After the repast, the King called the three Lifeguards into council with the Queen and Lady Elizabeth.
"Gentlemen," he began, "yesterday, M. Petion proposed that you should flee in disguise, but the Queen and I opposed the plan for fear it was a plot. This day he repeats the offer, pledging his honor as a representative, and I believe you ought to hear the idea."
"Sire, we humbly beg," replied Charny for the others, "that we may be free to take the hint or leave it."
"I pledge myself to put no pressure on you. Your desires be done."
The astonished Queen looked at Charny without understanding the growing indifference she remarked in his determination not to swerve from his duty. She said nothing but let the King conduct the conversation.
"Now that you reserve freedom, here are Petion's own words," he went on. "Sire, there is no safeguard for your attendants in Paris. Neither I, nor Barnave nor Latour can answer for shielding them even at peril of our lives, for their blood is claimed by the people.'"
Charny exchanged a look with the other two bodyguards who smiled with scorn.
"Well?" he said.
"M. Petion suggests that he should provide three National Guards suits and you might in them get away this night."
Charny consulted his brother officers who replied with the same smile.
"Sire," he replied, "our days are set apart for your Majesty, having deigned to accept the homage, it is easier for us to die than separate. Do us the favor to treat us as you have been doing. Of all your court and army and Lifeguards, three havestood staunch; do not rob them of the only glory they yearn for, namely to be true to the last."
"It is well, gentlemen," said, the Queen; "but you understand that you are no longer servants but brothers." She took her tablets from her pockets. "Let us know the names of your kinsfolk so that, should you fall in the struggle, we can tell the loved ones how it happened and soothe them as far as in our power lies."
Malden named his old, infirm mother and Valory his young orphan sister. The Queen stopped in her writing to wipe her eyes.
"Count," she said, turning to Charny, "we know that you have no one to mention as you have lost your two brothers——"
"Yes, they had the happiness to perish for your sake," said the nobleman "but the latter to fall leaves a poor girl recommended in a kind of will found upon him. He stole her away from her family which will never forgive her. So long as I live she and her child never shall want, but, as your Majesty says with her admirable courage, we are all in the face of death, and if death strikes me down, she and her babe will be penniless. Madam, deign to write the name of this poor country girl, and if I die like the others of the house of Charny, for my august master and noble mistress, lower your generosity to Catherine Billet and her child, in Villedovray."
No doubt the idea of George Charny expiring like his brothers was too dreadful a picture for the hearer, for in swaying back with a faint cry, she let the tablets fall and sank giddily on a chair. The two Guards hastened to her while Charny caught up the memo-book and inscribed the name and address.
The Queen recovered and said: "Gentlemen, do not leave me without kissing my hand."
The Lifeguards obeyed, but when it came Charny's turn he barely brushed the hand with his lips. It seemed to him sacrilege when he was carrying Andrea's letter on his heart. The Queen sighed: never had she so accurately measured the depth of the gulf between her and her lover, widening daily.
As the Guards therefore replied next day to the Committeemen that they would not change their attire from what the King authorized them to wear, Barnave had an extra seat placed in front of them with two grenadiers to occupy it so as to shield them in some degree.
At ten A. M. they quitted Meaux for Paris, from which they had been five days absent.
What an unfathomable abyss had deepened in those few days.
At a league beyond Meaux the accompanying sightseers took an aspect more frightful than before. All the dwellers of the Paris suburbs flocked to the road. Barnave tried to make the postillions go at a trot but the Claye National Guard blocked the way with their bayonets and it would be imprudent to try to break that dam: comprehending the danger, the Queen supplicated the deputies not to vex the mob—it was a formidable storm growling and felt to be coming.
Such was the press that the horses could hardly move at a walk.
It had never been hotter, the air seemed fire.
The insolent curiosity of the people pursued the royal prisoners right up to the carriage interior. Men mounted upon it and clung to the horses. It was a miracle that Charny and his comrades were not killed over and over again. The two grenadiers failed to fend off the attacks:appealsin the name of the Assembly were drowned by the hooting.
Two thousand men formed the vanguard, and double that number closed up the rear. On the flanks rolled an incalculable gathering.
The air seemed to fail as they neared Paris as though that giant inhaled it all. The Queen was suffocating, and when the King begged for a glass of wine it was proposed that he should have a sponge dipped in gall and vinegar.
At Lavillette, the multitude was beyond the power of sight to estimate; the pavement was so covered that they could not move. Windows, walls, doors, all were crammed. The trees were bending under the novel living fruit.
Everybody wore their hats, for the walls had been placarded:
"Flogging for whoever salutes the King: hanging for him who insults him."
All this was so appalling that the Commissioners dared not go down St. Martin's Street Without-the-City, a crowded way full of horrors, where Berthier Savigny had been torn to pieces and other barbarities committed.
So they made the circuit and went by the Champs Elysees.
The concourse of spectators was still more great and broke up the ranks of the soldiery.
It was the third time Louis had entered by this dread entrance.
All Paris rushed hither. The King and the Queen saw a vast sea of heads, silent, sombre and threatening, with hats on. Still more alarming was the double row of National Guards, all the way to the Tuileries, their muskets held butt up as if at a funeral. It was a funeral procession indeed, for the monarchy of seven centuries!
This slowly toiling carriage was the hearse taking royalty to the grave.
On perceiving this long file of Guards the soldiers of the escort greeted them with "Long Live the Nation!" and that was the cry bursting out along the line from the barrier to the palace.
All the bystanders joined in, a cry of brotherhood uttered by the whole of France, but this one family was excluded.
Behind the cab following the royal carriage came a chaise, open but covered with green boughs on account of the heat; it contained Drouet and two others who had arrested the King. Fatigue had forced them to ride.
Billet alone, indefatigable, as if revenge made him bronze, kept on horseback and seemed to lead the whole procession.
Louis noticed that the statue of his ancestor, on Louis XV. Square, had the eyes bandaged; in token of the blindness of rulers, Petion explained.
Spite of all, the mob burst all bars and stormed the carriage. Suddenly the Queen saw at the windows those hideous men with implacable speech who come to the surfaceon certain days like the sea monsters seen only in tempestuous weather.
