The Countess De Charny - Volume II (20 page)

The Commune began openly to accuse tlie Assembly of being royalistic. From time to time Robcs])ierre would thrust his head out of the hole in which he was hiding, and hiss out some calumny.

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Eobespierre, too, was insinuating, just then, that a powerful party was offering the French throne to the Duke of Brunswick. He meant, of course, the Girondists ; that is to say, the very party which had been the first to declare war, and to offer itself for the defence of France.

The Commune, to secure paramount sway, must, consequently, oppose all the acts of the so-called royalistic Assembly.

The Assembly had offered the Luxembourg to the king as a temporary abode ; but the Communists declared that they would not be responsible for the king if he went to reside in the Luxembourg, as the cellars were connected with the unhealthy catacombs running underneath the city, and might also afford a means of escape.

The Assembly, not disposed to quarrel with the Commune over such a trifle, left the selection of a royal residence to the Commune, and the Commune, thereupon, selected the Temple.

The Temple was not a palace like the Luxembourg. It was nothing more or less than a prison located under the very eye of the Commune. The Commune had only to reach out its hand to open or close the doors of the Temple. It was an old tower, strong, gloomy and dismal. Philip the Fair, that is to say royalty, had crushed the middle ages there when they revolted against him; now, royalty was about to enter it to be crushed in its turn.

Was the royal family remanded to this abode on account of the historic associations connected with it? No, it came about by the merest chance, — providentially, one might say, were not such an assertion too suggestive of cruelty.

On the evening of August 13th, the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, Madame de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, and Chemilly and Hué, the king’s valets, were transferred to the Temple.

The Commune, in its haste to have the king take possession of his new abode, sent him there before the tower had been properly prepared for occupancy ; so the royal family

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was taken into that part of the building sometimes occupied by Comte d’Artois when he wished to stay in the city, and, consequently, called the palace.

All Paris was jubilant. Thirty -live hundred citizens had been slain, it is true, but the king, the ally of foreigners, the enemy of the Revolution, the friend and protector of priests and nobles, — the king was a prisoner.

All the houses in the neighbourhood of the Temple were illuminated. Lanterns were even suspended from the battlements.

When Louis XVI. stepped from the carriage, he saw Santerre on horseback, about ten yards from the coach door, and two municipal officers with their hats on their heads stood evidently waiting for the monarch to alight. He entered the Temple, and, being ignorant of the real character of the abode, he asked to be shown the apartments of the palace.

The officers interchanged smiles. Without telling him that his tour of inspection was useless, as it was the tower he was to occupy, not the palace, they took him through room after room of the better part of the building, — and he began to plan the distribution of his household, the attendants thoroughly enjoying the mistake which would result in such bitter disappointment.

At ten o’clock supper was served, and during the entire meal Manuel stood behind the king, no longer as a servant, eager to obey, but as a jailer, a master. If two conflicting orders were given, one by the king, the other by Manuel, Manuel’s was the order obeyed.

About eleven o’clock the family entered the drawing-room of the palace. The king was still the king, or, rather, he supposed himself to be the king, for he was entirely ignorant of what was going on; but a few minutes afterwards one of the officers reappeared, and ordered the valets to take whatever luggage they had and follow them.

“Follow you wliere?”

“To your employers’ lodgings,” replied the official. “The palace is merely their day residence.”

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The king and queen were no longer masters of tlieir own lackeys.

At the door of the palace they found an officer with a lantern, waiting to lead the way. Monsieur Hué looked around for the king’s future residence. He could see nothing but the gloomy donjon looming up in the air like a giant upon whose brow a fiery crown still sparkled. ” Good God! ” exclaimed the valet, pausing, “can it be that you intend taking us to the tower ? “

“Precisely,” answered the officer. “The time of palaces is past. You shall see how we lodge assassins of the people now.”

As he spoke, the man with the lantern stumbled over the first step of a winding staircase. The valets paused on the first landing, but the man with the lantern went on. On the second landing he paused, and turning into a narrow passage, opened a door on the right side of the corridor.

The room was lighted by a single window. Three or four chairs, a table, and a narrow, uncomfortable bed composed the entire furniture.

“Which of you is the king’s servant?” inquired the official.

“I am his valet,” replied Monsieur Chemilly.

“Valet or servant, it’s all the same,” replied the officer; then pointing to the bed, he added, “There ‘s where your master is to sleep.”

The man with the lantern flung a blanket and a couple of sheets on the bed, and left the two valets alone.

Hué and Chemilly gazed at each other in utter dismay. The king was not only cast into prison, but lodged in a kennel. The bed stood in an uncurtained alcove, and the whole aspect of the room was squalid in the extreme. Nevertheless, the two men went resolutely to work, and cleaned the room and made the bed as comfortable as they could. While they were thus engaged, the king entered the room.

” Oh, Sire, how infamous ! ” they both exclaimed, in the same breath.

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But the king — was it from strength of soul or from indifference? — evinced no emotion. He glanced around him, but did not utter a word.

The walls were covered with woodcuts; and, as some were of an obscene character, he tore them off, remarking, “I do not want my innocent daughter to see such things ! “

When his bed was made the king retired, and was soon sleeping as peacefully as if he were still at the Tuileries, — more peacefully, perhaps !

If, at this time, the king had been offered an income of thirty thousand francs, and a country house with a forge, a library well stocked with books of travel, a private chaplain, and a park ten acres in extent, — a home where he could live far removed from all plotting and intrigue, and surrounded by his wife and children, the king would have been the happiest man in the land.

But it was very different with the queen. If this wounded lioness did not roar with rage on beholding her cage, it was because her mental anguish made her blind to her surroundings.

