were perishing with cold, that she hoped they would be willing to do without new toys, and let the money go for fuel for the poor. The children agreed, and the toy-man was sent away, with a present of money, to console him for the disappointment of having sold nothing. It is probable that Louis also, when old enough to understand, was told of the sufferings of the poor: but it is difficult to give an idea of what want really is to children who have half-a-dozen ladies and footmen always at their orders, and who are surrounded with luxuries which seem to them to come as naturally as the light of day, and to belong to them as completely as their own limbs and senses. We have all heard of the little French princess who, when told by her governess how many of the poor were dying of starvation, in a hard season, said, she thought that was very foolish; and that, rather than starve, she would eat bread and cheese. She had no idea that multitudes never tasted anything better than the coarsest black dry bread; and that it was for want of this that many were perishing. How should she know? She had never seen the inside of a poor man’s hut, or tasted any but the most delicate food.

Louis wished to know what he ought to do, now that the people were so angry with his father. The queen told him that he must behave civilly and kindly to the magistrates, when they came; to the officers of the people’s army,—the National Guard,—and to everybody that belonged to Paris. Louis took great pains to do this: and when he had an opportunity of speaking kindly to the mayor, or any other visitor, he used to run up to his mother, and whisper in her ear, “Was that right?”—He once said a thing which pleased the mayor of Paris very much. The mayor showed him the shield of Scipio, which was in the royal library, and asked him which he liked best, Scipio or Hannibal. The boy answered that he liked best him who had defended his own country.

At this time he read, not only of Scipio and Hannibal, but much besides. The royal family, out of spirits, and not knowing what would happen next, led a very quiet life in the Tuileries, from the 6th of October, when they were brought there, till the beginning of the next summer.

During this season, the queen never went to the theatre. She gave no concerts, or large entertainments: and only received the court twice a week, where everybody came wearing white lilies, and bows of white ribbon, while tricolor cockades were sold at all the corners of the streets; and the National Guards stopped all who did not show red and blue colours. The queen went to mass, and dined in public with the king, twice a week, and joined small card-parties in the evenings. The Princess de Lamballe, who had returned to resume her office in the palace, gave gay parties; and the queen went a few times, but soon felt that, in her circumstances, a private life was more suitable. One evening she returned to her apartments in great agitation. An English nobleman had been exhibiting a large ring which he wore, containing a lock of Oliver Cromwell’s hair. She looked with horror upon Cromwell, as a regicide; and she thought the English nobleman meant to point out to her what kings may come to when their people are discontented with them. It was probable that the gentleman meant no such thing: but he was guilty of a very thoughtless act, which gave a great deal of pain.

The queen’s mind was so full of the revolution, that she found she could not fix her attention upon books. Work suited her best; and she sat the greater part of the morning working, with the Princess Elizabeth, at a carpet intended for one of their apartments. After breakfast she went to the king, to converse with him, if he was so inclined. She then sat by, at work, while the children did their lessons, which was the regular employment of the morning. They all walked in the palace gardens; and the queen returned to her work after dinner. She could talk of nothing but the revolution: and was extremely anxious to know what everybody thought of her,—particularly persons in office. She was for ever wondering how it was that those who hailed her with love and joy, when she came as a bride from Germany, should so fiercely hate her now. It is a pity that she did not now learn to know and trust Lafayette. It might have saved her, and all who belonged to her; but she was prejudiced against him from his being a friend of the people, and in favour of great changes in the government.

Thus the winter passed wearily on. If the people of Paris were jealous of the queen’s wish to get away, and suspicious of her meaning it, if possible, they were not far wrong. Some or other of the nobles and clergy were continually planning to carry the royal family, either to Rouen (a loyal city) or to the frontiers, to meet the king’s brother and friends, and the army they were raising. It would probably have been done, but for the king’s irresolution. He would neither speak nor stir about it.

One night in March, at ten o’clock, when the children were asleep in bed, the king and queen were playing whist with his next brother and sister-in-law (who had not gone away), and the Princess Elizabeth was kneeling on a footstool beside the card table, looking on. Monsieur Campan, one of the most trusty of the queen’s attendants, came in, and said, in a low voice, that the Count d’Inisdal had called to say that everything was planned for an escape. The nobles who had contrived it were collected to guard and accompany the king;—the National Guard about the palace were gained over;—post horses were ready all along the road;—the king had only to consent, and he might be off before midnight. The king went on playing his cards, and made no answer. “Did you hear,” said the queen, “what Campan has been telling us?”

“I hear,” said the king; and still went on playing. After a while, the queen observed, “Campan must have an answer of some kind.” Then, at length, the king spoke. “Tell the Count d’Inisdal,” said he, “that I cannot consent to be carried off.” The queen repeated, “The king cannotconsentto be carried off,” meaning it to be clearly understood that he would be very glad to go, if it could be so done as that he might say afterwards that he had had nothing to do with the plan. The Count d’Inisdal was very angry at the message. “I see how it is,” said he. “We, the king’s faithful servants, are to have all the danger, and all the blame, if the scheme fails.” And off he went.

The queen would not give up her hopes that the nobles would understand how glad the royal family would be to go, and would come for them. She sat till past midnight wrapping up her jewels to carry away; and then desired the lady who assisted her not to go to bed. The lady listened all the night through, and looked out of the window many times; but all was still, and no one but the guards was to be seen. The queen observed to this lady that they should have to fly. There was no saying to what lengths the rebellious people would go, she declared, and the danger increased every day.

There was indeed no respite from apprehensions of danger. About a month after, on the 13th of April, there was a good deal of agitation in Paris, from the debates in the Assembly having been very warm, and such as to make the people fear that the king would be carried away. Lafayette promised the king that if he saw reason to consider the palace in danger, he would fire a great cannon on a certain bridge. At night, some accidental musket-shots were heard near the palace, and the king mistook them for Lafayette’s cannon. He went to the queen’s apartments. She was not there. He found her in the Dauphin’s chamber, with Louis in her arms. “I was alarmed about you,” said the king. “You see,” said she, clasping her little son close, “I was at my post.”

While thus suffering, and certainly not learning to love the people more on this account,—while distrusting Lafayette, and knowing no one else who could give them the knowledge and advice which would have been best for them, the royal family were confirmed in their worst prejudices and errors by letters which reached them from a distance. Those who wished to write to them in their distress were naturally those who sympathised most with them, and least with the people. One instance shows how absurd and mischievous such a correspondence was. The Empress Catherine of Russia wrote to the queen, “Kings ought to proceed on their course without troubling themselves about the cries of the people, as the moon traverses the sky without regard to the baying of dogs.” Whether the queen saw the folly of these words, and thought of the proper answer to them,—that a king is a man, like those who cry to him for sympathy, but the moon is not a dog,—we do not know; nor whether she perceived the insolent wickedness of the sentence; but she saw the unfeeling absurdity of writing this to a king and queen who were actually prisoners in the hands of their subjects. If the king had been active, decided, and equal to the dangers of the times, he would have made use of this winter in Paris to go among his people, and learn for himself what was the matter, what they wanted, and how much could be done for peace and good government: and then this correspondence from a distance might have done no harm: but, indolent and passive as he was, everything seemed to conspire to prevent all mutual understanding between him and the nation.

Volume Two—Chapter Seven.At Saint Cloud.One of his wishes was, to a certain degree, gratified at length. He got a little more hunting when June came. To the surprise of the court, and many besides, the royal family were quietly permitted to go to their country-house at Saint Cloud, a few miles from Paris, when the weather became too warm for a comfortable residence at the Tuileries. The National Guard followed them; but the king rode out daily, attended only by an officer of General Lafayette’s staff. The queen was guarded by another of these officers, and the Dauphin by a third.It seems rather strange that so much liberty should have been allowed, when so lately every precaution was taken to prevent the flight of the family. During the past winter and spring, and the next season, the leaders of the revolution kept a constant watch upon the palace, and knew all that went on there. They knew what persons were admitted at back doors to consult with the queen. They also knew, after the family returned from Saint Cloud, how many horses were in the royal stables, and how many of them stood constantly saddled and bridled. They knew how the royal carriages were kept stuffed with luggage, ready to start at a moment’s warning,—the royal arms being nearly rubbed out from the panels. They declared also that they knew that the king’s old aunts meant to go away, carrying off, not only plenty of treasure, but little Louis; and that a boy, very like Louis, had been in training for some time, to represent him, when the true Dauphin should have been carried to his uncle, over the frontiers. All this was published in the newspapers, so that, if the old princesses had any such plan prepared, they were obliged to give it up. Thus were the family guarded in Paris, before and after, and yet, in June, they were riding and driving about Saint Cloud, believing that they might go off any day they chose. Perhaps, however, this might not have proved so easy as they thought. There might have been spies about them that they did not know of; and, since nothing could be worse than their management of all business matters, from inexperience and want of knowledge of other people’s minds and affairs, their enemies might feel pretty secure that the royal prisoners could not fly far without being caught.There was a plan for escape completely formed, as we know from the lady to whom the queen confided it. No one doubted of the entire success of this scheme; and the lady daily expected and hoped to have to wait in vain for the return of the royal family from their drive.They went out every afternoon at four o’clock; and often did not return till eight, and sometimes even not till nine. The king went on horseback, attended by grooms and pages on whom he could rely. The ladies, in a carriage, were also followed by grooms and pages. The plan was for all to ride to the same place on a certain afternoon, by different roads,—the king on horseback, the queen and her daughter, and the princess Elizabeth, in a carriage; the Dauphin and Madame de Tourzel in a chaise; and some of the royal suite in other vehicles. On meeting in a wood, twelve miles from Saint Cloud, the three officers of Lafayette’s staff were to be gained over, or to be overpowered by the servants; and then all were to push on for the frontier. Meanwhile, the people at home would wait till nine o’clock, quietly enough. Then, on becoming alarmed and looking about, they would find on the king’s desk a letter to the Assembly, which they would instantly forward. It could not reach Paris before ten; and then the Assembly would not be sitting. The president would have to be found; and the Assembly could hardly be got together, or messengers sent after the fugitives, before midnight; when the royal family would have had a start of eight hours.The lady to whom the queen confided this scheme approved it, but asked no questions, and hoped she should not be told the precise day, as she was to be left behind, and wished to be able to say that she had not known that they intended more than an afternoon drive when they went forth. One June evening, nine o’clock came, and none of them were home. The attendants walked restlessly about the courts, and wondered. The lady’s heart beat so that she was afraid her emotion would be observed. But presently she heard the carriage-wheels; and all returned as usual. She told the queen that she had not expected to see her home to-night: and the queen replied that they must wait till the king’s aunts had left France, and till they knew whether the plan would suit the wishes of their friends over the frontier.It was believed by many persons, and certainly by Lafayette, that there were plots, at this time, against the life of the queen. An agent of the police gave notice of an intention to poison her. The queen did not believe it. She believed that her enemies meant to break her spirit by calumny; but she had no fear of poison. Her head physician, however, chose to take precautions. He desired one of her ladies to have always at hand a bottle of fresh, good oil of sweet almonds, which, with milk, is an antidote against corrosive poisons. He was uneasy at the queen’s habit of sweetening draughts of water from a sugar-basin which stood open in her apartment. He was afraid of this sugar being poisoned. The lady therefore kept a great quantity of sugar pounded in her own apartment, and always carried some packets of it in her bag, from which she changed the sugar in the basin, several times a day. The queen found this out, and begged she would not take the trouble to do this, as she had no fear of dying by that method. Poor lady! She said sometimes that, but for her family’s sake, she should be glad to die by any means. She was indeed unhappy; but she had not yet learned how much more unhappy had been multitudes of her people before they hated her as they now did. She grieved to see her daughter growing up grave and silent, and her little boy of five years old surrounded by sorrowful faces, and subject to terrors at an age when he should have been merry, and smiled upon by everybody near him: but she knew nothing of the affliction of thousands of mothers who had seen their children dying of hunger on heaps of straw, in hovels open to the rain; or of the indignation of thousands more who had seen their lively, promising infants growing stupid and cross under the pressure of early toil, and in the absence of all instruction. All this had happened while she was paying 15,000 pounds for a pair of diamond ear-rings, and using her influence in behalf of bad advisers to the king. She might wish to die under her sorrows; she little knew how many had died under their most intolerable sufferings.

One of his wishes was, to a certain degree, gratified at length. He got a little more hunting when June came. To the surprise of the court, and many besides, the royal family were quietly permitted to go to their country-house at Saint Cloud, a few miles from Paris, when the weather became too warm for a comfortable residence at the Tuileries. The National Guard followed them; but the king rode out daily, attended only by an officer of General Lafayette’s staff. The queen was guarded by another of these officers, and the Dauphin by a third.

It seems rather strange that so much liberty should have been allowed, when so lately every precaution was taken to prevent the flight of the family. During the past winter and spring, and the next season, the leaders of the revolution kept a constant watch upon the palace, and knew all that went on there. They knew what persons were admitted at back doors to consult with the queen. They also knew, after the family returned from Saint Cloud, how many horses were in the royal stables, and how many of them stood constantly saddled and bridled. They knew how the royal carriages were kept stuffed with luggage, ready to start at a moment’s warning,—the royal arms being nearly rubbed out from the panels. They declared also that they knew that the king’s old aunts meant to go away, carrying off, not only plenty of treasure, but little Louis; and that a boy, very like Louis, had been in training for some time, to represent him, when the true Dauphin should have been carried to his uncle, over the frontiers. All this was published in the newspapers, so that, if the old princesses had any such plan prepared, they were obliged to give it up. Thus were the family guarded in Paris, before and after, and yet, in June, they were riding and driving about Saint Cloud, believing that they might go off any day they chose. Perhaps, however, this might not have proved so easy as they thought. There might have been spies about them that they did not know of; and, since nothing could be worse than their management of all business matters, from inexperience and want of knowledge of other people’s minds and affairs, their enemies might feel pretty secure that the royal prisoners could not fly far without being caught.