Once she was so terrified that she pulled down the sash, whereupon a dozen furious voices demanded the reason.
"I am stifling," she stammered.
"Pooh, we will stifle you in quite another way, never fear," replied a rough voice while a dirty fist smashed the window.
Nevertheless the cortege reached the grand terrace steps.
"Oh, gentlemen, save the Lifeguards," cried the Queen, particularly to Barnave and Petion.
"Have you any preference?" asked the former.
"No," she answered, looking at him full and square.
She required that the King and the royal children should first alight.
The next ten minutes were thecruelestof her life. She was under the impression, not that she would be killed—prompt death would be nothing—but made the sport of the mob or dragged away into jail whence she would issue only after a trial handing her over to ignominious death.
As she stepped forth, under the ceiling of steel made by the swords and bayonets of the soldiers, Barnave gathered to cover her. Even as a giddiness made her close her eyes, she caught a glimpse down the flashing vista of a face she remembered. This face seemed to be the centre of the multitudinous eyes of the mob: from his glance would come the cue for her immolation. It was the terrible man who had in a mysterious manner at Taverney Manor raised the veil over the future. He whom she had seen at Sevres on returning from Versailles. He who appeared merely to foretell greatcatastrophesor to witness their fulfillment.
And yet if Cagliostro, was he not dead in the dungeons of the Pope?
To be assured that her sight did not deceive her, she darted down the tunnel of steel, strong against realities but not against this sinister vision.
It seemed to her that the earth gave way under her tread; that all whirled round her, palace, gardens, trees, the countlesspeople; that vigorous arms seized her and carried her away amid deafening yells. She heard the Lifeguards shouting,calling the wrath upon them to turn it aside from its true aim. Opening her eyes an instant, she beheld Charny between the pair hurled from the box—pale and handsome, as ever, he fought with ten men at once, with the nobleman's smile of scorn and the martyr's light in his gaze. From Charny her eyes went back to the man whose myrmidons ruled the storm and swept her out of the maelstrom. With terror she undoubtedly recognized the magician of Taverney and Sevres.
"You, it is you!" she gasped, trying to repel him with her rigid hands.
"Yes, it is I," he hissed in her ear. "I still need you to push the throne into its last gulf, and so I save you!"
She could support no more, but screaming, she swooned.
Meanwhile the mob, defrauded of the chief morsel, were tearing the Lifeguards to pieces and carrying Billet and Drouet in triumph.
When the Queen came to her senses she was in her sleeping room in the Tuileries. Her favorite bed-chamber women, Lady Misery and Madam Campan were at hand. Though they told her the Dauphin was safe, she rose and went to see him: he was in sleep after the great fright.
She looked at him for a long time, haunted by the words of that awful man: "I save you because you are needed to hurl the throne over into the last abyss." Was it true that she would destroy the monarchy? Were her enemies guarding her that she might accomplish the work of destruction better than themselves? But would this gulf close after swallowing the King, the throne and herself? Would not her two children go down in it also? In religions of the past alone is innocence safe to disarm the gods?
Abraham's sacrifice had not been accepted, but it was not so in Jephthaph's case.
These were gloomy thoughts for a Queen, gloomier still for a mother.
She shook her head and went slowly back to her rooms. She noticed the disorder she was in and took a bath and was attired more fitly.
The news awaiting her was not so black as she had feared; all three Lifeguards had been saved from the mob, mainly by Petion who screened a good heart under his rough bark. Malden and Valory were in the palace, bruised, wounded, but alive. Nobody knew where Charny was in refuge after having been snatched from the ruffians.
At these words from Madam Campan, such a deadly pallor came over the Queen's countenance that the Lady thought it was from anxiety about the count and she hastened to say:
"But there need be no alarm about his coming back to the palace; the countess has a town house and of course he will hasten there."
This was just what she feared and what made her lose color.
She wanted to dress, as if she would be allowed to go out of the palace prison to inquire about his fate, when he was announced as present in the other room.
"Oh, he is keeping his word," muttered the Queen which her attendants did not understand.
Her toilet hastily completed, she ordered the count to be introduced into hersitting room, where she joined him.
He had also dressed for the reception, for he wore the naval uniform in which she had first seen him. Never had he been calmer, handsomer and more elegant, and she could not believe that this beau was the man whom she had seen the mob fall upon a while before.
"Oh, my lord, I hope you were told how distressed I was on your behalf and that I was sending out for tidings?"
"Madam, you may be sure that I did not go away till I learned that you were safe and sound," was his rejoinder. "And now that I am assured by sight, and hearing of the health of your children and the King, I think it proper to ask leave to give personal news to my lady the countess."
The Queen pressed her hand to her heart as if to ascertain if this blow had not deadened it, and said in a voice almost strangled by the dryness of her throat:
"It is only fair, my lord, and I wonder how it is that you did not ask before this."
"The Queen forgets my promise not to see the countess without her permission."
"I suppose, though, in your ardor to see the lady again, you could do without it?"
"I think the Queen unjust to me," he replied. "When I left Paris I believed it was to part from her forever. During the journey I did all that was humanly possible to make the journey a success. It is not my fault that I did not lose my life like my brother or was not cut to pieces on the road or in the Tuileries Gardens. Had I the honor to conduct your Majesty across the frontier, I should have lived in exile with you, or if I were fated to die, I should have died without seeing the countess. But, I repeat, I cannot, being again in town, give the lady this mark of indifference, not to show her I am alive, particularly as I no longer have my brother Isidore as my substitute; at all events, either M. Barnave is wrong or your Majesty was of the same opinion only yesterday."
The Queen glided her arm along the chair-arm and following the movement with her body said:
"You must love this woman fondly to give me this pain so coldly?"
"Madam, at a time when I did not think of such a thing, as there was but one woman the world for me—it will soon be six years—this woman being placed too high above me for me to hope for her, as well as under an indissoluble bond—you gave me as wife Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, imposed her on me! In these six years my hand has not twice touched hers; without necessity I have not spoken a word to her and our glances have not met a dozen times. My life has been occupied by another love, the thousand tasks, cares and combats agitating man's existence in camp and court. I have coursed the King's highways, entangling the thread the master gave me in the intrigues of fatality. I have not counted the days, or months or years, for time has passed most rapidly from my being enwrapt in these tasks.
