The Countess De Charny - Volume II (12 page)

Mandat was merely wounded, however, and rose, only to be beaten down again by blows from twenty pikes. His son threw up his arms wildly, shrieking, “My father! Oh, my father! ” But no one paid any attention to his cries.

Suddenly, from out of the centre of a circle in which one could see nothing but the flashing of sabres and pikes, an arm was uplifted, holding a bleeding head just severed from the body.

It was Mandat’ s head. His son fainted, and the aide galloped off to the Tuileries to report what he had witnessed. The crowd of assassins divided. Some started to throw the body into the river; others to march through the streets bearing the head upon a pike.

It was now about four o’clock.

After the king finished his confession, he went to bed; for when his conscience was at rest, he troubled himself very little about other matters. He retired without undressing, however, and when the sound of the tocsin was again heard, and the drums began to beat a general alarm, the king was awakened ; for Monsieur de la Chesnaye — to whom Mandat had relegated his authority on leaving the palace — thought it advisable for Louis to show himself to the îsational Guards, and endeavour to revive their enthusiasm by his presence and a few appropriate words.

The king arose, heavy-eyed, tottering, and only half awake. His hair had been powdered, but the powder was rubbed off on the side of his head next the pillow. The royal barber was sent for, but could not be found; so the king left his room with his hair in disorder.

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The queen, warned in the Council Chamber that the king was about to show himself to his defenders, hastened to meet him.

Unlike the poor king, — whose dull eyes seemed to distinguish no one, whose facial muscles, especially those about the mouth, drooped heavily and twitched convulsively, and whose purple coat gave him the appearance of being in mourning for royalty, — the queen, though pale, was feverish and excited; her eyes shone brilliantly, and her eyelids, though red, were dry. She joined this poor phantom of royalty who was about to show himself, winking and blinking, in the cold, searching light of early dawn, hoping to imbue him with some of her own superabundant courage and energy and life.

All went well as long as royalty was exhibited only in the privacy of its own apartments; though the few National Guardsmen who were in company with the noblemen, on seeing the poor heavy, awkward, stupid-looking man who had proved such a failure under similar circumstances at Varennes, began to wonder if this was really the hero of the 20th of June, — the same king whose romantic story priests and admiring women had already begun to embroider on funeral crape.

It must be admitted that this was not the king the National Guardsmen had expected to see.

Just at that moment the venerable Due de Mailly — with one of those good intentions destined to furnish hell with an additional paving-stone — just at that moment the venerable Due de Mailly drew his sword and threw himself at the king’s feet, swearing in a trembling voice to die — he and the nobility of France which he represented — for the grandson of Henri IV.

Here were two big blunders instead of one, Fii’st, the National Guards had no great liking for tlie nobility of France, which Monsieur de Mailly re])resented; secondly, it was not the grandson of Henri IV. they were to defend, but a constitutional sovereign; so, in response to a few

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shouts of “God save tlie kiug!” cheers for the nation resounded on every side.

The king was then urged to go down into the courtyard. Alas ! the poor monarch, deprived of his accustomed food, and having slept only one hour instead of seven, being essentially a materialist, seemed to be no longer endowed with any will of his own, but was exactly like an automaton, moved by some outside volition.

Whence came this impetus? From the queen, who possessed a highly nervous and excitable nature, and who had neither eaten nor slept for hours.

Some individuals are so organised that when one thing gets beyond their control, they seem to fail in nearly everything; so in this case, instead of being able to win over the disaffected, it seemed as if Louis XVI. approached them merely to show them how little prestige royalty really bestows upon a man when that man possesses neither genius nor energy.

In the courtyards, as in the interior of the palace, when the few Eoyalists shouted, “Long live the king!” there were enthusiastic shouts for the nation.

The Eoyalists were so impolitic as to persist, however.

“No, no, no!” shouted the Patriots; “no king but the nation ! ” Whereiipon the king responded, almost beseechingly, “Yes, yes, my children; but are not your king and the nation one and the same?”