There was a plan for escape completely formed, as we know from the lady to whom the queen confided it. No one doubted of the entire success of this scheme; and the lady daily expected and hoped to have to wait in vain for the return of the royal family from their drive.

They went out every afternoon at four o’clock; and often did not return till eight, and sometimes even not till nine. The king went on horseback, attended by grooms and pages on whom he could rely. The ladies, in a carriage, were also followed by grooms and pages. The plan was for all to ride to the same place on a certain afternoon, by different roads,—the king on horseback, the queen and her daughter, and the princess Elizabeth, in a carriage; the Dauphin and Madame de Tourzel in a chaise; and some of the royal suite in other vehicles. On meeting in a wood, twelve miles from Saint Cloud, the three officers of Lafayette’s staff were to be gained over, or to be overpowered by the servants; and then all were to push on for the frontier. Meanwhile, the people at home would wait till nine o’clock, quietly enough. Then, on becoming alarmed and looking about, they would find on the king’s desk a letter to the Assembly, which they would instantly forward. It could not reach Paris before ten; and then the Assembly would not be sitting. The president would have to be found; and the Assembly could hardly be got together, or messengers sent after the fugitives, before midnight; when the royal family would have had a start of eight hours.

The lady to whom the queen confided this scheme approved it, but asked no questions, and hoped she should not be told the precise day, as she was to be left behind, and wished to be able to say that she had not known that they intended more than an afternoon drive when they went forth. One June evening, nine o’clock came, and none of them were home. The attendants walked restlessly about the courts, and wondered. The lady’s heart beat so that she was afraid her emotion would be observed. But presently she heard the carriage-wheels; and all returned as usual. She told the queen that she had not expected to see her home to-night: and the queen replied that they must wait till the king’s aunts had left France, and till they knew whether the plan would suit the wishes of their friends over the frontier.

It was believed by many persons, and certainly by Lafayette, that there were plots, at this time, against the life of the queen. An agent of the police gave notice of an intention to poison her. The queen did not believe it. She believed that her enemies meant to break her spirit by calumny; but she had no fear of poison. Her head physician, however, chose to take precautions. He desired one of her ladies to have always at hand a bottle of fresh, good oil of sweet almonds, which, with milk, is an antidote against corrosive poisons. He was uneasy at the queen’s habit of sweetening draughts of water from a sugar-basin which stood open in her apartment. He was afraid of this sugar being poisoned. The lady therefore kept a great quantity of sugar pounded in her own apartment, and always carried some packets of it in her bag, from which she changed the sugar in the basin, several times a day. The queen found this out, and begged she would not take the trouble to do this, as she had no fear of dying by that method. Poor lady! She said sometimes that, but for her family’s sake, she should be glad to die by any means. She was indeed unhappy; but she had not yet learned how much more unhappy had been multitudes of her people before they hated her as they now did. She grieved to see her daughter growing up grave and silent, and her little boy of five years old surrounded by sorrowful faces, and subject to terrors at an age when he should have been merry, and smiled upon by everybody near him: but she knew nothing of the affliction of thousands of mothers who had seen their children dying of hunger on heaps of straw, in hovels open to the rain; or of the indignation of thousands more who had seen their lively, promising infants growing stupid and cross under the pressure of early toil, and in the absence of all instruction. All this had happened while she was paying 15,000 pounds for a pair of diamond ear-rings, and using her influence in behalf of bad advisers to the king. She might wish to die under her sorrows; she little knew how many had died under their most intolerable sufferings.