"But not so has fared the Countess of Charny. Since she has had the affliction of quitting your Majesty, after havingdispleased you, I suppose, she has lived lonely in the Paris summerhouse, accepting the neglect and isolation without complaining, for she has not the same affections as other women from her heart being devoid of love. But she may not accept without complaint my forgetting the simplest duty and the most commonplace attentions."
"Good gracious, my lord, you are mightily busy about what the countess thinks of you according to whether you see her or not! Before worrying yourself it would be well to know whether she does think of you in the hour of your departure or in that of your return."
"I do not know about the hour of my return but I do know that she thought about me when I departed."
"So you saw her before you went?"
"I had the honor of stating that I had not seen the countess since I promised the Queen not to see her."
"Then she wrote to you? confess it!" cried Marie Antoinette.
"She confided a letter for me to my brother Isidore."
"A letter which you read? what does she say? but she promised me—but let us hear quickly. What does she say in this letter? Speak, see you not that I am on thorns?"
"I cannot repeat what it says as I have not read it."
"You destroyed it unread?" exclaimed she delightedly, "you threw it in the fire? Oh, Charny, if you did that, you are the most true of lovers and I was wrong to scold—for I have lost nothing."
She held out her arms to lure him to his former place, but he stood firm.
"I have not torn it or burnt it," he replied.
"But then, how came you not to read it?" questioned she, sinking back on the chair.
"The letter was to be given me if I were mortally wounded. But alas! it was the bearer who fell. He being dead, his papers were brought to me and among them was this, the countess's letter."
She took the letter with a trembling hand and rang for lights. During the brief silence in the dusk, her breathing could be heard and the hurried throbbing of her heart. Assoon as the candlesticks were placed on themantle shelf, before the servant left the room, she ran to the light. She looked on the paper twice without ability to read it.
"It is flame," she said, "Oh, God!" she ejaculated, smoothing her forehead to bring back her sight and stamping her foot to calm her hand by force of will. In a husky voice utterly like her own, she read:
"This letter is intended not for me but for my brother Count Charny, or to be returned to the countess. It is from her I had it with the following recommendation. If in the enterprise undertaken by the count, he succeeds without mishap, return the letter to the countess."
The reader's voice became more panting as she proceeded.
"If he is grievously hurt, but without mortal danger, his wife prays to be let join him."
"That is clear," said the Queen falteringly and in a scarcely intelligible voice she added: "'Lastly, if he be wounded to the death, give him the letter or read it to him if he cannot, in order that he should know the secret contained before he dies.'
"Do you deny it now, that she loves you?" demanded the Queen, covering the count with a flaming look.
"The countess love me? what are you saying?" cried Charny.
"The truth, unhappy woman that I am!"
"Love me? impossible!"
"Why, for I love you?"
"But in six years the countess has never let me see it, never said a word!"
The time had come for Marie Antoinette to suffer so keenly that she felt the need to bury her grief like a dagger in the depth of his heart.
"Of course," she sneered, "she would not breathe a word, she would not let a token show, and the reason is because she was well aware that she was not worthy to be your wife."
"Not worthy?" reiterated Charny.
"She cherished a secret which would slay your love," continued the other, more and more maddened by her pain.
"A secret to kill our love?"
"She knew you would despise her after she told it."
"I, despise the countess? tut, tut!"
"Unless one is not to despise the girl who is a mother without being a wife."
It was the man's turn to become paler than death and lean on the back of the nearest chair.
"Madam, you have said too much or too little, and I have the right for an explanation."
"Do you ask a queen for explanations?"
"I do," replied Charny.
The door opened, and the Queen turned to demand impatiently:
"What is wanted?"
It was a valet who announced Dr. Gilbert, come by appointment. She eagerly bade him send him in.
"You call for an explanation about the countess," she continued to the count: "well, ask it of this gentleman, who can give it, better than anybody else."
Gilbert had come in so as to hear the final words and he remained on the threshold, mute and standing.
The Queen tossed the letter to Charny and took a few steps to gain her dressing room when the count barred her passage and grasped her wrist.
"My lord, methinks that you forget I am your Queen," said Marie Antoinette, with clenched teeth and enfevered eye.
"You are an ungrateful woman who slanders her friend, a jealous women who defames another, and that woman the wife of a man who has for three days risked his life a score of times for you—the wife of George Count of Charny. Justice must be rendered in face of her you have calumniated and insulted! Sit down and wait."
"Well, have it so," railed the Queen. "Dr. Gilbert," she pursued, forcing a shallow laugh, "you see what this nobleman desires."
"Dr. Gilbert, you hear what the Queen orders," rebuked Charny with a tone full of courtesy and dignity.
"Oh, madam," said Gilbert, sadly regarding the Queen as he came forward. "My Lord Count," he went on to thegentleman, "I have to tell you of the shame of a man and the glory of a woman. A wretched earthworm fell in love with his lord's daughter, the Lady of Taverney. One day, he found her in a mesmeric trance, and without respect for her youth, beauty and innocence, this villain abused her and thus the maid became a woman, the mother before marriage. Mdlle. Taverney was an angel—Lady Charny is a martyr!"
"I thank Dr. Gilbert," said the count, wiping his brow. "Madam," he proceeded to the Queen, "I was ignorant that Mdlle. Taverney was so unfortunate—that Lady Charny was so worthy of respect; otherwise, believe me, six years would not have elapsed before I fell at her feet and adored her as she deserves."
Bowing to the stupefied Queen, he stalked forth without the baffled one making a move to detain him. But he heard her shriek of pain when the door closed between them. She comprehended that over those portals the hand of the demon of jealousy was writing the dread doom:
"Leave hope behind who enter here."
"Leave hope behind who enter here."
It is easy for us who know the state of Andrea's heart to imagine what she suffered from the time of Isidore's leaving. She trembled for the grand plot failing or succeeding. If succeeding, she knew the count's devotion to his masters too well not to be sure that he would never quit them in exile. If failure, she knew his courage too well not to be sure that he would struggle till the last moment, so long as hope remained, and beyond that.