“Bring the dauphin,” Marie Antoinette whispered to Madame Elizabeth. “Perhaps the sight of the child will touch them.”

Some of the attendants ran for the dauphin. Meanwhile the king continued his sorrowful tour of inspection. He even conceived the unfortunate idea of approaching the artillery, the officers of which were chiefly Eepublicans.

If the king had known how to talk, if he had been endowed with even mediocre powers of persuasion, this would have been a wise as well as courageous undertaking on his part, and might have proved successful, even at this

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late day; but tliere was nothing seductive eitlier in the speech or the manner of Louis XVI. He stammered badly when he attempted to speak to the men, and the Royalists tried to conceal his discomfiture by again attempting to raise the cry of “Long live the king! ” which had twice proved a failure.

This attempt on their part nearly led to a fight. Several cannoneers left their posts, and, rushing towards the king, shook their fists threateningly in his face, calling out, “Do 3’ou think we’ll fire at our brothers for the sake of defending a traitor like you ! “

The queen drew the king back.

“The dauphin! the dauphin! long live the dauphin!” cried several voices; but no one took up the cry. The poor child did not arrive in time, and so missed his cue, as they say at the theatre.

The king’s return to the palace was a retreat, — one might almost say a flight ; and when he reached his rooms, he sank breathless in an armchair.

The queen remained standing in the doorway, glancing around as if searching for some one to lean upon. Seeing Charny, she went to him at once.

“Oh, monsieur, all is lost!”

“I fear so, madame.”

“Is there still time for us to flee? “

“It is too late, madame.”

“What is there left for us to do, then? “

“Nothing but to die,” responded Charny, bowing gravely.

The queen sighed heavily, and re-entered her chamber.

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CHAPTER XIII.

FROM SIX TO NINE IN THE MORNING.

Mandat had hardly ceased to breathe before the municipal government appointed Santerre commanding general in his stead. Santerre immediately ordered the drums beat throughout the city and the tocsin sounded; then he sent out patrols with orders to go as far as the Tuileries, and particularly to keep a close watch on the proceedings of the Assembly.

In fact, the National Assembly had been under close surveillance all night. About ten o’clock a party of eleven persons had been arrested on the Champs Élysées. Ten of these men were armed with pistols and daggers, and the eleventh with a blunderbuss; but they offered no resistance, and were conducted to the guardroom at the Feuillant Club for safe-keeping.

During the night eleven other prisoners were arrested and taken to the same place. These twenty-two men were confined in two separate rooms. About daybreak the first eleven made their escape by leaping from the window into the garden, and forcing open the gates. The others were more securely confined.

About seven o’clock a young man about thirty years of age, attired in the uniform of a National Guardsman, was brought into the guardroom. The freshness of his uniform, the brilliancy of his weapons, and the elegance of his whole appearance had excited the suspicion that he was a Royalist, and it was this which had led to his arrest.

A former clerk in the Naval Department, who was in charge that day, questioned the prisoner.

“Where were you arrested?” he asked.

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” On tlie Feuillant Terrace ,” was the prompt reply.

“What were you doing there? “

“I was on my way to the palace.”

“What for?”

“In compliance with an order from the City Council.”

“Have you the order in your possession? “

“Here it is,” responded the young man, drawing a paper from his pocket as he spoke.

The questioner unfolded the paper and read the following: —

The bearer of this order is to go to the palace to investigate the coudition of aifairs, and afterwards report to the Procureur-General Syndic of the department.

BOIRIE,

Le Roulx,

Municipal Officers.

The order seemed genuine; butas there was some fear that the signatures might have been forged, a man was sent to the city-hall to have them identified.

The last arrest had drawn quite a crowd, and several persons began to clamour for the death of the prisoners.