Volume Two—Chapter Eight.The Enterprise.The longer the revolution went on, exhibiting more and more fully the incapacity of the king, the more were the intoxicated people tempted to exult over him, sometimes fiercely, and sometimes in mockery. It is not conceivable that they would have ventured upon some things that were said and done, if the king had been a man of spirit; for men of spirit command personal respect in their adversity. The great original quarrel with the king, it will be remembered, was on matters of finance,—about the vast debts of the State, and the choice of a minister who would wisely endeavour to reduce these debts, and at the same time to relieve the people from some of the pressure of taxation. Towards the end of this year, 1790, the Assembly had decreed the discharge of the debts of the State; and (whether or not they might prove able to execute what they decreed) the people were highly delighted. It was the custom to serenade the royal family on New Year’s morning. On this New Year’s day, the band of the National Guard played under the king’s windows an opera air which went to the words, “But our creditors are paid, and we are consoled.” They would play nothing but this air; and finished it, stopped and resumed, over and over again. They might have been very sure that the king knew what they meant by playing it at all.Another New Year’s day custom was to present gifts to the royal children. On this day, some grenadiers of the Parisian guard came, preceded by military music, to offer a gift to the Dauphin. This gift was a set of dominoes made of the stone and marble of which parts of the Bastille had been built. On the lid of the box were engraved some verses, of which the sense was as follows:—“These stones of the walls which enclosed so many innocent victims of arbitrary power, have been made into a toy, to be offered to your Highness, as a token of the love of the people, and a lesson as to their strength.”The queen would not allow her son to have this toy. She took it from him, and gave it into the hands of one of her ladies, desiring her to preserve it as a curious sign of the times.If the royal family received insults from people who could not feel for them, it was equally true that their adherents exasperated the feelings of persons who quite as little deserved insult. Such was the effect of mutual prejudice. General Lafayette, still in hopes of bringing the opposing parties to some understanding, frequently went to the palace of the Tuileries, where now, during the winter, the royal family were once more established. As there was little use in conversing with the king about affairs, these interviews were generally with the queen,—a fact which prevents our wondering much at the common accusation that the queen meddled with the government, and did mischief by it. One day when Lafayette was with the queen, one of her majesty’s ladies observed (intending to be heard by the General’s officers) that it made her uneasy to think of her majesty’s being shut up alone with a rebel and a robber. An older and more prudent lady, Madame Campan, seeing the folly of such a speech at a time when everything might depend on General Lafayette’s goodwill, reproved the person who had spoken; but it is curious to see how much more she thought of the imprudence than of the injustice of the speech. She observed that General Lafayette was certainly a rebel: but that an officer who commanded forty thousand men, the capital, and a large extent of country, should be called a chieftain rather than a robber. One would think this was little enough to say in favour of such a man as Lafayette: yet the queen the next day asked Madame Campan, with a mournful gravity, what she could have meant by taking Lafayette’s part, and silencing the other ladies because they did not like him. When she heard how it was, the queen was satisfied: but we, far from being satisfied, may learn from this how difficult it must have been to help the royal family and court, while they thought and spoke of the best men in the nation in such a way as this. In truth, there were miserable prejudices and insults on both sides: and at this distance of time, Lafayette, with his love of freedom, and his goodwill towards all the sufferers of both parties, rises to our view from among them all as a sunny hill-top above the fogs of an unwholesome marsh.The next event in the royal family was the departure of the old princesses. They got away in February; and, though stopped in some places on their journey, crossed the frontiers in safety. They might probably have remained secure enough in Paris; and their departure was not on their own account, so much as that of the king. He could not have attempted to fly while his aged aunts remained in the midst of the troubles. When they were disposed of, he felt himself more free to go or stay. The old ladies earnestly entreated the sweet princess Elizabeth to go with them, representing to her how happy she might be at Rome in the exercise of the religion to which she was devoted. But her religion taught her that her duty lay, not where she could say her prayers with the most ease and security, but where she could give the most help and consolation. She refused ease and safety, and declared her intention of remaining with her brother’s family to the end—whatever that end might be.The queen immediately (that is, in March) began her preparations for departure. Remembering how easily they might have got away from Saint Cloud, last summer, it was determined to start from Saint Cloud this time. On the 15th of April, notice was given to the Assembly that, the king having become subject to colds of late, the royal family would remove into the country in a few days.The people of Paris discussed this plan very earnestly. Lafayette wished that the king should live at any one of his palaces that he pleased. But so much had been said, all through the winter, about his majesty’s leaving Paris, that it had now become a very difficult thing to do. The papers on the royal side had proudly threatened that the king would leave his people, if they were not more worthy of his presence. The revolutionary papers had said that the king should not go, to raise up armies of enemies at a distance. All Paris had been kept awake by stories of saddled horses in the royal stables, of packed carriages, and a host of armed nobles, always hovering about, ready to rescue him and murder the people. It does indeed appear that latterly there had been various mysterious meetings of gentlemen, who were secretly armed: and report, which always exaggerates these things, declared that thirty thousand such armed gentlemen were hidden in the woods, about Saint Cloud, and that they would overpower the people’s guard, and carry off the family.Some may wonder why the nation, if sick of their king, did not let him go, and rejoice to be rid of him. The reason why they detained him so carefully was this: they knew that his brother and friends were raising an army at a distance; and they saw that, if once the royal family escaped from their hands, they should have all Europe down upon them; whereas, if they kept the family as hostages, their enemies would let them alone, in the fear that the first march of a foreign army into France would be revenged upon the lives of the very persons whom it was desired to save.Considering all these things, the people resolved that the royal family should not go to Saint Cloud.First, numbers of the servants were sent off, to get everything made ready for the king, who was to follow on the 18th, to dinner. The servants were allowed to go without opposition; so that on the 18th, the apartments at Saint Cloud were ready, the dinner was cooking, and the attendants looking out along the road to Paris, wondering why the carriages did not appear, and fearing the dinner would be spoiled. Nobody came to eat it, however, unless it was given to the National Guard, a detachment of whom had gone forward, to be on duty about the palace.At one o’clock, the great royal coach, drawn by its eight black horses, drove up to the palace-gate in Paris; and immediately the alarm-bell from a neighbouring church-steeple began to sound. The family were almost ready; but multitudes of people, summoned by the bell, collected presently, and declared that the coach should not move. Lafayette and his officers came up, and did what they could in the way of persuasion: but the crowd said, “Hold your tongues. The king shall not go.” They shouted, on seeing one of the royal family, “We do not choose that the king should go.” The royal party, however, entered the carriage, and the coachman cracked his whip; but some seized the reins and the horses’ heads; others shut the gates: and a multitude so pressed round the heavy coach that it rocked from side to side. Such of the royal attendants as attempted to get near for orders were seized, their swords taken from them, and their persons roughly handled. The children must have been grievously terrified; for even, their mother, so calm in danger, passionately entreated from the carriage-window that her servants might not be hurt. The National Guards did not know how to act. Lafayette and his officers rode hither and thither, trying to open a way: the driver whipped, the horses scrambled and reared; and the people pressed closer and closer, so that the great coach rocked more and more;—all in vain, it did not get on one inch.All this, amidst tremendous noise and confusion, went on for an hour and three-quarters. Then Lafayette rode up to say he would clear the way with cannon, if the king would order it. The king was not a person to give any order at all; and least of all, such an order as that. So the royal family alighted, and returned into the palace, while the coach went back to the coach-house, and the eight black horses to their stalls.The king and queen were not sorry for what had happened. This act of violence must prove so plainly to all the world that they were prisoners, that all the world would now think them justified in getting off, in any way they could. They might now devote themselves to the one great object of escape.Poor little Louis must have been very sorry. He had seen the hay-making at Saint Cloud, last summer: and now he must have been pleased at the thought of the sweet fields and gardens of the country, and the woods just bursting into leaf. There were many woods about Saint Cloud. He knew nothing of armed nobles lurking there to save him and his family. What he thought of was the violets and daffodils, and fresh grass and sprouting shrubs,—the young lambs in the field, and the warbling larks in the air. And now, when actually in the carriage to go (his garden tools probably gone before), he had to get out again, and stay in hot, dusty, glaring Paris; and, what was far worse, in danger of seeing every day the sneering, angry faces which had been crowded round the carriage for nearly two hours; and of hearing, wherever he walked, the cruel laugh or fierce abuse with which his parents were greeted when they attempted to do anything which the people did not like. No doubt, the little boy’s heart was heavy when he was lifted from the coach, and went back into the palace.How much happier he might have been if he had been one of the children he had seen hay-making at Saint Cloud, the year before! Or even as the child of a Paris tradesman he might have been happier than now, though the children of the tradesmen of capital cities seldom have a run in the fields, or gather violets in the fresh woods of April. But, as a shop-keeper’s child, he might at least have seen his father cheerful in his employment, and his mother bright and gay. He might have passed his days without hearing passionate voices, and seeing angry faces; without dreaming of being afraid. It was now nothing to him that he was born a prince, and constantly told that he was to be a king. He saw nothing in his father’s condition that made him think it a good thing to be a king; and he would have given all the grandeur in which he lived, all the ladies and footmen that waited upon him, all his pretty clothes, all his many playthings, all the luxuries of the palace, to be free from the terrors of the revolution, and to see his parents look as happy as other children see theirs every day.He did not know it, but preparations were from this time going on diligently for an escape,—for a real flight, by night.We must not suppose that in this, any more than other affairs, the king showed decision, or the queen knowledge and judgment. They could not show what they had not: and it was now too late for the king to become prompt and active, and for the queen to learn to view people and things as the rest of the world did, brought up, as she had been, in ignorance and self-will. She often complained (and we cannot wonder) at having to live and act among people who showed no presence of mind and good sense: but, really, the king, and everybody concerned, might well have complained of the ruin which her folly and self-will brought upon the present scheme,—the last chance they had for liberty. Not that she only was to blame. There were mistakes,—there was mismanagement without end; showing how little those who are brought up in courts, having everything done for them exactly to their wish, are fit for business, when brought to the proof.The case was just this. Here were the king and queen, with a sister and two children, wanting to get away from Paris. They had plenty of money and jewels; plenty of horses and carriages; plenty of devoted servants and friends:—friends at hand, ready to help; friends at a distance, ready to receive them; and every court in Europe inclined to welcome and favour them. The one thing to be done was to elude the people of Paris, and of the large towns through which they must pass.In such a case as this, it seems clear that, in the first place, everything at home should go on as usual, up to the very last moment; that there should be no sign of preparation whatever, to excite the suspicion of any tradespeople or servants who were not in the secret.In the next place, it is clear that the king should have separated from his family on the road. His best chance was to go with one other gentleman, and to travel as private gentlemen are in the habit of doing. While he went by one road to one country, the queen and princess should have gone by another road, under the escort of one or two of the many gentlemen who were devotedly attached to their cause. The children might, with their governess, have gone, under the charge of another gentleman, to Brussels, to the arms of their aunt (their mother’s sister), who held her court there.In the third place, they should have taken the smallest quantity of luggage they could travel with without exciting suspicion, carrying on their persons money and jewels, with which to buy what they wanted when they were safe. They should have travelled in light carriages, and have made sure, by employing drivers and couriers who knew the respective roads, of encountering no difficulty about meeting the relays of horses, and of exciting no particular observation at the post-houses. These are the arrangements which ordinary people, accustomed to business, would have made. We shall see how the queen chose that the affair should be managed.During the month of March (before the attempt to go to Saint Cloud), the queen began her preparations for her escape to another kingdom. Madame Campan (in whom she had perfect trust, and with good reason) was in attendance upon her during that month. The queen employed her in buying and getting made an immense quantity of clothes. Madame Campan remonstrated with her upon this, saying that the queen of France would always be able to obtain linen and gowns wherever she went: but the queen was obstinate. Though it was necessary for Madame Campan to go out almost disguised to procure these things,—though she was obliged, for the sake of avoiding suspicion, to order six petticoats at one shop, and six at another, and to buy one gown in one street, and two in another,—and though this great load of things would be sure to attract notice, however they might be sent off, nothing could satisfy the queen but having with her a complete and splendid wardrobe for herself and the children; and this, after she and the king had a hundred times wondered how it came to be told in the newspapers that so many horses were kept saddled in their stables, and that such and such persons had paid them visits by the back-door. After having suffered for months from spies, the queen would not agree to the simple plan of doing nothing which spies might not see, and tell all Paris, if they chose. As it was, it was well-known when Madame Campan went out, where she went, and what about, from the very day her shopping began.Madame Campan endeavoured to use more disguise by getting her own little boy measured for the clothes which were intended for the Dauphin; and by asking her sister to have the Princess Royal’s wardrobe made ready as if for her daughter. But these poor expedients were seen through, as might have been expected. How much easier and safer it would have been to have no ordering and making at all.These clothes were not all to go by the same coach which conveyed the family. Most of them were sent in a trunk to one of the queen’s women, who was now at Arras, from whence she was to proceed to Brussels with these clothes, to meet her mistress. Of course, the sending off of this trunk was observed.All this was not so foolish as what followed. The queen had a very large, expensive, and remarkable toilet-case, called a nécessaire, which contained everything wanted for the toilet, from her rarest essences and perfumes down to soap and combs. It was of fine workmanship, and had much expensive material and ornament about it. In short, it was fit for a splendid royal palace, and no other place. The queen consulted Madame Campan about how she should get this nécessaire away. Madame Campan entreated her not to think of taking it, saying that if it was moved from its place, on any pretence, it would be enough to excite the suspicions of all the spies about the court. The poor queen, however, seemed to think that she could no more do without her nécessaire than go without shoes to her feet. The nécessaire, she declared, she must have; and she hit upon a device which she thought very clever for deceiving any spies, but which deceived nobody, though Madame Campan herself hoped it might afford a chance of doing so. The queen agreed with the ambassador from Vienna (who was in her confidence), that he should come to her, while her hair was dressing, and, in the presence of all her attendants, request her to order a nécessaire precisely like her own, for her sister at Brussels, who wished to have exactly such an one. The ambassador did as he was desired; and the queen turned to Madame Campan, and requested her to have a nécessaire made by the pattern of the one before her. If the plan had succeeded, here was an expense of 500 pounds incurred, at the time when money was most particularly wanted, and great hazard run; and all because the queen could not be satisfied with such a dressing-case as other ladies use. Any of her friends could have supplied her with such an one as she was setting off.The nécessaire was ordered in the middle of April. A month after, the queen inquired whether it would soon be done. The cabinet-maker said it could not be finished in less than six weeks more. The queen declared to Madame Campan that she could not wait for it; and that, as the order had been given in the presence of all her attendants, nobody would suspect anything if her own nécessaire was emptied and cleaned, and sent off to Brussels; and she gave positive orders that this should be done. Madame Campan ordered the wardrobe-woman, whose proper business it was, to have this order executed, as the archduchess could not wait so long as it would take to finish the new nécessaire; and she particularly desired that no perfume should be left hanging about any of the drawers which might be disagreeable to the archduchess.One evening in May, the queen called Madame Campan to help her to wrap up in cotton, and pack, her jewels, which she sent, by the hands of a person she could trust, to Brussels. They sat in a little room by themselves, with the door locked, till seven o’clock, when the queen had to go to cards. She told Madame Campan that there was no occasion to put by the diamonds; they would be quite safe, as there was a sentinel under the window, and she herself should keep the key in her pocket. She appointed Madame Campan to be there early the next morning, to finish the packing; till which time the jewels lay on the sofa, some in cotton, and some without.The same wardrobe-woman, Madame R—, who was ordered to empty the nécessaire, was clever about her business, and had been engaged in it for many years, and all the year round; so that the queen, without having much to do with her, had become accustomed to see her, liked her way of discharging her business, and did not dream of distrusting her. Madame Campan did, however. She knew that this lady, having grown rich in her office, gave parties, consisting chiefly of persons of politics opposed to the court,—several members of the Assembly of those politics being often there,—and one of Lafayette’s staff, Monsieur Gouvion, being a lover of Madame R—’s. This lady was indeed not to be trusted. On the 21st of this month of May, she went and made a declaration before the mayor, that she had no doubt the royal family were planning an escape. She told the whole story of the nécessaire, saying that everybody knew the queen was too fond of her own nécessaire to think of parting with it, when another might be had for a little waiting; and that the queen had often been heard to say how useful this article would be to her in travelling. Madame R— went on to declare that the queen had been engaged in packing her diamonds in the evening of such a day,—those diamonds having been seen by her lying about, half wrapped in cotton, on the sofa of such a room; and that Madame Campan had helped the queen, and, of course, knew all about it. It was plain that this woman had a key of the little room, and that she must have been in it, either in the evening while the queen was at cards, or very early the next morning.The queen confided to Madame Campan a letter-case full of very valuable papers, which was immediately put into the hands of some faithful persons in the city. This proceeding also did not escape the quick eyes of Madame R—. She declared before the mayor that she saw a letter-case upon a chair, which had never been seen there before: that she observed the queen say something about it in a low voice to Madame Campan, after which it disappeared. The mayor took these depositions, as in duty bound: but he let them lie, not wishing to injure the royal family. So the queen went on, more hopeful every day, and not in the least suspecting that her scheme was seen through from beginning to end.The other persons who were taking part in the plan were, a brave officer of the name of Bouillé, and a Swedish Count Fersen, helped by the Duke de Choiseul, who was a colonel in the French army.Bouillé was near the frontier, collecting together such French soldiers as were loyal, and several Germans, under pretence of watching the Austrians. It was secretly settled for him to meet the royal family near the frontiers, and escort them beyond the reach of their enemies. They really had not to go very far. Montmédy, where Bouillé was making a fortified camp, was less than two hundred miles from Paris; and he meant to meet the royal family, with a guard of hussars, at some distance nearer Paris.We have seen how the queen neglected the first precautions, and how much risk she ran about clothes and luggage. So it was with the other precautions we mentioned. She did, at one time, intend to send the children to Brussels, under the care of a gentleman who might be trusted; but she changed her mind, and resolved that the whole family, with attendants, should go together.Again, instead of travelling in light carriages, and in the most ordinary style, so as to excite as little observation as possible, they must all go in the same carriage,—that is, the king, the queen, and two children, the Princess Elizabeth, and Madame de Tourzel,—six in one carriage, while the other attendant ladies were to follow in another. These were great difficulties; and it was over these difficulties that Count Fersen did all he could to help them. He declared, openly, that a Russian lady, a friend of his, the Baroness de Korff, was about to travel homewards, with her valet, waiting-woman, and two children, and that she wanted a carriage for that purpose. The Count pretended to be very particular about this carriage,—a large coach, called a berlin. He had a model made first; and employed the first coach-makers in France. When it was done, he and the Duke de Choiseul made trial of it in a drive through the streets of Paris. They then sent it to a certain Madame Sullivan’s, near the northern outskirts of the city. Count Fersen also bought several horses and a chaise, to convey, as he said, two waiting-women; and exerted himself much about getting the necessary passport for the Baroness de Korff and her party. It appeared that Count Fersen was uncommonly polite, or very much devoted to this Baroness de Korff.In order to put Paris off its guard, the king and queen promised to be present at a great Catholic festival, in the church of the Assumption in Paris, on the 21st of June; meaning, however, to be off on the 20th.Little Louis knew nothing of all that was going on, nor guessed, when he went to bed on the 20th of June, that he should have to get up again presently. As soon as it was dark, his governess took him up, and dressed him, and put a sort of hood over his head, which prevented his face being seen. He was probably as sleepy as a little boy of six, just waked up before eleven o’clock at night, was likely to be; and knew and cared little about what Madame de Tourzel was doing with him. His sister was dressed, and had a hood over her head too; and so had Madame de Tourzel. They were very quiet; for everybody in the palace but those who were in the secret believed that the king was now gone to bed. Somebody opened the doors for them, and showed them the way. They passed some sentinels who knew better than to ask them who they were; then went out through a back-door where there was no sentinel, along a court and a square, and into a street. A glass-coach was stationed before the door of Ronsin, the saddler, as if waiting for some visitors of Ronsin’s. The coachman, standing beside his horses, opened the door without any question, and let Madame de Tourzel and the children into the coach. This was no real coachman, however, but Count Fersen.In a little while came another lady, attended by a servant, as it seemed. She said “Good night” cheerfully to him, and stepped into the coach. It was the Princess Elizabeth. If anybody in the street wondered to see ladies coming the same way, one after another, the answer was easy; they had, no doubt, been at the palace.Presently, the coachman’s hand was again upon the door; and a gentleman, stout, in a round hat, was seen coming, leaning upon the arm of a servant. As he passed a sentinel, one of his shoe buckles gave way. He stooped down and clasped it. Glad were the party in the coach when the king stepped in. They were all there now but the queen; and it was rather odd that she should be the last.One looked from the window, and then another watched; and still she did not come. It must have been a terrible worry,—waiting and waiting there,—the Count afraid of what everybody in the street might think of a coach standing so long before one door;—the party within afraid of something having happened to the queen. Minute after minute passed slowly away, and then,—“what is this? Here is some great man’s carriage, with lights all about it, dashing up the street!” It was Lafayette’s carriage, evidently in a prodigious hurry: and it went under the arch; it was certainly going to the palace.Itwasgoing to the palace. Madame R—’s eyes were as quick as ever. She had told her lover perpetually that she was sure the royal family were going off; and Gouvion had kept constantly on the watch, but could discover nothing. This evening she had told him that she was sure they meant to go in the night. Gouvion sent an express for Lafayette, who came directly. He thought he met no one in the courts,—saw nothing suspicious. The sentinels were all at their posts, and the royal family (as all the palace believed) quietly in their chambers. So Lafayette went away again, telling his officer that he must have been deceived, and bidding him beware of treachery.Lafayette was mistaken if he thought he had met no one within the precincts of the palace. Under the arch he had whirled past two people,—a lady in white, with something in her hand, leaning on a man’s arm. The lady had even touched the spoke of one of his carriage-wheels with that which she had in her hand,—a sort of switch, which it was then the fashion for ladies to carry. This lady was the queen, and she was conducted by a faithful body-guard. However faithful this man might be, he did not know the way; and the queen’s guard on such an occasion should also have been a well-qualified guide. The queen was flurried with meeting the enemy’s carriage rumbling under the archway, with its flaring lights; and, on entering the square, she took the turn to the right hand instead of the left. She and her guard wandered far away, over the bridge, and they knew not where. The queen of France wandering through the streets of Paris, losing her way on foot at midnight! What could she have thought of a situation so new? How must her guard have felt, with such a charge upon his arm! And the Count, standing beside the hackney-coach-door; and the party within! We may hope that Louis was fast asleep upon Madame de Tourzel’s lap, forgetting all about where he was.A hackney-coachman came up, and began to talk. The Swedish count talked as like a hackney-coachman as he could. They took a pinch of snuff together, would rather not drink together, and the real hackney-coachman bade good-night, and went off without making any discovery. The