So she had her eye open to every light and her ear to every sound.
On the following day, she learnt with the rest of the population that the King had fled from the capital in the night, without any mischance.
She had suspected the flight, and as Charny would participate, she was losing him by his going far from her.
Sighing deeply, she knelt in prayer for the journey to be happy.
For two days, Paris was dumb, without news; then the rumor broke forth that the King had been stopped at Varennes. No details, just the word.
Andrea hunted up on the map the little obscure point on which attention was centred. There she lived on hopes, fears and thought.
Gradually came the details precious to her, particularly when news came that a Charny, one of the royal bodyguard, had been killed: Isidore or George? for two days, while this was undecided, Andrea's heart oscillated in anguish indescribable.
Finally the return of the august prisoners were heralded. They slept at Meaux.
At eleven in the morning, veiled and dressed most plainly she went and waited till three o'clock at the east end, for it was supposed that the party would enter by St. Martin's suburb. At that hour the mob began to move away, hearing that the King was going round to enter through the Champs Elysees. It was half the city to cross afoot as no vehicles could move in the throng, unexampled since the Taking of the Bastile.
Andrea did not hesitate and was one of the first on the spot where she had still three mortal hours to wait.
At last the procession appeared, we know in what order.
She hailed the royal coach with a cry of joy for she saw Charny on the box. A scream which seemed an echo of her own, though different in tone, arose, and she saw a girl in convulsions in the crowd. She would have gone to her help, though three or four kind persons flew to her side, but she heard the men around her pour imprecations on the three on the box seat. On them would fall the popular rage as the scapegoats of the royal treachery; when the coach stopped they would be torn to pieces.
And Charny was one!
She resolved to do her utmost to get within the Tuileriesgardens; this she managed by going round about but the crush was so dense that she could not get into the front. She retired to the waterside terrace where she saw and heard badly, but that was better than not seeing at all.
She saw Charny, indeed, on the same level, little suspecting that the heart beating for him alone was so near; probably he had no thought for her—solely for the Queen, forgetting his own safety to watch over hers.
Oh, had she known that he was pressing her letter on his heart and offering her the last sigh which he thought he must soon yield! At last the coach stopped amid the howling, groaning and clamor. Almost instantly around it rose an immense turbulence, weapons swaying like a steel wheat-field shaken by the breeze.
Precipitated from the box, the three Lifeguards disappeared as if dropped into a gulf. Then there was such a back-wave of the crowd that the retiring rear ranks broke against the terrace front.
Andrea was shrouded in anguish; she could hear and see nothing; breathless and with outstretched arms, she screamed inarticulate sounds into the midst of the dreadful concert of maledictions, blasphemy anddeath cries.
She could no longer understand what went on: the earth turned, the sky grew red, and a roar as of the sea rang in her ears.
She fell, half dead, knowing only that she lived from her feeling suffering.
A sensation of coolness brought her round: a woman was putting to her forehead a handkerchief dipped in river water. She remembered her as having fainted when the royal coach came into sight, without guessing what sympathy attached her to this mistress of her husband's brother—for this was Catherine Billet.
"Are they dead?" was her first question.
Compassion is intelligent: they around her understood that she asked after the three Lifeguardsmen.
"No, all three are saved."
"The Lord be praised! Where are they?"
"I believe in the palace."
Rising and shaking her head, seeing where she was in a distracted way, she went around to the Princes' Court and sprang into the janitor's room. This man knew the countess as having been in attendance when the court first came back from Versailles. He had also seen her go away, with Sebastian in her carriage.
He related that the Guardsmen were safe;CountCharny had gone out for a little while, when he returned dressed in naval uniform to appear in the Queen's rooms, where he probably was at that period.
Andrea thanked the good fellow and hastened home, now that George was safe. She knelt on her praying stand, to thank heaven, with all her soul going up to her Maker.
She was plunged in ecstasy when she heard the door open, and she wondered what this earthly sound could be, disturbing her in her deepest reverie.
The shadow in the doorway was dim but her instinct told her who it was without the girl announcing:
"My lord the Count of Charny."
Andrea tried to rise but her strength failed her: half turning, she slid down the slope of the stand, leaning her arm on the guard.
"The count," she murmured, disbelieving her eyes.
The servant closed the door on her master and mistress.
"I was told you had recently returned home? Am I rude in following you indoors so closely?" he asked.
"No, you are welcome, my lord," she tremblingly replied. "I was so uneasy that I left the house to learn what had happened."
"Were you long out?"
"Since morning; I was first out to St. Martin's Bars, and then went to the Champs Elysees; there I saw—" she hesitated—"I saw the Royal Family—you, and momentarily I was set at ease, though I feared for you when the carriage should set you down. Then I went into the Tuileries Gardens, where I thought I should have died."
"Yes, the crowd was great; you were crushed, and I understand——"
"No," said Andrea, shaking her head, "that was not it. I inquiredand learned that you were unhurt, so that I hastened home to thank God on my knees."
"Since you are so, praying, say a word for my poor brother."
"Isidore—poor youth! was it he, then?" exclaimed Andrea.
She let her head sink on her hands. Charny stepped forward a few steps to regard the chaste creature at her devotions. In his look was immense commiseration, together with a longing restrained.
Had not the Queen said—or rather revealed that Andrea loved him?
"And he is no more?" queried the lady, turning round after finishing her prayer.
"He died, madam, like Valence, and for the same cause, fulfilling the same duty."
"And in the great grief which you must have felt, you still thought of me?" asked Andrea in so weak a voice that her words were barely audible.
Luckily Charny was listening with the heart as well as ear.
"Did you not charge my brother with a message for me?" he inquired. "A letter to my address?"
She rose on one knee and looked with anxiety upon him.
"After poor Isidore's death, his papers were handed to me and among them was this letter."
"And you have read it—ah!" she cried, hiding her face in her hands.
"I ought to know the contents only if I were mortally wounded and you see I have returned safe. Consequently, as you see, it is intact, as you gave it to Isidore."