A city officer present knew that it would not do to allow these demands to become too vehement; so he mounted a small platform to talk to the crowd and to endeavour to persuade them to disperse. As they were on the point of yielding to his persuasions, the messenger who had been despatched to the city-hall to ascertain if the signatures were genuine, returned, and reported that the order was all right, and that the bearer of it — a man named Suleau — was to be set at liberty.

This was the same man we met at the Princesse de Lamballe’s reception, when Gilbert sketched the plan of the guillotine for Louis XYI., and Marie Antoinette recognised in it the strange instrument which Cagliostro had sliown her in a decanter of water at the Château de Taverney.

On hearing this name, a woman — unnoticed until now in the crowd — raised her head and uttered a cry of rage.

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“Suleau!” slie exclaimed. “Suleau, editor-in-chief of the * Acts of the Apostles! ‘ Suleau, one of the assassins of the independence of Liège. He belongs to me; I de-mand Suleau’s death!”

The crowd opened to make way for this woman. She was a small, insignificant-looking creature, clad in a startling Amazonian costume, in the colours of the uniform worn by the National Guards. In her belt she carried a sword. Advancing towards the municipal officer, she forced him to step down, and then took his place. Her head had hardly become visible above the throng, when everybody shouted, “Theroigne! Theroigne!”

In fact, Theroigne was the popular idol of the hour. The part she had played in the disturbances of October, 1789, her arrest at Brussels and subsequent detention in Austrian prisons, as well as her prominence in the demonstration of June 20th, all combined to endow her with such popularity that Suleau, in his sarcastic journal, had begun as far back as 1789 to jest about her conquest of Citizen Populus, — an allusion which had reference, not only to Theroigne’s popularity with the people, but to the looseness of her morals.

Suleau had also published a paper in Brussels called “The Eoyal Tocsin,” and had thus assisted in suppressing the revolt in Liège, and in again forcing a noble people under the Austrian yoke and the bishop’s power.

At this time Theroigne was preparing an account of her arrest and captivity, and had read a few chapters of it to the Jacobins.

She now demanded, not only the death of Suleau, but of the eleven other prisoners as well. Suleau could hear her voice above the plaudits of the crowd, insisting that he and his companions should be put to death, and through the closed door he appealed to the officer in command to let him out.

“They can kill me, then, and that will end it; and my death will save eleven other lives.”

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But as the guards very naturally refused to open the door, Suleau attempted to jump out of the window into the midst of the infuriated throng; but his companions seized him and held him back, for they could not believe they were to be delivered up to be butchered in cold blood.

But they were mistaken. The officer in command, intimidated by the threats of the mob, granted ïhéroigne’s request, and forbade the National Guards to offer any resistance to the will of the people. The National Guards obeyed and withdrew, — thus leaving the door unguarded, — and the populace rushed into the prison and seized the first man they came to. This happened to be Abbé Bouyon, a dramatic writer, famous alike for his clever epigrams and the hisses with which three-fourths of his pieces were greeted at the IMontansier Theatre. A man of colossal stature, he was snatched from the arms of the superintendent of the post — who tried to save him — and dragged into the courtyard, where he fought desperately with his murderers; and though he had only his arms to defend himself with, he managed to disable two or three of his assailants.

A bayonet-thrust finally pinned him to the wall, and he died without being able to reach his enemies at the last.

During this struggle two other prisoners managed to make their escape.

The mob next attacked a member of the old Eoyal Guard named Solminiac. His defence was less vigorous than that of his predecessor, and his death was consequently all the more cruel.

Then they killed a third, whose name is unknown. Suleau was the fourth.

” Here ‘s your Suleau ! ” a woman cried to Thëroigne, who did not know him by sight. As he was commonly called Abbé Suleau, she had supposed him to be a j)riest. Now she sprang upon him like a wildcat, clutching him savagely by the throat.

Suleau was young, and brave, and vigorous. With one

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blow of his fist he dashed Theroigne ten feet from him, shook off three or four men who were trying to seize him, snatched a sabre from the hand of one of the cut-throats, and felled two of the wretches to the ground.