clocks had struck midnight by this time; but soon after the queen appeared. She had had to inquire her way, which was dangerous. Her companion and the king’s were to go with them; so they jumped up, the Count was on the box in a moment; and off they drove,—six inside and three out.In a little while there was another panic. The king was sure they were going the wrong way. They ought to leave Paris by the north-eastern road; but they were now going straight north. The king might have been sure that the Count knew which way to drive, after managing so well all else that he had to do. He was only going to Madame Sullivan’s, to make sure that the new berlin was gone to the place where they were to meet it. All was right. Count Fersen’s servant had called for the Baroness de Korff’s coach, an hour and a half before. So on they went, through the north entrance, turning immediately eastwards; and when fairly free of Paris, they came in sight of the great coach, waiting by the roadside, with its six horses, and the Count’s coachman on the box.The party made haste to settle themselves in the berlin; for too much time had been lost already. Count Fersen was again the driver. His coachman went off in another direction, to have his master’s chariot ready for him, at some distance on the north road. Who then was there to drive home the glass-coach? Nobody. So they turned the horses’ heads towards the city, and set them off by themselves; and the coach was found next day in a ditch. Still there was another meeting to take place. At the hamlet of Bondy they were to meet the two waiting-women, with their luggage in the new chaise, and postilions with fresh horses. There they were at Bondy, while every one else was asleep. They had been waiting some time. Here Count Fersen took his leave. How must the party have felt towards him! How must they have longed to say what they must not say before the postilions, in whose eyes Count Fersen must be a driver, and nothing more! He met his coachman and chariot on the north road, and got safely away. It must have given him satisfaction all the rest of his life to look back on this adventure, in which his part was so admirably performed. Perhaps, if he had been of the party for another day or two, things might have gone better with the fugitives than they did.Now they had to take care of their behaviour, lest, by any forgetfulness, they should cause suspicion as to who they were. Madame de Tourzel had to act the Baroness de Korff, and call the princess and the dauphin her children. The king, who wore a wig, was her valet, and the queen her waiting-maid. The Princess Elizabeth was her travelling companion. We know nothing of how they supported these characters at the places where they stopped. One may imagine the queen putting some spirit into her part; but one can never fancy the king doing anything in the service of Madame de Tourzel. They stopped as little as they could, however; and yet they did not get on fast. How should a heavy coach, with nine people in and on it, get on fast? How much wiser would it have been to have travelled separately, and like other people! The king’s brother and his lady did so; going in common carriages towards Flanders, by different roads, and finding no difficulty. At one point their roads crossed, and they happened to meet while changing horses. They had the presence of mind to take no notice, and drove off their separate ways without a look or sign. The Princess de Lamballe travelled in the same way towards England, without impediment. It was lamentable folly in the king and queen to choose a way of journeying which must attract all eyes.This sort of notice began almost before it was light. About sunrise they passed, in the wood of Bondy, a poor herb-man, with his ass and panniers of greens. When the hue and cry began, this herb-man told of the fine new berlin he had seen in the wood of Bondy; and thus set pursuers upon their track. Besides the eight horses wanted for the two carriages, there were more for the three body-guards, mounted and dressed as couriers, but knowing nothing about courier’s business, as the people along the road must have found out, while watching the changing of eleven horses at the different stages. Then the berlin wanted some repairs, and this detained them at Étoges: and the king would get out, and walk up the hills, and they had to wait for him: so that though they gave double money to the drivers to get on fast, they had gone only sixty-nine miles by ten at night. This slowness ruined everything.The Duke de Choiseul, Count Fersen’s friend, had left Paris ten hours before the royal family, and was waiting, with a party of hussars, at a village, some way beyond Chalons. If the party had kept their time, they would have met their guard, and, finding more and more soldiers all along the road, would have been safe. There would have been no time for the attention of the country people to be fixed on the gathering of military in the neighbourhood. The Duke de Choiseul’s pretence for his party was that they were to guard a treasure that was expected. The “treasure” did not arrive; the soldiers lounged about; and it was all their officers could do to keep them out of public-houses, where they would be questioned and made suspicious;—for, of course, they knew nothing of the meaning of their errand. It was a great misfortune, too, that the queen had changed her mind about the day, when it was too late to warn some of the officers; and they, supposing the party to have set off on the 19th, were now in great dismay; and their soldiers were lounging about twenty-four hours sooner than they should have been. The village politicians did not like what they saw. They began to say to one another that no treasure ought to be leaving the kingdom. Any treasure which had to be guarded by soldiers must be public treasure, belonging to the people, which no one had any right to carry away. Some of these rang the alarm-bell of their parish church; and from several places, parties of the national soldiery went out to explore the roads, and met parties of the national soldiery from other places. They agreed that there must be something wrong. At Saint Menehould, the National Volunteers demanded three hundred muskets from the town-hall, and stood armed: the same Saint Menehould where the former arrival of the queen as dauphiness had been awaited in a far different temper. In short, the hussars had to ride away, and leave the “treasure” to take its chance. Thus all was confusion, expectation, and alarm along the road, for hours before the berlin appeared: the very road by which the queen had entered France, amidst cheers of welcome, in her bridal days!It appeared afterwards that it was the king’s wish to have these soldiers in waiting along the road, while his advisers thought it would be better to keep up the story of the Baroness de Korff till the party actually drew near Montmédy. As it turned out, the king not only lost his desired security, but, by his and the queen’s management together, the whole region beyond Chalons was in an uproar before they entered it. Meantime, the party had travelled only sixty-nine of their two hundred miles in twenty-two hours; and little Louis must have been sadly tired before they had gone nearly half-way.On and on they went, however, through the night and all the next day, little knowing how fast messengers from Paris were racing all over the kingdom, to give the news of their flight. Lafayette had been roused, at six in the morning of the 21st, by a note from a gentleman who had been informed that the king’s rooms at the Tuileries were empty. The whole city was in consternation, and Lafayette’s life in great danger. Tranquillity was preserved, however. Messengers galloped off in every direction; and one of these it was who, going north-east, spread the alarm which made the herb-man go and tell what he had seen in the wood of Bondy. Little did the travelling party think how much faster the mounted messengers were going than they: and on they lumbered, the eleven horses whisking their tails, and the king taking his time in walking up the hills, while the alarm was flying abroad.It was near sunset on the second evening, when they had gone about one hundred and seventy miles, that one of the body-guards, mounted and dressed in yellow as a courier, came prancing into the village of Saint Menehould. His dress attracted all eyes; and so did his proceedings. The gazers saw that this odd courier did not know the post-house; for he spurred past it, and had to inquire for it. The master of the post, Drouet, of revolutionary politics, was in a very bad humour, and had been so all day, having been angry about the mysterious hussars in the morning, and no less angry at seeing the village now full of dragoons, from another quarter, whose business here he could not understand. These dragoons, strolling through the streets, touched their helmets to the party in the carriage, which the waiting-maid of the baroness acknowledged with remarkable grace. The dragoon officer, Dandoins, at first delighted to see the party arrive, presently did not like what he saw, and was pretty sure the village had taken the alarm. He looked full at the pretended courier, from the side pavement, as much as to say, “Be quick! Make haste to change horses, and be off.” The dull fellow, not understanding what he meant, came up to him, to know whether he had anything to say. All which was observed by a hundred eyes. Drouet’s eyes were the quickest. He thought that the waiting-maid’s face was like somebody he had seen somewhere in Paris; and the valet, how very like the king! He called to a friend to bring him, quick, a new assignat. (Note: A promissory note which passed as money, like a bank-note. It bore an engraving of the king’s head.) The king’s head there, and the valet’s head in the carriage, were exactly alike. Now Drouet understood the meaning of his village being filled with hussars in the morning, and dragoons in the afternoon.The great coach was just driving off; and he dared not stop it, while the armed dragoons were standing about, even if he had been absolutely certain that he had seen the king and queen; which he could not be. So he let them drive off; and then told the friend that had brought him the assignat, desiring him to saddle two of the fleetest horses in the post-house, while he stepped over to the town-hall, to give the alarm. While they rode off, the report got abroad through the whole village. Dandoins wanted his dragoons to mount and ride; but they were hungry, and would have some bread and cheese first. While they were eating, the National Volunteers drew up, with their bayonets fixed, to prevent their leaving the village. The dragoons were willing to stay, and side with the people: and stay they did; only the quarter-master cutting his way through, and riding off with a pocket-book, containing secret despatches, which Dandoins had managed to slip into his hand.The berlin went on faster now; but not so fast as Drouet and his companion were following; while the quarter-master was spurring on to overtakethem, if possible. What a race!—the fate of France probably depending upon it!About six miles before coming to Varennes, the party observed a horseman passing, at a gallop, from behind, close by the coach-window. In passing, he shouted something which the noise of their carriage-wheels prevented their hearing exactly. They caught the sound, however; and when all was over, agreed that he must have said, “You are discovered!” They did not know whether to take this man for a friend or an enemy. They received another warning from one who was no enemy. A beggar, who asked alms of the king at a place where the coach stopped, said, with much feeling, “Your Majesty is known. May God take care of you! May Providence watch over you!”The quarter-master, on reaching Clermont after them, called up the dragoons who were gone to bed; and afewof them followed the royal carriage, under the command of a Cornet Rémy. But they lost their way in the dark, and floundered about in fields and lanes, stumbling over fences, before they found the direction in which they should go to Varennes. The rest of the dragoons at Clermont,—all but two,—struck their swords into the scabbard when ordered to draw, and declared for the people, instead of the king.The Duke de Choiseul, with his hussars, was all the while stumbling about in the cross country, finding it difficult enough to get to Varennes, as he must avoid the high roads. Some of his troop fell and were hurt; and their comrades refused to go on without them. Towards midnight, the alarm-bell of Varennes was heard through the darkness. The duke said it was no doubt some fire: but in his heart he had strong fears of the truth.Bouillé, junior, sent by his father, had been waiting with his troop six hours at Varennes: and he, supposing that the party would not arrive this day, was in bed and asleep when the berlin reached the village, at eleven o’clock. His troop were, some of them, drinking in the public-houses. None of them were ready; and the royal party tried in vain to discover through the thick darkness any sign of a friendly guard, where they had made sure of meeting one. If they could but find these hussars, they believed they should be safe; for they had now no more towns to pass through, and no great way to go.The berlin stood on the top of the hill, at the entrance of Varennes, while their pretended couriers were riding about, rousing the sleeping village, in search of horses to go on with. The horses were standing, the whole time, all ready, by the orders of the Duke de Choiseul, in the upper village, over the bridge; and the men never found this out. They might have changed horses in five minutes, and proceeded, without having wakened a single person in the place; instead of which, the carriages actually stood five-and-thirty minutes on the top of the hill, while this blundering was going on. The king argued with the postilions about proceeding another stage: but their horses were so tired, they would not hear of it.In the midst of this argument, two riders came up from behind, checked their horses for a moment on recognising the berlin, which they could just make out in the dark; and then pushed on quickly into the village. It was Drouet and his companion.They rode to the Golden Arms tavern, told the landlord what they came for, and proceeded to block up the bridge with waggons, and whatever else they could find. And the fugitives might have passed that bridge above half an hour before, and be now speeding on with the fresh horses that were standing ready,—if only young Bouillé had not gone to bed; or even if, instead of one of their useless servants, they had had a courier who knew the road, and could have told them of the upper village! Was ever an expedition so mismanaged?Before the berlin came up (the horses somewhat refreshed with meal and water), the bridge was well barricaded; and (the landlord having roused three or four companions) about half-a-dozen men, with muskets and lanterns hidden under their coats, were standing under an archway, awaiting the party. Suddenly the lanterns shone out, the horses’ bridles were seized, and a man thrust the barrel of a musket in at each window, exclaiming, “Ladies, your passports!”This was one of the moments which occur now and then in the course of men’s lives, as if to show what they are made of. This was the occasion, if the king had been a man of spirit, to forget that he had blood to spill,—to assert his rights as a ruler and as an innocent man,—to daunt his enemies, and rouse his friends,—to carry off his family in triumph,—to save his crown and kingdom, his life and reputation. Things much more difficult have been done. His enemies were but six; and he and his body-guards might have resisted them till Bouillé was roused by the noise, to come up with his hussars, to help and save. It is true, the king did not know that his enemies were but six: but a man of spirit would have seen how many they were before he yielded. It is true he did not know that Bouillé was in bed, and his hussars drinking in the village: but a man of spirit would have trusted that help would rise up, or have done without it in such an extremity, rather than yield. Instead of this, what did the king do? He heard what his enemies had to say.One of the six was Monsieur Sauce, a grocer who lived in the market-place, and a magistrate. He said, in the name of his party, that, whether the travellers were the Baroness de Korff and suite, or of a higher rank still, it would be better that they should alight, and remain at his house till morning.With what a bursting heart must the queen have seen the king quietly doing as he was bid! For twenty-one years she had suffered what a high spirit must suffer in being closely united with a companion who has none; but the agony of this moment must have exceeded all former trials of the kind. She, the woman and the wife, must obey, to her own destruction, and that of all who belonged to her. She said little; but there was afterwards a visible sign of what she must have endured. In this one night, her beautiful hair turned white, as if forty years had at once fallen upon her head.The king stepped out of the coach, and the ladies followed him. They took each an arm of Monsieur Sauce, and walked across the market-place to his shop, the king following, with a child holding either hand. It was strange confusion for little Louis. This was the third night that he had spent out of his bed. He had been asleep,—the whole party had been asleep in the coach; and now this disputing, and the flare of the lanterns, and the presenting the muskets, and the having to get out and walk, must have been perplexing and terrifying to the poor little fellow. There was much noise round about. The alarm-bell was clanging; there were lights in all the windows: men poured out of the houses, half-dressed, and rolled barrels, and laid felled trees across the road, that no help might arrive on the king’s behalf.And what did the king do next? He asked for something to eat! “Something to eat” was always a great object with him; and he seemed to find comfort under all trials in his good appetite. He sat now in an upper story of Monsieur Sauce’s house, eating bread and cheese and drinking Burgundy,—declaring that this bottle of Burgundy was the best he ever tasted. One wonders that the queen’s heart was not quite broken. She believed that there was yet a chance. She saw Monsieur Sauce’s old mother kneeling, and praying for her king and queen, while the tears ran down her cheeks. The queen saw that Monsieur Sauce looked frequently towards his wife, while the king talked with him, explaining that he meant no harm to the nation, but good, since he could come to a better understanding with his people when at a distance and in freedom. Monsieur Sauce, the queen saw, looked so frequently towards his wife, that it was plain that he would act according to her judgment. The queen of France therefore kneeled to the grocer’s wife to implore mercy and aid. Fain would the grocer’s wife have aided her sovereign, if she dared: but she dared not. Again and again she said, “Think what it is you ask, madame. Your situation is very grievous; but you see what we should be exposed to. They would cut off my husband’s head. A wife must consider her husband first.”“Very true,” replied the queen. “My husband is your king. He has made you all happy for many years; and wishes to do so still.” Whatever Madame Sauce might think of the poor queen’s belief that her husband had made his people happy, she replied only, as before, that she could not induce Monsieur Sauce to put his life in danger.The leaders of the different military parties, hearing one alarm-bell after another beginning to toll through the whole region, made prodigious exertions to reach Varennes, and did so. The Duke de Choiseul and his troop surmounted the barricade, and got in; and the hussars promised fidelity to “the king—the king! And the queen!” as they kept exclaiming. They were led forward to beset Monsieur Sauce’s house: but Drouet shouted to his national soldiery to stand to their cannon. On hearing of cannon, the hussars drew back: though Drouet’s cannon were only two empty, worn-out, useless field-pieces, which seemed fit only to make a clatter on the pavement.Count Damas had also arrived; and the king sat consulting with these officers and the magistrates of Varennes,—consulting, when he, with the aid which had arrived, should have been forcing his way out towards the frontier. There he sat, as usual, unable to decide upon anything; and while he sat doubting, the national soldiery poured in to the number of three thousand, and would presently amount to ten thousand. While he thus sat doubting, the people were handing jugs of wine about among the hussars; and when their commander came out from Monsieur Sauce’s, at the end of an hour, he found them tipsy, and declaring for the nation against the king.There was still one other chance—one more opportunity of choice for him whose misfortune was that he never could make a choice. Another loyal officer, Deslons, arrived, with a hundred horse-soldiers. He left his hundred horse outside the barricade, entered himself, and offered to cut out the royal party,—to rescue them by the sword, if the king would order him to do so. “Will it be hot work?” asked the king. “Very hot,” was the answer; and the king would give no orders.—In the bitterness of her regrets, the queen said afterwards, at Paris, that no one who knew what had been the king’s answer to Count d’Inisdal about being carried off, should have asked him for orders;—that the officers should have acted without saying a word to him.The children were asleep on a bed up-stairs, and the ladies remonstrating with Madame Sauce, from hour to hour of this dreadful night: and the end of it all was that it was decided by somebody that the party were to go back to Paris, as the people in the market-place were loudly demanding. The poor queen’s doubts and fears thus ended in despair. Weary as they all were,—after having travelled so far, and escaped so many dangers,—and now so near the frontier, so near Bouillé’s camp, so close upon the queen’s own country,—they were to pursue their weary way back to Paris,—journeying in disgrace, prisoners in the eyes of all the people, to be plunged again into the midst of their enemies, now enraged by their flight. It would have been easier to a spirit like the queen’s to have died, with those who belonged to her, in one more struggle,—in one rush to the camp, than to undergo the slow despair of a return among their enemies.Her feelings were understood,—the case was understood,—by one of the attendants who had travelled in the chaise,—the Dauphin’s head waiting-woman. Hoping that gaining time might afford a chance, she threw herself on a bed, and pretended to be taken suddenly ill, and in an agony of pain. The queen went to the bedside, and the woman squeezed her hand, to make her understand the pretence. The queen declared that she could not think of leaving in this state a faithful servant who had encountered many dangers and fatigues for the sake of the family; but a device so obvious was seen through at once, and no indulgence was allowed. The woman had to get off the bed and enter the chaise again.The great berlin travelled back more slowly than it came, being surrounded by sixty thousand National Guards, besides the crowds of other people who drew near to see the captive royal family. There was so much indecent joy, so much insult shown by the ignorant and fierce among the crowd, that civility which would have been thought nothing of at another time touched the feelings of the unhappy ladies. The queen was delighted with the manners of a lady at whose house they rested,—the wife of Monsieur Renard, the mayor of Ferté-sous-Jouarre. The mayor waited upon the king at table; and Madame Renard did all she could to make the ladies comfortable. Everything was done so quietly that the queen did not discover, for a long time, who she was. When, at length, the queen inquired whether she was not the mistress of the house, Madame Renard replied, “I was so, Madame, before your Majesty honoured this abode with your presence.” To us there appears some affectation in this speech; but the queen was now so unused to homage from strangers that she shed tears at the words.The Dauphin did not travel back, as he came, on the lap of Madame de Tourzel. The National Assembly sent three of its members from Paris to meet and travel with the royal family. Two of these members were to be in the carriage with the king; so that Madame de Tourzel had to turn out. The other member and she joined the two waiting-maids in the carriage behind. The pretended couriers were bound with cords, and rode conspicuous to all eyes on the top of the berlin.Monsieur Barnave, one of the king’s new travelling companions, was so considerate, polite, and gentlemanly, that the royal party decided and declared that, if ever they regained their power, Monsieur Barnave should be pardoned the part he had taken in the Revolution. It does not seem to have occurred to them that they might have been prejudiced against him and others,—that the revolutionary leaders might not have been altogether so wicked and detestable as the Court had been accustomed to call them. Barnave, on his part, seems to have been touched by the sorrows of the queen; and it is probable that he discovered now that he had been prejudiced—too strongly wrought upon by the queen’s enemies.A poor clergyman, endeavouring to reach the carriages to offer his loyal greeting, was seized, and roughly handled by the furious mob. Barnave feared they would kill him, as they had already killed one person under similar circumstances. He threw himself almost out of the coach-door as he cried, “Tigers, have you ceased to be Frenchmen? From being brave fellows have you turned assassins?” The Princess Elizabeth, fearing lest he should fall out of the carriage, grasped the skirt of his coat; and the queen told Madame Campan afterwards that she could not but be struck with the oddity of seeing the Princess Elizabeth taking care of the safety of a man whom they had all abhorred as a rebel and a traitor. So vehemently had the whole Court thus detested him, that Madame Campan could scarcely believe her senses when she heard the queen speak with earnest regard of the revolutionary Barnave. This is another circumstance which indicates how much guilt and misery might have been saved if the adverse parties could early have come to an understanding and made their mutual complaints face to face.Barnave’s companion, Pétion, disgusted them all; including Barnave. He behaved with ostentatious rudeness and brutality. The king began to converse with him upon the condition of the nation, and to explain the reasons of his own conduct, saying that he wished to strengthen the government so far as to enable it tobea government, since France could not be a republic... “Not yet, indeed,” interrupted Pétion; “for the French are not ripe for a republic yet.” This brutal reply silenced the king, who spoke no more till he entered Paris.The ladies offered refreshments to their new companions. Barnave said he had to occupy their Majesties with the serious business on which he was sent, but would not trouble them with his personal wants.Pétion ate and drank greedily. He threw chicken-bones out of the window, past the king’s face; and when the Princess Elizabeth poured out wine for him, he jerked his glass, instead of speaking, to show that there was enough. He took Louis on his knees, and twisted his fingers in the child’s curly hair. When eager in conversation, he twitched the boy’s hair so as to make him call out. The queen held out her arms, saying, “Give me my son. He is accustomed to tender care, and to treatment very unlike this familiarity.”The great coach entered Paris on the Saturday evening, slowly rolling on through hundreds of thousands of gazers. A placard had been stuck up through one region of the city, in the morning, declaring that whoever insulted the king should be caned: whoever applauded him should be hanged. The people were quiet, gaped and stared, and seemed neither very much pleased nor very angry. The king now began to speak once more. As one body of official personages after another met him, he said, over and over again, with an embarrassed sort of smile, “Well, here I am!” Again we cannot help thinking what a pity it was that he was not a locksmith, happy in his workshop in one of the meaner streets of Paris. As for his little son, how happy would Louis now have been to be the son of the poor herb-man in the wood of Bondy, gathering his dewy herbs in the fresh, free morning air and sunshine, and going to sleep at sundown, far from crowds and quarrels and fears! Never more was this unfortunate child in the open country. He had this day seen the last of green fields, breezy hills, and waving woods.The couriers were the first objects of the people’s wrath. Some at length left off staring at the king and queen, and seizing the three men in yellow liveries, would have massacred them, if the Assembly had not sent a force to rescue them.Glad was the poor queen to get out of sight of the hundreds of thousands of gazers, and to be within the courts of the Tuileries: but she found little comfort there. Three women only were appointed to wait on her; and those three were Madame R— the spy, her sister, and niece. It was only after the king had remonstrated with General Lafayette, that the queen could obtain the attendance of her former servants. She much needed the presence of some to whom she could speak without restraint; and yet this was an indulgence she found it prudent to wait for. Immediately on her arrival she caused these few lines, unsigned, to be forwarded by a faithful hand to Madame Campan:—“I dictate this from my bath, by which my bodily strength at least may be recruited. I can say nothing of the state of my mind. We exist: that is all. Do not return till summoned by me. This is very important.” It was not till seven or eight weeks after that Madame Campan saw her royal mistress. The queen was then rising from bed. She took off her cap, and showed her hair, white as any aged person’s, saying that it had become bleached in one night.