"Oh, what you have done is very lofty—or very unkind," muttered the countess, taking the letter.
Charny stretched out his hand and caught her hand in spite of an effort to retain it. As Charny persisted, uttering a reproachful "Oh!" she sighed almost with fright; but she gave way, leaving it quivering in his clasp. Embarrassed, not knowing where to turn her eyes, to avoid his glance, which she felt to be fastened on her, and unable to retreat as her back was against the wall, she said:
"I understand—you came to restore the letter."
"For that, and another matter. I have to beg your pardon heartily, Andrea."
She shuddered to the bottom of her soul for this was the first time he had addressed her so informally. The whole sentence had been spoken with indescribable softness.
"Pardon of me, my lord? on what grounds?"
"For my behavior towards you these six years."
"Have I ever complained?" she asked, eyeing him in profound astonishment.
"No, because you are an angel."
Despite herself her eyes were veiled and tears welled out.
"You weep, Andrea," exclaimed Charny.
"Excuse me, my lord," she sobbed, "but I am not used to being thus spoken to. Oh, heavens!" She sank on an easy chair, hiding her face in her hands for a space but then withdrawing them, she said:
"Really, I must be going mad."
She stopped—while she had her eyes hid, Charny had fallen on his knees to her.
"Oh, you, on your knees to me?" she said.
"Did I not say I must ask your forgiveness?"
"What can this mean?" she muttered.
"Andrea, it means that I love you," he answered in his sweetest voice.
Laying her hand on her heart, she uttered a cry. Springing upright as though impelled by a spring under her feet, she pressed her temples between her hands and cried:
"He loves me? this cannot be."
"Say that it is impossible you should love me, but not that I should love you."
She lowered her gaze on the speaker to see if he spoke truly and his eyes said more than his tongue: though she might doubt the words she could not the glance.
"Oh, God, in all the world is there a being more unfortunate than me?" she cried.
"Andrea, tell me that you love me," continued Charny, "or at least that you do not hate me?"
"I, hate you?" she said, with a double flash from the calm eyes usually so limpid and serene. "Oh, my lord, it would be very wrong to take for hate the feeling you inspire."
"But if not hate or love, what is it?"
"It is not love because I am not allowed to love you; but did you not hear me call myself the unhappiest of God's creatures?"
"Why are you not allowed to love me when I love you with all the strength of my soul?"
"Oh, that I cannot, dare not, must not tell you," replied she, wringing her hands.
"But if another should tell me what you cannot, dare not, must not tell?" he demanded.
"Heaven!" she gasped, leaning her hands on his shoulder.
"Suppose I know? and that, considering you the more worthy because of the noble way you have borne that woe, it was that terrible secret which determined me upon telling you that I loved you?"
"If you did this, you would be the noblest and most generous of men."
"Andrea, I love you," cried he, three times.
"Oh, God, I knew not that there could be such bliss in this world," she said, lifting her arms heavenward.
"Now, in your turn, tell me that you love me."
"Oh, no, that I dare not, but you may read that letter," said Andrea.
While she covered her face with her hands, he sharply broke the letter seal, and exclaimed when he had read the first lines; parting her hands and with the same movement drawing her upon his heart, he said: "How shall I love you enough, saintly creature, to make you forget what you have undergone in these six years!"
"Oh, God, if this be a dream, let me never awake, or die on awakening," prayed Andrea, bending like a reed beneath the weight of so much happiness.
And now, let us forget these who are happy to return to those who hate, suffer or are struggling, and perhaps their evil fate will forget them, too.
On the Field of Mars the Altar of the Country still stood, set up for the anniversary of the Bastile Capture, a skeleton of the past. On this sixteenth of July, it was used as a table on which was spread a petition to the Assembly, which considered that the King had practically abdicated by his flight, and that he ought to be replaced by "Constitutional methods." This was a cunning way to propose the Duke of Orleans as Regent.
Politics is a fine veil, but the people see through it if they are given time.
There was some discussion by the persons called on to sign over these very words. But they might have been glossed over by the man in charge of the paper, the pen and the ink, but for a man of the people, judging by his manners and dress, who, with a frankness next to roughness, stopped the secretary abruptly.
"Halt, this is cheating the people," said he.
"What do you mean?"
"This stuff about replacing the abdicated King by 'constitutional means.' You want to give us King Stock instead of King Log. You want to rig up royalty again and that is just what we don't want any more of."
"No, no more Kings—enough of royalty?" shouted most of the lookers on.
The secretary was Brissot, a Jacobin, and strange thing, here were the arch-revolutionists, the Jacobins defending royalty!
"Have a care, gentlemen," cried he and his supporters, "with no royalty, no king; the Republic would come, and we are not ripe for anything of that kind."
"Not ripe?" jeered the Commoner: "a few such suns asshone on Varennes when we nabbed the skulking King, will ripen us."
"Let's vote on this petition."
"Vote," shouted those who had clamored for no more royalty.
"Let those who do not want Louis XVI. or any other king, put up their hand," cried the plebeian in a lusty voice.
Such a powerful number held up their hands that theAyeshad it beyond a necessity of farther trial.
"Good," said the stranger; "to-morrow is Sunday, the seventeenth; let all the boys come out here to sign the petition as amended to our liking. I, Billet, will get the right sort ready."
At this name everybody recognized Farmer Billet, the Taker of the Bastile, the hero of the people, the volunteer envoy who had accompanied Lafayette's dandy aid to Varennes where he arrested the King whom he had brought back to Paris.
Thus, at the first start, the boldest of the politicians had been surpassed by—a man of the people, the embodied instincts of the masses! The other leaders said that a storm would be raised and that they had best get permission of the Mayor to hold this meeting on the morrow.
"Very well," said Billet, "obtain leave, and if refused you, I will wrest it from them."
Mayor Bailly was absent when Brissot and Desmoulins called for the leave: his deputy verbally granted it, but sent word to the House what he had done.
The House was caught napping, for it had done nothing in fixing the status of the King after his flight. As if from an enemy of the rulers, the decree was passed that "The suspension of the executive power will last until the King shall have accepted and signed the Constitutional Act." Thus he was as much of a king as before; the popular petition became useless.