Her apartment consisted of four rooms : an antechamber, occupied by the Princesse de Lamballe, a larger bedroom in which the queen established herself, a sort of closet assigned to Madame de Tourzel, and another bedroom used by Madame Elizabeth and the two children. These rooms were cleaner and a little less squalid in appearance than the king’s.

Manuel, however, as if rather ashamed of the sort of trick that had been played upon the king, said that the city architect — Citizen Palloy — would come and consult with the king as to what could be done to make the habitation of the royal family more comfortable.

And now, while Andrée is burying the remains of her beloved husband, while Manuel is installing the king and the royal family in the Temple, and while the carpenters are erecting the guillotine on the Carrousel, let us glance into the interior of the city-hall, which we have already

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visited several times, and form some idea of the municipal government which has succeeded that of Bailly and Lafayette, — a government which is endeavouring to substitute itself for the Assembly, and even aspires to a dictatorship.

On the night of August tenth, when the carnage was over, and the roar of cannon hushed, a crowd of ragged and intoxicated men bore in their arms, into the midst of the Council of the Commune, that prince of darkness, the divine Marat, as he was blasphemously called.

He yielded to their wishes. There was nothing to be afraid of now. Victory was assured, and the field open to the wolves and vultures.

They called him the Victor of the tenth of August, this man they found just as he was venturing to put his head out of the airhole of his cellar for the first time that day. They crowned him with laurel, and he, like Caesar, had permitted the crown to rest upon his brow.

They brought their god, Marat, into the midst of the Commune, — this crippled Vulcan imposed upon the Council of the gods.

On beholding Vulcan, the other gods laughed and sneered. On beholding Marat many laughed, and a few trembled, and those who trembled were right.

Marat did not belong to the Commune at that time, nor was he ever elected a member of it. He was merely carried there, and there he remained. And this haughty Commune, that so lorded it over the Assembly, see how humbly it obeyed Marat !

Here is one of the first measures the Council passed : —

” The printing presses of the venomous Eoyalists shall be confiscated and divided among the patriot printers.”

Marat carried this decree into execution the very day it was issued. He went to the royal printing-office, had a press removed to his own house, and appropriated all the type he wanted, for was he not one of the chief and foremost of the patriot printers ?

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The Assembly was appalled by the atrocities of August tenth, but was powerless to check them. The slaughter went on in the Assembly grounds, in its corridors, and, in fact, at its very doors, in spite of all its protests.

Danton said : ” Let justice by the courts begin , and popular vengeance will cease. I pledge myself in the presence of this Assembly to defend the men within its precincts.”

But Danton had said this before Marat was admitted to the City Council ; after that Danton felt that he could no longer be responsible for anything. So the lion endeavoured to enact the part of a fox in his dealings with the wily serpent.

Lacroix, one of Danton’s most devoted followers, ascended the rostrum, and asked that Santerre — who, according to the Eoyalists themselves, possessed a kind and sympathetic heart despite his rough exterior — Lacroix asked that Santerre be authorised to select a court martial to try the Swiss officers and men, without making any final disposal of them.

The plan of Lacroix, or rather of Danton, was that the members of the court martial should be selected from those who had fought against these brave men; and who being brave fighters themselves could, consequently, appreciate courage in others, while the fact that the native soldiers came off victorious would cause them to be lenient to their vanquished foes, for did not these victors, thirsting for blood, spare defenceless women, and even protect them and escort them to yjlaces of safety? To prove that this was really a clement measure, it is only necessary to say that the Council of the Commune rejected it.

Marat preferred massacre. It would be the shortest way out of the difficulty. But his estimate of the number of deaths necessary increased instead of diminished, day by day. First, he demanded fifty thousand heads; then one hundred thousand; then two hundred thousand; and finally he concluded that nothing less than two hundred and seventy-three thousand would do. Why this odd

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number, this strange fraction? He would have been greatly puzzled to explain himself.

Danton kept away from the Commune. His duties as a minister engrossed his entire time, he said.

Meanwhile the Commune was sending deputations to the Assembly. On the sixteenth of August three deputations presented themselves in rapid succession at the bar of the Assembly.

On the seventeenth still another deputation presented itself with this message : —

” The people are tired of waiting for vengeance! Beware lest they take the matters into their own hands ! To-night at twelve o’clock the alarm-bells wiU again be heard. Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette wanted blood ; let them see it flowing from the bodies of their adherents ! “

The audacity of this demand brought two men instantly to their feet, — Choudieu, the Jacobin, and Thuriot.

“Those who come here demanding massacre are not friends, but mere trucklers to the people,” cried Choudieu. “Nothing more or less than the establishment of an Inquisition is demanded. I shall oppose it to the death ! “

“Do you wish to bring odium upon the Revolution and Revolutionists? ” pleaded Thuriot. “This Revolution is not for France alone, but the entire human race ; and we are accountable to all mankind.”

Petitions were followed by threats. Representatives from the different sections took their turn in saying : ” If a special tribunal is not appointed, and is not ready for business within two or three hours, rivers of blood will flow ! “

This last threat compelled the Assembly to yield. A measure for the creation of a court extraordinary was introduced. The demand was made on the seventeenth of August, and granted on the nineteenth. On the twentieth, the tribunal was organised, and one Royalist was condemned to death. On the night of the twenty-first this

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man, upon whom sentence of death had been passed the day before, was executed by torch-light in Carrousel Square.

The effect of this first execution was terrible ; so terrible, in fact, that the executioner himself could not bear it. At the very moment he was exhibiting the head of this first victim to the people, he uttered a faint cry, let the head slip from his grasp, and roll to the pavement, and then fell backwards. His assistants lifted him up, but he was dead.

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CHAPTER XXIII.