The longer the revolution went on, exhibiting more and more fully the incapacity of the king, the more were the intoxicated people tempted to exult over him, sometimes fiercely, and sometimes in mockery. It is not conceivable that they would have ventured upon some things that were said and done, if the king had been a man of spirit; for men of spirit command personal respect in their adversity. The great original quarrel with the king, it will be remembered, was on matters of finance,—about the vast debts of the State, and the choice of a minister who would wisely endeavour to reduce these debts, and at the same time to relieve the people from some of the pressure of taxation. Towards the end of this year, 1790, the Assembly had decreed the discharge of the debts of the State; and (whether or not they might prove able to execute what they decreed) the people were highly delighted. It was the custom to serenade the royal family on New Year’s morning. On this New Year’s day, the band of the National Guard played under the king’s windows an opera air which went to the words, “But our creditors are paid, and we are consoled.” They would play nothing but this air; and finished it, stopped and resumed, over and over again. They might have been very sure that the king knew what they meant by playing it at all.

Another New Year’s day custom was to present gifts to the royal children. On this day, some grenadiers of the Parisian guard came, preceded by military music, to offer a gift to the Dauphin. This gift was a set of dominoes made of the stone and marble of which parts of the Bastille had been built. On the lid of the box were engraved some verses, of which the sense was as follows:—

“These stones of the walls which enclosed so many innocent victims of arbitrary power, have been made into a toy, to be offered to your Highness, as a token of the love of the people, and a lesson as to their strength.”

The queen would not allow her son to have this toy. She took it from him, and gave it into the hands of one of her ladies, desiring her to preserve it as a curious sign of the times.

If the royal family received insults from people who could not feel for them, it was equally true that their adherents exasperated the feelings of persons who quite as little deserved insult. Such was the effect of mutual prejudice. General Lafayette, still in hopes of bringing the opposing parties to some understanding, frequently went to the palace of the Tuileries, where now, during the winter, the royal family were once more established. As there was little use in conversing with the king about affairs, these interviews were generally with the queen,—a fact which prevents our wondering much at the common accusation that the queen meddled with the government, and did mischief by it. One day when Lafayette was with the queen, one of her majesty’s ladies observed (intending to be heard by the General’s officers) that it made her uneasy to think of her majesty’s being shut up alone with a rebel and a robber. An older and more prudent lady, Madame Campan, seeing the folly of such a speech at a time when everything might depend on General Lafayette’s goodwill, reproved the person who had spoken; but it is curious to see how much more she thought of the imprudence than of the injustice of the speech. She observed that General Lafayette was certainly a rebel: but that an officer who commanded forty thousand men, the capital, and a large extent of country, should be called a chieftain rather than a robber. One would think this was little enough to say in favour of such a man as Lafayette: yet the queen the next day asked Madame Campan, with a mournful gravity, what she could have meant by taking Lafayette’s part, and silencing the other ladies because they did not like him. When she heard how it was, the queen was satisfied: but we, far from being satisfied, may learn from this how difficult it must have been to help the royal family and court, while they thought and spoke of the best men in the nation in such a way as this. In truth, there were miserable prejudices and insults on both sides: and at this distance of time, Lafayette, with his love of freedom, and his goodwill towards all the sufferers of both parties, rises to our view from among them all as a sunny hill-top above the fogs of an unwholesome marsh.

The next event in the royal family was the departure of the old princesses. They got away in February; and, though stopped in some places on their journey, crossed the frontiers in safety. They might probably have remained secure enough in Paris; and their departure was not on their own account, so much as that of the king. He could not have attempted to fly while his aged aunts remained in the midst of the troubles. When they were disposed of, he felt himself more free to go or stay. The old ladies earnestly entreated the sweet princess Elizabeth to go with them, representing to her how happy she might be at Rome in the exercise of the religion to which she was devoted. But her religion taught her that her duty lay, not where she could say her prayers with the most ease and security, but where she could give the most help and consolation. She refused ease and safety, and declared her intention of remaining with her brother’s family to the end—whatever that end might be.

The queen immediately (that is, in March) began her preparations for departure. Remembering how easily they might have got away from Saint Cloud, last summer, it was determined to start from Saint Cloud this time. On the 15th of April, notice was given to the Assembly that, the king having become subject to colds of late, the royal family would remove into the country in a few days.

The people of Paris discussed this plan very earnestly. Lafayette wished that the king should live at any one of his palaces that he pleased. But so much had been said, all through the winter, about his majesty’s leaving Paris, that it had now become a very difficult thing to do. The papers on the royal side had proudly threatened that the king would leave his people, if they were not more worthy of his presence. The revolutionary papers had said that the king should not go, to raise up armies of enemies at a distance. All Paris had been kept awake by stories of saddled horses in the royal stables, of packed carriages, and a host of armed nobles, always hovering about, ready to rescue him and murder the people. It does indeed appear that latterly there had been various mysterious meetings of gentlemen, who were secretly armed: and report, which always exaggerates these things, declared that thirty thousand such armed gentlemen were hidden in the woods, about Saint Cloud, and that they would overpower the people’s guard, and carry off the family.

Some may wonder why the nation, if sick of their king, did not let him go, and rejoice to be rid of him. The reason why they detained him so carefully was this: they knew that his brother and friends were raising an army at a distance; and they saw that, if once the royal family escaped from their hands, they should have all Europe down upon them; whereas, if they kept the family as hostages, their enemies would let them alone, in the fear that the first march of a foreign army into France would be revenged upon the lives of the very persons whom it was desired to save.