Whoever claimed the dethronement of a monarch who was constitutionally maintained by the House, so long as the King agreed to accomplish this condition, was a rebel, of course. The decree was to be posted throughout the town next morning at eight.
Prudent politicians went out of the town. The Jacobins retired, and their vulgar member, Santerre, the great brewer of the working quarter, was chosen to go and withdraw the petition from the Altar of the Country.
But those meant to attend, spite of governmental warning, who are like the wolves and vultures who flock to the battlefields.
Marat was confined to his cellar by his monomania, but he yelled for the Assembly to be butchered and cried for a general massacre out of which he would wade a universal dictator.
Verriere, the abominable hunchback, careered about on a horse like the spectre of the Apocalypse, and stopped at every crossroad to invite the masses to meet on the Field of Mars.
So the thousands went to the rendezvous, to sign the paper, sing and dance and shout "The Nation Forever!"
The sun rose magnificently. All the petty tradesfolk who cater to the multitude swarmed on the parade-ground where the Altar of the Country stood up in the middle like a grand catafalque.
By half past four a hundred and fifty thousand souls were present. Those who rise early are usually bad sleepers, and who has not slept well is commonly in a bad humor.
In the midst of the chatter a woman's scream was heard. On the crowd flocking round her, she complained of having been stabbed in the ankle while leaning against the altar. Indeed the point of a gimlet was seen sticking through the boards. In a twinkling the planks were torn down and two men were unearthed in the hollow. They were old cronies, sots who had taken a keg of liquor with them and eatables, and stolen a march on the crowd by hiding here overnight.
But unfortunately the mob at the woman's cue thought they made peepholes for a mean purpose and cried that the keg contained powder to blow up the signers of the petition. They forgot that these new Guido Fawkes hardly looked the sort to blow themselves up with their victims.
Be this as it may, they were taken to the police court where the magistrates laughingly released them; but the washer-women,great sticklers for women not to be probed in the ankle by gimlets, gave them a beating with the paddles used in thumping linen. This was not all: the cry that powder was found getting spread, they were taken from the women and slain. A few minutes after, their heads were cut off and the ready pikes were there to receive them on their points.
The news was perverted on its way to the Assembly where the heads were stated to be of two friends of order who had lost them while preaching respect to the law.
The Assembly at once voted the City to be under martial law.
Santerre, sent by the Jacobin Club to withdraw their petition before Billet transformed it, found that worthy the centre of the immense gathering. He did not know how to write but he had let some one guide his hand when he "put his fist" to it.
The brewer went up the steps of the altar, announced that the Assembly proclaimed any one a rebel who dared demand the dethronement of the King, and said he was sent to call in the petition.
Billet went down three steps to face the brewer. The two members of the lower orders looked at each other, examining the symbols of the two forces ruling France, the town and the country.
They had fought together to take the Bastile and acknowledged that they were brothers.
"All right," said Billet, "we do not want your petition; take yours back to the Jacobins; we will start another."
"And fetch it along to my brewery in the St. Antoine Suburb, where I will sign it and get my men and friends to do the same."
He held out his broad hand in which Billet clapped his.
At sight of this powerful alliance, the mob cheered.
They began to know the worth of the brewer, too. He went away with one of those gestures expressive of meeting again, which the lower classes understood.
"Now, look here," said Billet, "the Jacobins are afraid. They have a right to back out with their petition, but we are not afraid and we have the right to draw up another."
"Hurrah for another petition! all be on hand to-morrow."
"But why not to-day?" cried Billet: "who knows what may happen to-morrow?"
"He's right," called out many; "to-day—at once!"
A group of enlightened men flocked round Billet; they were members of the Invisibles like him, and, besides, strength has the loadstone's power to attract.
Roland and his celebrated wife with Dr. Gilbert, wrote the petition, which was read in silence, while all bared their head to this document dictated by the people. It declared that the King had abdicated the throne by his flight and called for a fresh House to "proceed in a truly national manner to try the guilty ruler and organize a new executive power."
It answered to everybody's wish so that it was applauded at the last phrase. Numbered sheets were served out for the signatures to be written on them by the many who sought to sign, all over the place.
During this work, which was so quietly done that women were strolling about the groups with their children, Lafayette arrived with his special guard, who were paid troops.
But he could not see any cause to intervene and marched away. It is true that on the road he had to take one barricade set up by the gang who had slaughtered the two Peeping Toms of the Altar of the Country. One of his aids had been fired at in this scuffle; and the report ran to the House that in a severe action Lafayette had been shot and his officers wounded.
The house sent a deputation to inquire.
This party of three found the multitude still signing, and signing a document so harmless that they personally said they would put their own names to it if they were not in an official position.
In the conflict of no importance between the mob and the National Guards two prisoners had been made by the latter. As usual in such cases they had nothing to do with the riot.
The principal petitioners asked their release.
"We can do nothing in the matter," replied the deputation; "but send a committee to the City Hall and the liberation will be given."
Billet was unanimously chosen chairman of a party of twelve. They were kept waiting an hour before the Mayor Bailly came to receive them. Bailly was pale but determined; he knew he was unjust but he had the Assembly's order at his back and he would carry it out to the end.
But Billet walked straight up to him, saying, in his firm tone:
"Mayor, we have been kept waiting an hour."
"Who are you and what have you to say to me?"
"I am surprised you should ask who I am, Mayor Bailly but those who turn off the right road do not always get back on the track. I am Farmer Billet."
Bailly was reminded of one of the Takers of the Bastile, who had tried to save the objects of public wrath from the slaughterers; the man who had given the King the tricolor cockade; who had aroused Lafayette on the night when the Royal Family were nearly murdered; the leader who had not shrank from making the King and the Queen prisoners.
"As for what I have to say," continued he, "we are the messengers of the people assembled on the parade-ground: we demand the fulfillment of the promise of your three envoys—that the two citizens unjustly accused and whose innocence we guarantee, shall be set free straightway."
"Nonsense, whoever heard of promises being kept that were made to rioters?" returned Bailly, trying to go by.
The committee looked astonished at one another and Billet frowned.
