The Countess De Charny - Volume II (33 page)

The queen did not open her door until Clery came down, so that the municipal officer could not come in. Clery would then arrange the dauphin’s hair, give the queen any assistance she might require with her toilet, and then go into the other room to render Madame Eoyale and Madame Elizabeth like assistance if necessary. This time devoted to the toilet though brief was exceedingly precious, for it was Clery’s only opportunity to impart any news he had been able to gather outside.

At nine o’clock the ladies and children went up to the king’s rooms, where breakfast was served, during which time Clery went down to put the queen’s apartments in order.

After breakfast, the king went down to the queen’s room, where he spent the rest of the morning in teaching the dauphin, making him repeat passages from Corneille and Racine, giving him a lesson in geography or making him draw maps. France had been divided into departments for three or four years, and it was with the geography of the kingdom that the monarch seemed specially anxious that his son should become conversant.

Meanwhile, the queen devoted herself to teaching Madame Eoyale; but the lessons were often interrupted by relapses into a gloomy reverie, which frequently lasted a long time,

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and when this happened, the daughter would steal softly away, leaving the mother alone wih her thovights.

At noon, the ladies went into Madame Elizabeth’s rooms to change their morning gowns, for at one o’clock when the weather permitted the royal family was taken down into the garden. Four municipal officers and an officer of the National Guards accompanied, or rather watched them. Clery was also present, and generally amused the prince by playing ball or pitching quoits with him.

At three o’clock, they all returned to the small tower where dinner was served. Every day, too, at the same hour Santerre came to the Temple accompanied by two aides, and carefully examined the apartments of the king and queen.

The king spoke to him, sometimes; the queen, never. She had forgotten the 20th of June and what she owed this man.

After dinner they went downstairs again, and the king played a game of piquet or backgammon with the queen or his sister, after which he stretched himself out on a lounge or in a big armchair to take a nap. Then the most profound stillness reigned. The ladies busied themselves with their work or with some books, and every one, even the little dauphin, was silent. The king passed from wakefulness to slumber almost instantaneously, and generally slept from an hour and a half to two hours. When he woke, conversation was resumed, and Clery, after giv-ing the dauphin a lesson in writing, took him into Madame Elizabeth’s room fora game of battledore and shuttlecock.

When evening came, the family gathered around the table, and the queen read something aloud to amuse and instruct the children. If the queen became weary Madame Elizabeth relieved her. The reading lasted until eight o’clock. At that hour the dauphin had his supper in Madame Elizabetli’s room. The family sat in the room while he ate, and very often the king gave the children conundrums and charades to guess out of a bound volume of ” The French Mercury ” he had found in the library.

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After the dauphin finished his supper the queen heard him say the following prayer : —

Alniiijlity God, who hast made and redeemed me, and whom I adore, proloni; the days of the king, my father, and of all the other members of my family. Protect us from our enemies, and give Madame de Tourzel strength to bear what she is euduring on our account.

Cléry then undressed the lad and put him to bed, one of the younger ladies remaining with him until he fell asleep.

Every evening about that time, a newspaper vendor ■went down the street crying the news of the day. Cléry would be on the alert and repeat the man’s words to the king.

At nine the king had his supper, after which he went into the queen’s room to bid the other members of the family good-night, and then returned to his own apartments where he would sit in the little library and read until midnight. After the king had gone, the ladies shut themselves up in their ow^n rooms. One of the municipal guards remained in the narrow passage between the chambers of the ladies; the other always followed the king upstairs. There was always a change of guards at eleven o’clock in the morning, five in the afternoon, and at midnight.

This life lasted without any change, as long as the king remained in the small tower, that is, until September 30th.

The situation of the family was a most trying one, as every reader can see, and the more deserving of pity because it was so nobly borne. The bitterest enemies of royalty were softened by the sight. They came to guard an atrocious monster who had ruined France, ruthlessly slaughtered Frenchmen, and summoned foreign foes into their midst, — to guard a queen in whom the sensuality of a Messalina was combined with the depravity of Catherine Second”; they saw a man dressed in gray whom they

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might easily have mistaken for his valet, — a man who ate and drank and slept well, who played backgammon and taught his little son Latin and geography, and helped his children solve riddles ; they saw a woman, whose manner was proud and scornful, undoubtedly, but who was calm and resigned, and still beautiful, teaching her daughter to embroider, and her son to say his prayers, speaking gently to the servants and saying my friend even to an humble valet.

At first, their hearts were full of hatred. Each man came breathing vengeance, but soon they began to relent, and usually returned home in the evening with a gloomy air and bowed head.