Considering all these things, the people resolved that the royal family should not go to Saint Cloud.

First, numbers of the servants were sent off, to get everything made ready for the king, who was to follow on the 18th, to dinner. The servants were allowed to go without opposition; so that on the 18th, the apartments at Saint Cloud were ready, the dinner was cooking, and the attendants looking out along the road to Paris, wondering why the carriages did not appear, and fearing the dinner would be spoiled. Nobody came to eat it, however, unless it was given to the National Guard, a detachment of whom had gone forward, to be on duty about the palace.

At one o’clock, the great royal coach, drawn by its eight black horses, drove up to the palace-gate in Paris; and immediately the alarm-bell from a neighbouring church-steeple began to sound. The family were almost ready; but multitudes of people, summoned by the bell, collected presently, and declared that the coach should not move. Lafayette and his officers came up, and did what they could in the way of persuasion: but the crowd said, “Hold your tongues. The king shall not go.” They shouted, on seeing one of the royal family, “We do not choose that the king should go.” The royal party, however, entered the carriage, and the coachman cracked his whip; but some seized the reins and the horses’ heads; others shut the gates: and a multitude so pressed round the heavy coach that it rocked from side to side. Such of the royal attendants as attempted to get near for orders were seized, their swords taken from them, and their persons roughly handled. The children must have been grievously terrified; for even, their mother, so calm in danger, passionately entreated from the carriage-window that her servants might not be hurt. The National Guards did not know how to act. Lafayette and his officers rode hither and thither, trying to open a way: the driver whipped, the horses scrambled and reared; and the people pressed closer and closer, so that the great coach rocked more and more;—all in vain, it did not get on one inch.

All this, amidst tremendous noise and confusion, went on for an hour and three-quarters. Then Lafayette rode up to say he would clear the way with cannon, if the king would order it. The king was not a person to give any order at all; and least of all, such an order as that. So the royal family alighted, and returned into the palace, while the coach went back to the coach-house, and the eight black horses to their stalls.

The king and queen were not sorry for what had happened. This act of violence must prove so plainly to all the world that they were prisoners, that all the world would now think them justified in getting off, in any way they could. They might now devote themselves to the one great object of escape.

Poor little Louis must have been very sorry. He had seen the hay-making at Saint Cloud, last summer: and now he must have been pleased at the thought of the sweet fields and gardens of the country, and the woods just bursting into leaf. There were many woods about Saint Cloud. He knew nothing of armed nobles lurking there to save him and his family. What he thought of was the violets and daffodils, and fresh grass and sprouting shrubs,—the young lambs in the field, and the warbling larks in the air. And now, when actually in the carriage to go (his garden tools probably gone before), he had to get out again, and stay in hot, dusty, glaring Paris; and, what was far worse, in danger of seeing every day the sneering, angry faces which had been crowded round the carriage for nearly two hours; and of hearing, wherever he walked, the cruel laugh or fierce abuse with which his parents were greeted when they attempted to do anything which the people did not like. No doubt, the little boy’s heart was heavy when he was lifted from the coach, and went back into the palace.

How much happier he might have been if he had been one of the children he had seen hay-making at Saint Cloud, the year before! Or even as the child of a Paris tradesman he might have been happier than now, though the children of the tradesmen of capital cities seldom have a run in the fields, or gather violets in the fresh woods of April. But, as a shop-keeper’s child, he might at least have seen his father cheerful in his employment, and his mother bright and gay. He might have passed his days without hearing passionate voices, and seeing angry faces; without dreaming of being afraid. It was now nothing to him that he was born a prince, and constantly told that he was to be a king. He saw nothing in his father’s condition that made him think it a good thing to be a king; and he would have given all the grandeur in which he lived, all the ladies and footmen that waited upon him, all his pretty clothes, all his many playthings, all the luxuries of the palace, to be free from the terrors of the revolution, and to see his parents look as happy as other children see theirs every day.

He did not know it, but preparations were from this time going on diligently for an escape,—for a real flight, by night.

We must not suppose that in this, any more than other affairs, the king showed decision, or the queen knowledge and judgment. They could not show what they had not: and it was now too late for the king to become prompt and active, and for the queen to learn to view people and things as the rest of the world did, brought up, as she had been, in ignorance and self-will. She often complained (and we cannot wonder) at having to live and act among people who showed no presence of mind and good sense: but, really, the king, and everybody concerned, might well have complained of the ruin which her folly and self-will brought upon the present scheme,—the last chance they had for liberty. Not that she only was to blame. There were mistakes,—there was mismanagement without end; showing how little those who are brought up in courts, having everything done for them exactly to their wish, are fit for business, when brought to the proof.

The case was just this. Here were the king and queen, with a sister and two children, wanting to get away from Paris. They had plenty of money and jewels; plenty of horses and carriages; plenty of devoted servants and friends:—friends at hand, ready to help; friends at a distance, ready to receive them; and every court in Europe inclined to welcome and favour them. The one thing to be done was to elude the people of Paris, and of the large towns through which they must pass.

In such a case as this, it seems clear that, in the first place, everything at home should go on as usual, up to the very last moment; that there should be no sign of preparation whatever, to excite the suspicion of any tradespeople or servants who were not in the secret.

In the next place, it is clear that the king should have separated from his family on the road. His best chance was to go with one other gentleman, and to travel as private gentlemen are in the habit of doing. While he went by one road to one country, the queen and princess should have gone by another road, under the escort of one or two of the many gentlemen who were devotedly attached to their cause. The children might, with their governess, have gone, under the charge of another gentleman, to Brussels, to the arms of their aunt (their mother’s sister), who held her court there.

In the third place, they should have taken the smallest quantity of luggage they could travel with without exciting suspicion, carrying on their persons money and jewels, with which to buy what they wanted when they were safe. They should have travelled in light carriages, and have made sure, by employing drivers and couriers who knew the respective roads, of encountering no difficulty about meeting the relays of horses, and of exciting no particular observation at the post-houses. These are the arrangements which ordinary people, accustomed to business, would have made. We shall see how the queen chose that the affair should be managed.

During the month of March (before the attempt to go to Saint Cloud), the queen began her preparations for her escape to another kingdom. Madame Campan (in whom she had perfect trust, and with good reason) was in attendance upon her during that month. The queen employed her in buying and getting made an immense quantity of clothes. Madame Campan remonstrated with her upon this, saying that the queen of France would always be able to obtain linen and gowns wherever she went: but the queen was obstinate. Though it was necessary for Madame Campan to go out almost disguised to procure these things,—though she was obliged, for the sake of avoiding suspicion, to order six petticoats at one shop, and six at another, and to buy one gown in one street, and two in another,—and though this great load of things would be sure to attract notice, however they might be sent off, nothing could satisfy the queen but having with her a complete and splendid wardrobe for herself and the children; and this, after she and the king had a hundred times wondered how it came to be told in the newspapers that so many horses were kept saddled in their stables, and that such and such persons had paid them visits by the back-door. After having suffered for months from spies, the queen would not agree to the simple plan of doing nothing which spies might not see, and tell all Paris, if they chose. As it was, it was well-known when Madame Campan went out, where she went, and what about, from the very day her shopping began.

Madame Campan endeavoured to use more disguise by getting her own little boy measured for the clothes which were intended for the Dauphin; and by asking her sister to have the Princess Royal’s wardrobe made ready as if for her daughter. But these poor expedients were seen through, as might have been expected. How much easier and safer it would have been to have no ordering and making at all.

These clothes were not all to go by the same coach which conveyed the family. Most of them were sent in a trunk to one of the queen’s women, who was now at Arras, from whence she was to proceed to Brussels with these clothes, to meet her mistress. Of course, the sending off of this trunk was observed.

All this was not so foolish as what followed. The queen had a very large, expensive, and remarkable toilet-case, called a nécessaire, which contained everything wanted for the toilet, from her rarest essences and perfumes down to soap and combs. It was of fine workmanship, and had much expensive material and ornament about it. In short, it was fit for a splendid royal palace, and no other place. The queen consulted Madame Campan about how she should get this nécessaire away. Madame Campan entreated her not to think of taking it, saying that if it was moved from its place, on any pretence, it would be enough to excite the suspicions of all the spies about the court. The poor queen, however, seemed to think that she could no more do without her nécessaire than go without shoes to her feet. The nécessaire, she declared, she must have; and she hit upon a device which she thought very clever for deceiving any spies, but which deceived nobody, though Madame Campan herself hoped it might afford a chance of doing so. The queen agreed with the ambassador from Vienna (who was in her confidence), that he should come to her, while her hair was dressing, and, in the presence of all her attendants, request her to order a nécessaire precisely like her own, for her sister at Brussels, who wished to have exactly such an one. The ambassador did as he was desired; and the queen turned to Madame Campan, and requested her to have a nécessaire made by the pattern of the one before her. If the plan had succeeded, here was an expense of 500 pounds incurred, at the time when money was most particularly wanted, and great hazard run; and all because the queen could not be satisfied with such a dressing-case as other ladies use. Any of her friends could have supplied her with such an one as she was setting off.

The nécessaire was ordered in the middle of April. A month after, the queen inquired whether it would soon be done. The cabinet-maker said it could not be finished in less than six weeks more. The queen declared to Madame Campan that she could not wait for it; and that, as the order had been given in the presence of all her attendants, nobody would suspect anything if her own nécessaire was emptied and cleaned, and sent off to Brussels; and she gave positive orders that this should be done. Madame Campan ordered the wardrobe-woman, whose proper business it was, to have this order executed, as the archduchess could not wait so long as it would take to finish the new nécessaire; and she particularly desired that no perfume should be left hanging about any of the drawers which might be disagreeable to the archduchess.

One evening in May, the queen called Madame Campan to help her to wrap up in cotton, and pack, her jewels, which she sent, by the hands of a person she could trust, to Brussels. They sat in a little room by themselves, with the door locked, till seven o’clock, when the queen had to go to cards. She told Madame Campan that there was no occasion to put by the diamonds; they would be quite safe, as there was a sentinel under the window, and she herself should keep the key in her pocket. She appointed Madame Campan to be there early the next morning, to finish the packing; till which time the jewels lay on the sofa, some in cotton, and some without.

The same wardrobe-woman, Madame R—, who was ordered to empty the nécessaire, was clever about her business, and had been engaged in it for many years, and all the year round; so that the queen, without having much to do with her, had become accustomed to see her, liked her way of discharging her business, and did not dream of distrusting her. Madame Campan did, however. She knew that this lady, having grown rich in her office, gave parties, consisting chiefly of persons of politics opposed to the court,—several members of the Assembly of those politics being often there,—and one of Lafayette’s staff, Monsieur Gouvion, being a lover of Madame R—’s. This lady was indeed not to be trusted. On the 21st of this month of May, she went and made a declaration before the mayor, that she had no doubt the royal family were planning an escape. She told the whole story of the nécessaire, saying that everybody knew the queen was too fond of her own nécessaire to think of parting with it, when another might be had for a little waiting; and that the queen had often been heard to say how useful this article would be to her in travelling. Madame R— went on to declare that the queen had been engaged in packing her diamonds in the evening of such a day,—those diamonds having been seen by her lying about, half wrapped in cotton, on the sofa of such a room; and that Madame Campan had helped the queen, and, of course, knew all about it. It was plain that this woman had a key of the little room, and that she must have been in it, either in the evening while the queen was at cards, or very early the next morning.

The queen confided to Madame Campan a letter-case full of very valuable papers, which was immediately put into the hands of some faithful persons in the city. This proceeding also did not escape the quick eyes of Madame R—. She declared before the mayor that she saw a letter-case upon a chair, which had never been seen there before: that she observed the queen say something about it in a low voice to Madame Campan, after which it disappeared. The mayor took these depositions, as in duty bound: but he let them lie, not wishing to injure the royal family. So the queen went on, more hopeful every day, and not in the least suspecting that her scheme was seen through from beginning to end.

The other persons who were taking part in the plan were, a brave officer of the name of Bouillé, and a Swedish Count Fersen, helped by the Duke de Choiseul, who was a colonel in the French army.

Bouillé was near the frontier, collecting together such French soldiers as were loyal, and several Germans, under pretence of watching the Austrians. It was secretly settled for him to meet the royal family near the frontiers, and escort them beyond the reach of their enemies. They really had not to go very far. Montmédy, where Bouillé was making a fortified camp, was less than two hundred miles from Paris; and he meant to meet the royal family, with a guard of hussars, at some distance nearer Paris.

We have seen how the queen neglected the first precautions, and how much risk she ran about clothes and luggage. So it was with the other precautions we mentioned. She did, at one time, intend to send the children to Brussels, under the care of a gentleman who might be trusted; but she changed her mind, and resolved that the whole family, with attendants, should go together.

Again, instead of travelling in light carriages, and in the most ordinary style, so as to excite as little observation as possible, they must all go in the same carriage,—that is, the king, the queen, and two children, the Princess Elizabeth, and Madame de Tourzel,—six in one carriage, while the other attendant ladies were to follow in another. These were great difficulties; and it was over these difficulties that Count Fersen did all he could to help them. He declared, openly, that a Russian lady, a friend of his, the Baroness de Korff, was about to travel homewards, with her valet, waiting-woman, and two children, and that she wanted a carriage for that purpose. The Count pretended to be very particular about this carriage,—a large coach, called a berlin. He had a model made first; and employed the first coach-makers in France. When it was done, he and the Duke de Choiseul made trial of it in a drive through the streets of Paris. They then sent it to a certain Madame Sullivan’s, near the northern outskirts of the city. Count Fersen also bought several horses and a chaise, to convey, as he said, two waiting-women; and exerted himself much about getting the necessary passport for the Baroness de Korff and her party. It appeared that Count Fersen was uncommonly polite, or very much devoted to this Baroness de Korff.