"Rioters? so we are rioters now, eh?"
"Yes, factious folk, among whom I will restore peace by going to the place."
Billet laughed roughly in that way which is a menace on some lips.
"Restore peace? Your friend Lafayette has been there, and your three delegates, and they will say it is calmer than the City Hall Square."
At this juncture a captain of militia came running up in fright to tell the Mayor that there was fighting on the Field of Mars, "where fifty thousand ragamuffins were making ready to march on the Assembly."
Scarce had he got the words out before he felt Billet's heavy hand on his shoulder.
"Who says this?" demanded the farmer.
"The Assembly."
"Then the Assembly lies." The captain drew his sword on him, which he seized by the hilt and the point and wrenched from his grasp.
"Enough, gentlemen," said Bailly; "we will ourselves see into this. Farmer Billet, return the sword, and if you have influence over those you come from, hasten back, to make them disperse."
Billet threw the sabre at the officer's feet.
"Disperse be hanged! the right to petition is recognized by decree and till another revokes it, nobody can prevent citizens expressing their wishes—mayor, or National Guards commander, or others. Come to the place—we will be there before you."
Those around expected Bailly to give orders for the arrest of this bold speaker, but he knew that this was the voice of the people, so loud and lofty. He made a sign and Billet and his friends passed out.
When they arrived on the parade-ground, the crowd was a third larger, say, sixty thousand, all old, women and men. There was a rush for the news.
"The two citizens are not released: the mayor will not answer except that we are all rioters."
The "rioters" laughed at this title and went on signing the petition, which had some five thousand names down: by night it would be fifty thousand, and the Assembly would be forced to bow to such unanimity.
Suddenly the arrival of the military was shouted. Bailly and the city officials were leading the National Guards hither.
When the bayonets were seen, many proposed retiring.
"Brothers, what are you talking of?" said Billet, on the Altar of the Country, "why this fear? either martial law is aimed at us, or not. If not, why should we run? if it is, the riot act must be read and that will give time to get away."
"Yes, yes," said many voices, "we are lawfully here. Wait for the summons to disperse. Stand your ground."
The drums were heard and the soldiers appeared at three entrances into the ground. The crowd fell back towards the Altar which resembled a pyramid of human bodies. One corps was composed of four thousand men from the working quarter and Lafayette, who did not trust them, had added a battalion of his paid Guards to them. They were old soldiers, Fayettists, who had heard of their god being fired on and were burning to avenge the insult.
So, when Bailly was received by the "booing" of the boys, and one shot was heard from the mob in that part, which sent a bullet to slightly wound a dragoon, the Mayor ordered a volley, but of blank cartridge from those soldiers around him.
But the Fayettists, also obeyed the command and fired on the mass at the Altar, a most inoffensive crowd.
A dreadful scream arose there, and the fugitives were seen leaving corpses behind them, with the wounded dragging themselves in trails of blood! Amid the smoke and dust the cavalry rushed in chase of the running figures.
The broad expanse presented a lamentable aspect, for women and children had mostly been shot and cut down.
An aid galloped up to the East-endbattalionsand ordered them to march on their side and sweep the mob away till they had formed a junction with the other corps. But these workingmen pointed their guns at him and the cavalry running down the fugitives and made them recoil before the patriotic bayonets. All who ran in this direction found protection.
Who gave the order to fire? none will ever know. It remains one of those historical mysteries inexplicable despite the most conscientious investigations. Neither the chivalric Lafayette nor the honest Bailly liked bloodshed, and this stain clung to them to the end. In vain were they congratulated by the Assembly; in vain their press organs called this slaughter a constitutional victory; this triumph was branded like all those days when the slain were given no chance to fight. The people who always fit the cap to the right head, call it "The Massacre of the Champ de Mars."
Paris had heard the fusillade and quivered, feeling that she had been wounded and the blood was flowing.
The Queen had sent her confidential valet Weber to the spot to get the latest news. To be just to her and comprehend the hatred she felt for the French, she had not only so suffered during the flight to Varennes, that her hair had turned white, but also after her return.
It was a popular idea, shared in by her own retinue, that she was a witch. A Medea able to go out of window in a flying car.
But if she kept her jailers on the alert, they also frightened her. She had a dream of scenes of violence, for they had always turned against her.
She waited with anxiety for her envoy's return, for the mobs might have overturned this old, decrepit, trimming Assembly of which Barnave had promised the help, and which might now want help itself.
The door opened: she turned her eyes swiftly thither, but instead of her foster-brother, it was Dr. Gilbert, with his stern face.
She did not like this royalist whose constitutional ideas made him a republican almost; but she felt respect for him; she would not have sent him in any strait, but she submitted to his influence when by.
"You, doctor?" she said with a shiver.
"It is I, madam. I bring you more precise news than those you expect by Weber. He was on the side of the Seine where no blood was spilt, while I was where the slaughter was committed. A great misfortune has taken place—the court party has triumphed."
"Oh,youwould call this a misfortune, doctor!"
"Because the triumph is one of those which exhaust the victorand lay him beside the dead. Lafayette and Bailly have shot down the people, so that they will never be able to serve you again; they have lost their popularity."
"What were the people doing when shot down?"
"Signing a petition demanding the removal of the King."
"And you think they were wrong to fire on men doing that?" returned the sovereign, with kindling eye.
"I believe it better to argue with them than shoot them."
"Argue about what?"
"The King's sincerity."
"But the King is sincere!"
"Excuse me, madam: three days ago, I spent the evening trying to convince the King that his worst enemies were his brothers and the fugitive nobles abroad. On my knees I entreated him to break off dealings with them and frankly adopt the Constitution, with revision of the impracticable articles. I thought the King persuaded, for he kindly promised that all was ended between him and the nobles who fled: but behind my back he signed, and induced you to sign, a letter which charged his brother to get the aid of Prussia and Austria."
The Queen blushed like a schoolboy caught in fault; but such a one would have hung his head—she only held hers the stiffer and higher.
"Have our enemies spied in our private rooms?" she asked.
"Yes, madam," tranquilly replied the doctor, "which is what makes such double-dealing on the King's part so dangerous."
"But, sir, this letter was written wholly by the royal hand, after I signed it, too, the King sealed it up and handed it to the messenger."
"It has been read none the less."
"Are we surrounded by traitors?"
"All men are not Charnys."
"What do you mean?"
"Alas, Madam! that one of the fatal tokens foretelling the doom of Kings is their driving away from them those very men whom they ought to 'grapple to them by hooks of steel.'"
"I have not driven Count Charny away," said the Queen bitterly, "he went of his own free will. When monarchs become unfortunate, their friends fall off."
"Do not slander Count Charny," said Gilbert mildly, "or the blood of his brothers will cry from their graves that the Queen of France is an ingrate. Oh, you know I speak the truth, madam: that on the day whenunmistakabledanger impends, the Count of Charny will be at his post and that the mostperillous."
"But I suppose you have not come to talk about Count Charny," said she testily, though she lowered her head.
"No, madam; but ideas are like events, they are attached by invisible links and thus are drawn forth from darkness. No, I come to speak to the Queen and I beg pardon if I addressed the woman: but I am ready to repair the error. I wish to say that you are staking the woe or good of the world on one game: you lost the first round on the sixth of October, you win the second, in the courtiers' eyes, on this sad day; and to-morrow you will begin what is called the rub. If you lose, with it go throne, liberty and life."
"Do you believe that this prospect makes us recede?" queried the proud one, quickly rising.
"I know the King is brave and the Queen heroic; so I never try to do anything with them but reason; unfortunately I can never pass my belief into their minds."
"Why trouble about what you believe useless?"
"Because it is my duty. It is sweet in such times to feel, though the result is unfruitful, that one has done his duty."
She looked him in the face and asked:
"Do you think it possible to save the King and the throne?"
"I believe for him and hope for the other."
"Then you are happier than I," she responded with a sad sigh: "I believe both are lost and I fight merely to salve my conscience."
"Yes, I understand that you want a despotic monarchy and the King an absolute one: like the miser who will not cast away a portion of his gold in a shipwreck so that he may swim to shore with the rest, you will go down with all. No, cut loose of all burdens and swim towards the future."
"To throw the past into a gulf is to break with all the crowned heads of Europe."
"Yes, but it is to join hands with the French people."
"Our enemies," returned Marie Antoinette.
"Because you taught them to doubt you."
"They cannot struggle against an European Coalition."
"Suppose a Constitutional King at their head and they will make the conquest of Europe."
"They would need a million of armed men for that."
"Millions do not conquer Europe—an idea will. Europe will be conquered when over the Alps and across the Rhine advance the flags bearing the mottoes: 'Death to tyranny!' and 'Freedom to all!'"
"Really, sir, there are times when I am inclined to think the wise are madmen."
"Ah, you know not that France is the Madonna of Liberty, for whose coming the peoples await around her borders. She is not merely a nation, as she advances with her hands full of freedom—but immutable Justice and eternal Reason. But if you do not profit by all not yet committed to violence, if you dally too long, these hands will be turned to rend herself.
"Besides, none of these kings whose help you seek is able to make war. Two empires, or rather an empress and a minister, deeply hate us but they are powerless! Catherine of Russia and William Pitt. Your envoy to Pitt, the Princess Lamballe, can get him to do much to prevent France becoming a republic, but he hates the monarch and will not promise to save him. Is not Louis the Constitutional King, the crowned philosopher, who disputed the East Indies with him and helped America to wrest herself from the Briton's grasp? He desires only that the French will have a pendant to his Charles the Beheaded."
"Oh, who can reveal such things to you?" gasped the Queen.
"The same who tell me what is in the letters you secretly write."
"Have we not even a thought that is our own?"
"I tell you that the Kings of Europe are enmeshed in an unseen net where they write in vain. Do not you resist, madam: but put yourself at the head of ideas which will otherwise spurn you if you take the lead, and this net will beyour defense when you are outside of it and the daggers threatening you will be turned towards the other monarchs."
"But you forgot that the kings are our brothers, not enemies, as you style them."
"But, Madam, if the French are called your sons you will see how little are your brothers according to politics and diplomacy. Besides, do you not perceive that all these monarchs are tottering towards the gulf, to suicide, while you, if you liked, might be marching towards the universal monarchy, the empire of the world!"
"Why do you not talk thus to the King?" said the Queen, shaken.
"I have, but like yourself, he has evil geniuses who undo what I have done. You have ruined Mirabeau and Barnave, and will treat me the same—whereupon the last word will be spoken."
"Dr. Gilbert, await me here!" said she: "I will see the King for a while and will return."
He had been waiting a quarter of an hour when another door opened than that she had left by, and a servant in the royal livery entered. He looked around warily, approached Gilbert, making a masonic sign of caution, handed him a letter and glided away.
Opening the letter, Gilbert read:
"Gilbert: You waste your time. At this moment, the King and the Queen are listening to Lord Breteuil fresh from Vienna, who brings this plan of policy: 'Treat Barnave as you did Mirabeau; gain time, swear to the Constitution and execute it to the letter to prove that it is unworkable. France will cool and be bored, as the French have a fanciful head and will want novelty, so that the mania for liberty will pass. If it do not, we shall gain a year and by that time we shall be ready for war.'"Leave these two condemned beings, still called King and Queen in mockery, and hasten to the Groscaillou Hospital, where an injured man is in a dying state, but not so hopeless as they: he may be saved, while they are not only lost but will drag you down to perdition with them!"
"Gilbert: You waste your time. At this moment, the King and the Queen are listening to Lord Breteuil fresh from Vienna, who brings this plan of policy: 'Treat Barnave as you did Mirabeau; gain time, swear to the Constitution and execute it to the letter to prove that it is unworkable. France will cool and be bored, as the French have a fanciful head and will want novelty, so that the mania for liberty will pass. If it do not, we shall gain a year and by that time we shall be ready for war.'
"Leave these two condemned beings, still called King and Queen in mockery, and hasten to the Groscaillou Hospital, where an injured man is in a dying state, but not so hopeless as they: he may be saved, while they are not only lost but will drag you down to perdition with them!"