In order to put Paris off its guard, the king and queen promised to be present at a great Catholic festival, in the church of the Assumption in Paris, on the 21st of June; meaning, however, to be off on the 20th.

Little Louis knew nothing of all that was going on, nor guessed, when he went to bed on the 20th of June, that he should have to get up again presently. As soon as it was dark, his governess took him up, and dressed him, and put a sort of hood over his head, which prevented his face being seen. He was probably as sleepy as a little boy of six, just waked up before eleven o’clock at night, was likely to be; and knew and cared little about what Madame de Tourzel was doing with him. His sister was dressed, and had a hood over her head too; and so had Madame de Tourzel. They were very quiet; for everybody in the palace but those who were in the secret believed that the king was now gone to bed. Somebody opened the doors for them, and showed them the way. They passed some sentinels who knew better than to ask them who they were; then went out through a back-door where there was no sentinel, along a court and a square, and into a street. A glass-coach was stationed before the door of Ronsin, the saddler, as if waiting for some visitors of Ronsin’s. The coachman, standing beside his horses, opened the door without any question, and let Madame de Tourzel and the children into the coach. This was no real coachman, however, but Count Fersen.

In a little while came another lady, attended by a servant, as it seemed. She said “Good night” cheerfully to him, and stepped into the coach. It was the Princess Elizabeth. If anybody in the street wondered to see ladies coming the same way, one after another, the answer was easy; they had, no doubt, been at the palace.

Presently, the coachman’s hand was again upon the door; and a gentleman, stout, in a round hat, was seen coming, leaning upon the arm of a servant. As he passed a sentinel, one of his shoe buckles gave way. He stooped down and clasped it. Glad were the party in the coach when the king stepped in. They were all there now but the queen; and it was rather odd that she should be the last.

One looked from the window, and then another watched; and still she did not come. It must have been a terrible worry,—waiting and waiting there,—the Count afraid of what everybody in the street might think of a coach standing so long before one door;—the party within afraid of something having happened to the queen. Minute after minute passed slowly away, and then,—“what is this? Here is some great man’s carriage, with lights all about it, dashing up the street!” It was Lafayette’s carriage, evidently in a prodigious hurry: and it went under the arch; it was certainly going to the palace.

Itwasgoing to the palace. Madame R—’s eyes were as quick as ever. She had told her lover perpetually that she was sure the royal family were going off; and Gouvion had kept constantly on the watch, but could discover nothing. This evening she had told him that she was sure they meant to go in the night. Gouvion sent an express for Lafayette, who came directly. He thought he met no one in the courts,—saw nothing suspicious. The sentinels were all at their posts, and the royal family (as all the palace believed) quietly in their chambers. So Lafayette went away again, telling his officer that he must have been deceived, and bidding him beware of treachery.

Lafayette was mistaken if he thought he had met no one within the precincts of the palace. Under the arch he had whirled past two people,—a lady in white, with something in her hand, leaning on a man’s arm. The lady had even touched the spoke of one of his carriage-wheels with that which she had in her hand,—a sort of switch, which it was then the fashion for ladies to carry. This lady was the queen, and she was conducted by a faithful body-guard. However faithful this man might be, he did not know the way; and the queen’s guard on such an occasion should also have been a well-qualified guide. The queen was flurried with meeting the enemy’s carriage rumbling under the archway, with its flaring lights; and, on entering the square, she took the turn to the right hand instead of the left. She and her guard wandered far away, over the bridge, and they knew not where. The queen of France wandering through the streets of Paris, losing her way on foot at midnight! What could she have thought of a situation so new? How must her guard have felt, with such a charge upon his arm! And the Count, standing beside the hackney-coach-door; and the party within! We may hope that Louis was fast asleep upon Madame de Tourzel’s lap, forgetting all about where he was.

A hackney-coachman came up, and began to talk. The Swedish count talked as like a hackney-coachman as he could. They took a pinch of snuff together, would rather not drink together, and the real hackney-coachman bade good-night, and went off without making any discovery. The clocks had struck midnight by this time; but soon after the queen appeared. She had had to inquire her way, which was dangerous. Her companion and the king’s were to go with them; so they jumped up, the Count was on the box in a moment; and off they drove,—six inside and three out.

In a little while there was another panic. The king was sure they were going the wrong way. They ought to leave Paris by the north-eastern road; but they were now going straight north. The king might have been sure that the Count knew which way to drive, after managing so well all else that he had to do. He was only going to Madame Sullivan’s, to make sure that the new berlin was gone to the place where they were to meet it. All was right. Count Fersen’s servant had called for the Baroness de Korff’s coach, an hour and a half before. So on they went, through the north entrance, turning immediately eastwards; and when fairly free of Paris, they came in sight of the great coach, waiting by the roadside, with its six horses, and the Count’s coachman on the box.

The party made haste to settle themselves in the berlin; for too much time had been lost already. Count Fersen was again the driver. His coachman went off in another direction, to have his master’s chariot ready for him, at some distance on the north road. Who then was there to drive home the glass-coach? Nobody. So they turned the horses’ heads towards the city, and set them off by themselves; and the coach was found next day in a ditch. Still there was another meeting to take place. At the hamlet of Bondy they were to meet the two waiting-women, with their luggage in the new chaise, and postilions with fresh horses. There they were at Bondy, while every one else was asleep. They had been waiting some time. Here Count Fersen took his leave. How must the party have felt towards him! How must they have longed to say what they must not say before the postilions, in whose eyes Count Fersen must be a driver, and nothing more! He met his coachman and chariot on the north road, and got safely away. It must have given him satisfaction all the rest of his life to look back on this adventure, in which his part was so admirably performed. Perhaps, if he had been of the party for another day or two, things might have gone better with the fugitives than they did.

Now they had to take care of their behaviour, lest, by any forgetfulness, they should cause suspicion as to who they were. Madame de Tourzel had to act the Baroness de Korff, and call the princess and the dauphin her children. The king, who wore a wig, was her valet, and the queen her waiting-maid. The Princess Elizabeth was her travelling companion. We know nothing of how they supported these characters at the places where they stopped. One may imagine the queen putting some spirit into her part; but one can never fancy the king doing anything in the service of Madame de Tourzel. They stopped as little as they could, however; and yet they did not get on fast. How should a heavy coach, with nine people in and on it, get on fast? How much wiser would it have been to have travelled separately, and like other people! The king’s brother and his lady did so; going in common carriages towards Flanders, by different roads, and finding no difficulty. At one point their roads crossed, and they happened to meet while changing horses. They had the presence of mind to take no notice, and drove off their separate ways without a look or sign. The Princess de Lamballe travelled in the same way towards England, without impediment. It was lamentable folly in the king and queen to choose a way of journeying which must attract all eyes.

This sort of notice began almost before it was light. About sunrise they passed, in the wood of Bondy, a poor herb-man, with his ass and panniers of greens. When the hue and cry began, this herb-man told of the fine new berlin he had seen in the wood of Bondy; and thus set pursuers upon their track. Besides the eight horses wanted for the two carriages, there were more for the three body-guards, mounted and dressed as couriers, but knowing nothing about courier’s business, as the people along the road must have found out, while watching the changing of eleven horses at the different stages. Then the berlin wanted some repairs, and this detained them at Étoges: and the king would get out, and walk up the hills, and they had to wait for him: so that though they gave double money to the drivers to get on fast, they had gone only sixty-nine miles by ten at night. This slowness ruined everything.

The Duke de Choiseul, Count Fersen’s friend, had left Paris ten hours before the royal family, and was waiting, with a party of hussars, at a village, some way beyond Chalons. If the party had kept their time, they would have met their guard, and, finding more and more soldiers all along the road, would have been safe. There would have been no time for the attention of the country people to be fixed on the gathering of military in the neighbourhood. The Duke de Choiseul’s pretence for his party was that they were to guard a treasure that was expected. The “treasure” did not arrive; the soldiers lounged about; and it was all their officers could do to keep them out of public-houses, where they would be questioned and made suspicious;—for, of course, they knew nothing of the meaning of their errand. It was a great misfortune, too, that the queen had changed her mind about the day, when it was too late to warn some of the officers; and they, supposing the party to have set off on the 19th, were now in great dismay; and their soldiers were lounging about twenty-four hours sooner than they should have been. The village politicians did not like what they saw. They began to say to one another that no treasure ought to be leaving the kingdom. Any treasure which had to be guarded by soldiers must be public treasure, belonging to the people, which no one had any right to carry away. Some of these rang the alarm-bell of their parish church; and from several places, parties of the national soldiery went out to explore the roads, and met parties of the national soldiery from other places. They agreed that there must be something wrong. At Saint Menehould, the National Volunteers demanded three hundred muskets from the town-hall, and stood armed: the same Saint Menehould where the former arrival of the queen as dauphiness had been awaited in a far different temper. In short, the hussars had to ride away, and leave the “treasure” to take its chance. Thus all was confusion, expectation, and alarm along the road, for hours before the berlin appeared: the very road by which the queen had entered France, amidst cheers of welcome, in her bridal days!

It appeared afterwards that it was the king’s wish to have these soldiers in waiting along the road, while his advisers thought it would be better to keep up the story of the Baroness de Korff till the party actually drew near Montmédy. As it turned out, the king not only lost his desired security, but, by his and the queen’s management together, the whole region beyond Chalons was in an uproar before they entered it. Meantime, the party had travelled only sixty-nine of their two hundred miles in twenty-two hours; and little Louis must have been sadly tired before they had gone nearly half-way.

On and on they went, however, through the night and all the next day, little knowing how fast messengers from Paris were racing all over the kingdom, to give the news of their flight. Lafayette had been roused, at six in the morning of the 21st, by a note from a gentleman who had been informed that the king’s rooms at the Tuileries were empty. The whole city was in consternation, and Lafayette’s life in great danger. Tranquillity was preserved, however. Messengers galloped off in every direction; and one of these it was who, going north-east, spread the alarm which made the herb-man go and tell what he had seen in the wood of Bondy. Little did the travelling party think how much faster the mounted messengers were going than they: and on they lumbered, the eleven horses whisking their tails, and the king taking his time in walking up the hills, while the alarm was flying abroad.

It was near sunset on the second evening, when they had gone about one hundred and seventy miles, that one of the body-guards, mounted and dressed in yellow as a courier, came prancing into the village of Saint Menehould. His dress attracted all eyes; and so did his proceedings. The gazers saw that this odd courier did not know the post-house; for he spurred past it, and had to inquire for it. The master of the post, Drouet, of revolutionary politics, was in a very bad humour, and had been so all day, having been angry about the mysterious hussars in the morning, and no less angry at seeing the village now full of dragoons, from another quarter, whose business here he could not understand. These dragoons, strolling through the streets, touched their helmets to the party in the carriage, which the waiting-maid of the baroness acknowledged with remarkable grace. The dragoon officer, Dandoins, at first delighted to see the party arrive, presently did not like what he saw, and was pretty sure the village had taken the alarm. He looked full at the pretended courier, from the side pavement, as much as to say, “Be quick! Make haste to change horses, and be off.” The dull fellow, not understanding what he meant, came up to him, to know whether he had anything to say. All which was observed by a hundred eyes. Drouet’s eyes were the quickest. He thought that the waiting-maid’s face was like somebody he had seen somewhere in Paris; and the valet, how very like the king! He called to a friend to bring him, quick, a new assignat. (Note: A promissory note which passed as money, like a bank-note. It bore an engraving of the king’s head.) The king’s head there, and the valet’s head in the carriage, were exactly alike. Now Drouet understood the meaning of his village being filled with hussars in the morning, and dragoons in the afternoon.

The great coach was just driving off; and he dared not stop it, while the armed dragoons were standing about, even if he had been absolutely certain that he had seen the king and queen; which he could not be. So he let them drive off; and then told the friend that had brought him the assignat, desiring him to saddle two of the fleetest horses in the post-house, while he stepped over to the town-hall, to give the alarm. While they rode off, the report got abroad through the whole village. Dandoins wanted his dragoons to mount and ride; but they were hungry, and would have some bread and cheese first. While they were eating, the National Volunteers drew up, with their bayonets fixed, to prevent their leaving the village. The dragoons were willing to stay, and side with the people: and stay they did; only the quarter-master cutting his way through, and riding off with a pocket-book, containing secret despatches, which Dandoins had managed to slip into his hand.

The berlin went on faster now; but not so fast as Drouet and his companion were following; while the quarter-master was spurring on to overtakethem, if possible. What a race!—the fate of France probably depending upon it!

About six miles before coming to Varennes, the party observed a horseman passing, at a gallop, from behind, close by the coach-window. In passing, he shouted something which the noise of their carriage-wheels prevented their hearing exactly. They caught the sound, however; and when all was over, agreed that he must have said, “You are discovered!” They did not know whether to take this man for a friend or an enemy. They received another warning from one who was no enemy. A beggar, who asked alms of the king at a place where the coach stopped, said, with much feeling, “Your Majesty is known. May God take care of you! May Providence watch over you!”

The quarter-master, on reaching Clermont after them, called up the dragoons who were gone to bed; and afewof them followed the royal carriage, under the command of a Cornet Rémy. But they lost their way in the dark, and floundered about in fields and lanes, stumbling over fences, before they found the direction in which they should go to Varennes. The rest of the dragoons at Clermont,—all but two,—struck their swords into the scabbard when ordered to draw, and declared for the people, instead of the king.

The Duke de Choiseul, with his hussars, was all the while stumbling about in the cross country, finding it difficult enough to get to Varennes, as he must avoid the high roads. Some of his troop fell and were hurt; and their comrades refused to go on without them. Towards midnight, the alarm-bell of Varennes was heard through the darkness. The duke said it was no doubt some fire: but in his heart he had strong fears of the truth.

Bouillé, junior, sent by his father, had been waiting with his troop six hours at Varennes: and he, supposing that the party would not arrive this day, was in bed and asleep when the berlin reached the village, at eleven o’clock. His troop were, some of them, drinking in the public-houses. None of them were ready; and the royal party tried in vain to discover through the thick darkness any sign of a friendly guard, where they had made sure of meeting one. If they could but find these hussars, they believed they should be safe; for they had now no more towns to pass through, and no great way to go.

The berlin stood on the top of the hill, at the entrance of Varennes, while their pretended couriers were riding about, rousing the sleeping village, in search of horses to go on with. The horses were standing, the whole time, all ready, by the orders of the Duke de Choiseul, in the upper village, over the bridge; and the men never found this out. They might have changed horses in five minutes, and proceeded, without having wakened a single person in the place; instead of which, the carriages actually stood five-and-thirty minutes on the top of the hill, while this blundering was going on. The king argued with the postilions about proceeding another stage: but their horses were so tired, they would not hear of it.

In the midst of this argument, two riders came up from behind, checked their horses for a moment on recognising the berlin, which they could just make out in the dark; and then pushed on quickly into the village. It was Drouet and his companion.

They rode to the Golden Arms tavern, told the landlord what they came for, and proceeded to block up the bridge with waggons, and whatever else they could find. And the fugitives might have passed that bridge above half an hour before, and be now speeding on with the fresh horses that were standing ready,—if only young Bouillé had not gone to bed; or even if, instead of one of their useless servants, they had had a courier who knew the road, and could have told them of the upper village! Was ever an expedition so mismanaged?

Before the berlin came up (the horses somewhat refreshed with meal and water), the bridge was well barricaded; and (the landlord having roused three or four companions) about half-a-dozen men, with muskets and lanterns hidden under their coats, were standing under an archway, awaiting the party. Suddenly the lanterns shone out, the horses’ bridles were seized, and a man thrust the barrel of a musket in at each window, exclaiming, “Ladies, your passports!”

This was one of the moments which occur now and then in the course of men’s lives, as if to show what they are made of. This was the occasion, if the king had been a man of spirit, to forget that he had blood to spill,—to assert his rights as a ruler and as an innocent man,—to daunt his enemies, and rouse his friends,—to carry off his family in triumph,—to save his crown and kingdom, his life and reputation. Things much more difficult have been done. His enemies were but six; and he and his body-guards might have resisted them till Bouillé was roused by the noise, to come up with his hussars, to help and save. It is true, the king did not know that his enemies were but six: but a man of spirit would have seen how many they were before he yielded. It is true he did not know that Bouillé was in bed, and his hussars drinking in the village: but a man of spirit would have trusted that help would rise up, or have done without it in such an extremity, rather than yield. Instead of this, what did the king do? He heard what his enemies had to say.

One of the six was Monsieur Sauce, a grocer who lived in the market-place, and a magistrate. He said, in the name of his party, that, whether the travellers were the Baroness de Korff and suite, or of a higher rank still, it would be better that they should alight, and remain at his house till morning.

With what a bursting heart must the queen have seen the king quietly doing as he was bid! For twenty-one years she had suffered what a high spirit must suffer in being closely united with a companion who has none; but the agony of this moment must have exceeded all former trials of the kind. She, the woman and the wife, must obey, to her own destruction, and that of all who belonged to her. She said little; but there was afterwards a visible sign of what she must have endured. In this one night, her beautiful hair turned white, as if forty years had at once fallen upon her head.

The king stepped out of the coach, and the ladies followed him. They took each an arm of Monsieur Sauce, and walked across the market-place to his shop, the king following, with a child holding either hand. It was strange confusion for little Louis. This was the third night that he had spent out of his bed. He had been asleep,—the whole party had been asleep in the coach; and now this disputing, and the flare of the lanterns, and the presenting the muskets, and the having to get out and walk, must have been perplexing and terrifying to the poor little fellow. There was much noise round about. The alarm-bell was clanging; there were lights in all the windows: men poured out of the houses, half-dressed, and rolled barrels, and laid felled trees across the road, that no help might arrive on the king’s behalf.

And what did the king do next? He asked for something to eat! “Something to eat” was always a great object with him; and he seemed to find comfort under all trials in his good appetite. He sat now in an upper story of Monsieur Sauce’s house, eating bread and cheese and drinking Burgundy,—declaring that this bottle of Burgundy was the best he ever tasted. One wonders that the queen’s heart was not quite broken. She believed that there was yet a chance. She saw Monsieur Sauce’s old mother kneeling, and praying for her king and queen, while the tears ran down her cheeks. The queen saw that Monsieur Sauce looked frequently towards his wife, while the king talked with him, explaining that he meant no harm to the nation, but good, since he could come to a better understanding with his people when at a distance and in freedom. Monsieur Sauce, the queen saw, looked so frequently towards his wife, that it was plain that he would act according to her judgment. The queen of France therefore kneeled to the grocer’s wife to implore mercy and aid. Fain would the grocer’s wife have aided her sovereign, if she dared: but she dared not. Again and again she said, “Think what it is you ask, madame. Your situation is very grievous; but you see what we should be exposed to. They would cut off my husband’s head. A wife must consider her husband first.”

“Very true,” replied the queen. “My husband is your king. He has made you all happy for many years; and wishes to do so still.” Whatever Madame Sauce might think of the poor queen’s belief that her husband had made his people happy, she replied only, as before, that she could not induce Monsieur Sauce to put his life in danger.

The leaders of the different military parties, hearing one alarm-bell after another beginning to toll through the whole region, made prodigious exertions to reach Varennes, and did so. The Duke de Choiseul and his troop surmounted the barricade, and got in; and the hussars promised fidelity to “the king—the king! And the queen!” as they kept exclaiming. They were led forward to beset Monsieur Sauce’s house: but Drouet shouted to his national soldiery to stand to their cannon. On hearing of cannon, the hussars drew back: though Drouet’s cannon were only two empty, worn-out, useless field-pieces, which seemed fit only to make a clatter on the pavement.

Count Damas had also arrived; and the king sat consulting with these officers and the magistrates of Varennes,—consulting, when he, with the aid which had arrived, should have been forcing his way out towards the frontier. There he sat, as usual, unable to decide upon anything; and while he sat doubting, the national soldiery poured in to the number of three thousand, and would presently amount to ten thousand. While he thus sat doubting, the people were handing jugs of wine about among the hussars; and when their commander came out from Monsieur Sauce’s, at the end of an hour, he found them tipsy, and declaring for the nation against the king.

There was still one other chance—one more opportunity of choice for him whose misfortune was that he never could make a choice. Another loyal officer, Deslons, arrived, with a hundred horse-soldiers. He left his hundred horse outside the barricade, entered himself, and offered to cut out the royal party,—to rescue them by the sword, if the king would order him to do so. “Will it be hot work?” asked the king. “Very hot,” was the answer; and the king would give no orders.—In the bitterness of her regrets, the queen said afterwards, at Paris, that no one who knew what had been the king’s answer to Count d’Inisdal about being carried off, should have asked him for orders;—that the officers should have acted without saying a word to him.

The children were asleep on a bed up-stairs, and the ladies remonstrating with Madame Sauce, from hour to hour of this dreadful night: and the end of it all was that it was decided by somebody that the party were to go back to Paris, as the people in the market-place were loudly demanding. The poor queen’s doubts and fears thus ended in despair. Weary as they all were,—after having travelled so far, and escaped so many dangers,—and now so near the frontier, so near Bouillé’s camp, so close upon the queen’s own country,—they were to pursue their weary way back to Paris,—journeying in disgrace, prisoners in the eyes of all the people, to be plunged again into the midst of their enemies, now enraged by their flight. It would have been easier to a spirit like the queen’s to have died, with those who belonged to her, in one more struggle,—in one rush to the camp, than to undergo the slow despair of a return among their enemies.

Her feelings were understood,—the case was understood,—by one of the attendants who had travelled in the chaise,—the Dauphin’s head waiting-woman. Hoping that gaining time might afford a chance, she threw herself on a bed, and pretended to be taken suddenly ill, and in an agony of pain. The queen went to the bedside, and the woman squeezed her hand, to make her understand the pretence. The queen declared that she could not think of leaving in this state a faithful servant who had encountered many dangers and fatigues for the sake of the family; but a device so obvious was seen through at once, and no indulgence was allowed. The woman had to get off the bed and enter the chaise again.

The great berlin travelled back more slowly than it came, being surrounded by sixty thousand National Guards, besides the crowds of other people who drew near to see the captive royal family. There was so much indecent joy, so much insult shown by the ignorant and fierce among the crowd, that civility which would have been thought nothing of at another time touched the feelings of the unhappy ladies. The queen was delighted with the manners of a lady at whose house they rested,—the wife of Monsieur Renard, the mayor of Ferté-sous-Jouarre. The mayor waited upon the king at table; and Madame Renard did all she could to make the ladies comfortable. Everything was done so quietly that the queen did not discover, for a long time, who she was. When, at length, the queen inquired whether she was not the mistress of the house, Madame Renard replied, “I was so, Madame, before your Majesty honoured this abode with your presence.” To us there appears some affectation in this speech; but the queen was now so unused to homage from strangers that she shed tears at the words.

The Dauphin did not travel back, as he came, on the lap of Madame de Tourzel. The National Assembly sent three of its members from Paris to meet and travel with the royal family. Two of these members were to be in the carriage with the king; so that Madame de Tourzel had to turn out. The other member and she joined the two waiting-maids in the carriage behind. The pretended couriers were bound with cords, and rode conspicuous to all eyes on the top of the berlin.

Monsieur Barnave, one of the king’s new travelling companions, was so considerate, polite, and gentlemanly, that the royal party decided and declared that, if ever they regained their power, Monsieur Barnave should be pardoned the part he had taken in the Revolution. It does not seem to have occurred to them that they might have been prejudiced against him and others,—that the revolutionary leaders might not have been altogether so wicked and detestable as the Court had been accustomed to call them. Barnave, on his part, seems to have been touched by the sorrows of the queen; and it is probable that he discovered now that he had been prejudiced—too strongly wrought upon by the queen’s enemies.

A poor clergyman, endeavouring to reach the carriages to offer his loyal greeting, was seized, and roughly handled by the furious mob. Barnave feared they would kill him, as they had already killed one person under similar circumstances. He threw himself almost out of the coach-door as he cried, “Tigers, have you ceased to be Frenchmen? From being brave fellows have you turned assassins?” The Princess Elizabeth, fearing lest he should fall out of the carriage, grasped the skirt of his coat; and the queen told Madame Campan afterwards that she could not but be struck with the oddity of seeing the Princess Elizabeth taking care of the safety of a man whom they had all abhorred as a rebel and a traitor. So vehemently had the whole Court thus detested him, that Madame Campan could scarcely believe her senses when she heard the queen speak with earnest regard of the revolutionary Barnave. This is another circumstance which indicates how much guilt and misery might have been saved if the adverse parties could early have come to an understanding and made their mutual complaints face to face.

Barnave’s companion, Pétion, disgusted them all; including Barnave. He behaved with ostentatious rudeness and brutality. The king began to converse with him upon the condition of the nation, and to explain the reasons of his own conduct, saying that he wished to strengthen the government so far as to enable it tobea government, since France could not be a republic... “Not yet, indeed,” interrupted Pétion; “for the French are not ripe for a republic yet.” This brutal reply silenced the king, who spoke no more till he entered Paris.

The ladies offered refreshments to their new companions. Barnave said he had to occupy their Majesties with the serious business on which he was sent, but would not trouble them with his personal wants.

Pétion ate and drank greedily. He threw chicken-bones out of the window, past the king’s face; and when the Princess Elizabeth poured out wine for him, he jerked his glass, instead of speaking, to show that there was enough. He took Louis on his knees, and twisted his fingers in the child’s curly hair. When eager in conversation, he twitched the boy’s hair so as to make him call out. The queen held out her arms, saying, “Give me my son. He is accustomed to tender care, and to treatment very unlike this familiarity.”

The great coach entered Paris on the Saturday evening, slowly rolling on through hundreds of thousands of gazers. A placard had been stuck up through one region of the city, in the morning, declaring that whoever insulted the king should be caned: whoever applauded him should be hanged. The people were quiet, gaped and stared, and seemed neither very much pleased nor very angry. The king now began to speak once more. As one body of official personages after another met him, he said, over and over again, with an embarrassed sort of smile, “Well, here I am!” Again we cannot help thinking what a pity it was that he was not a locksmith, happy in his workshop in one of the meaner streets of Paris. As for his little son, how happy would Louis now have been to be the son of the poor herb-man in the wood of Bondy, gathering his dewy herbs in the fresh, free morning air and sunshine, and going to sleep at sundown, far from crowds and quarrels and fears! Never more was this unfortunate child in the open country. He had this day seen the last of green fields, breezy hills, and waving woods.

The couriers were the first objects of the people’s wrath. Some at length left off staring at the king and queen, and seizing the three men in yellow liveries, would have massacred them, if the Assembly had not sent a force to rescue them.

Glad was the poor queen to get out of sight of the hundreds of thousands of gazers, and to be within the courts of the Tuileries: but she found little comfort there. Three women only were appointed to wait on her; and those three were Madame R— the spy, her sister, and niece. It was only after the king had remonstrated with General Lafayette, that the queen could obtain the attendance of her former servants. She much needed the presence of some to whom she could speak without restraint; and yet this was an indulgence she found it prudent to wait for. Immediately on her arrival she caused these few lines, unsigned, to be forwarded by a faithful hand to Madame Campan:—“I dictate this from my bath, by which my bodily strength at least may be recruited. I can say nothing of the state of my mind. We exist: that is all. Do not return till summoned by me. This is very important.” It was not till seven or eight weeks after that Madame Campan saw her royal mistress. The queen was then rising from bed. She took off her cap, and showed her hair, white as any aged person’s, saying that it had become bleached in one night.

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