The wife of one of these men awaited his return with great eagerness.

“Well, did you see the tyrant? ” she exclaimed.

“Yes, I saw him.”

“Has he a ferocious look?”

“He looks like a retired shopkeeper in the Marais district.”

“What was he doing? Cursing the Kepublic?”

“He spends his time in teaching his young ones Latin, playing backgammon with his sister, and solving riddles to amuse his wife.”

“Does the wretch look as if he was tortured by remorse?”

“I saw him eat, and he eats like a man whose conscience doesn’t trouble him in the least; I saw him sleep, and I bet he never had the nightmare in his life.”

Then the wife became thoughtful in her turn.

“If that is so, he can’t be as cruel and wicked as people say,” she would exclaim.

“I don’t believe he is either cruel or wicked; but the poor man is certainly wretched enough.”

“Poor man!” the wife would exclaim.

So the more the Commune persecuted and humiliated the prisoner, the harder they tried to prove that he was only

TOL. IV. — 18

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an ordinaiy man, the more other men pitied one in whom they now recognised a fellow-man.

Sometimes there were unmistakable manifestations of this compassion.

One day a stone-cutter was making some holes in the walls of the antechamber, in which some heavy bolts were to be inserted. While the workman was eating his breakfast, the dauphin amused himself by playing with the tools, and the king taking the chisel and mallet from the lad handled them in such a skilful way that the mechanic looked on in amazement from the corner where he was eating his bread and cheese, and though he had shown the king and prince no respect before, now he approached cap in hand, and remarked : —

” When you go out of here you can say that you worked on your own prison-bars,” he remarked.

” Ah! but when and how shall I go out?” exclaimed the king, sadly.

The dauphin began to cry, the mason dashed away a tear, and the king dropping hammer and chisel went into his own room where he paced the floor for a long time.

One day, Clery, who was alone in the queen’s room, noticed that the sentinel at the door was watching him very closely. Called elsewhere presently by his duties, Clery started to go out, but the sentinel, though he presented arms, said in a low, almost trembling voice: “You cannot pass.”

“Why not?” asked Clery.

” Because I am ordered to keep my eye on you.”

“On me? You must be mistaken.”

“Are you not the king? “

“Then you don’t know the king? “

” I have never seen him, monsieur, and I must say that if I do see him, I wish it might be in some other place.”

“Be careful,” said Clery, “speak low.” Then pointing to a door, he added, “I ‘m going into that room, and you can see the king. He is sitting at a table reading.”

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Cléry went in and told the king what had happened, and the king rose and walked into the other room so the kind-hearted fellow could get a good look at him, and mistrust-ing that it was on his account the monarch had taken this trouble, the sentinel remarked to Cléry: “Ah, monsieur, how kind the king is! As for me I don’t believe he has done half as much harm as people say! “

A sentinel stationed at the end of the walk which served as a promenade for the royal family made a sign as if to indicate that he had some information to impart. At first, no one paid any attention to these signs, but after a little, Madame Elizabeth approached him to see if he would speak, but either through fear or respect the young man, who had quite a distinguished bearing, remained silent; but his eyes filled with tears, and he furtively pointed to a pile of rubbish where it is quite probable that a letter was concealed.

Under pretext of finding some stones for the dauphin’s quoits, Cléry began to search among the rubbish; but the officials, suspecting his object doubtless, ordered him to desist, and forbade his talking with the sentinels under penalty of being separated from his master.

But all persons who came in contact with the prisoners did not show them the same compassion and consideration. Hatred was too strongly implanted in some minds to be eradicated by the sight of royal misfortunes, however patiently borne, and consequently the king and queen were often subjected to the grossest insults.

One day the officer on duty was an Englishman named James. This man stuck to the king like a leech, never leaving him for an instant. When the king went into his little study to read, the man followed him and sat down near the monarch.

“Monsieur,” said the king with his customary mild-ness of manner, ” your comrades have usually left me quite alone when I entered this little room, which is so small tliat I could not possibly elude them when the door is open.”

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“My comrades can do tlieir way, and I ‘11 do mine.”

“But you can see yourself, monsieur, that the room is not large enough for two.”

“Then go into the larger room,” responded the official, bluntly.

Without a word the king rose and went into his bedroom. The Englishman followed and remained by the king’s side until the guard was relieved.

One day the queen spoke to an official who happened to be present during the dinner hour.

“In what section do you live, monsieur? ” she asked.

“In France,” he replied proudly.

“But it seems to me France is the entire country.”

” Yes, except the part occupied by the enemies you have brought into it.”

Some of the guards could not speak to any member of the royal family without using an oath or some obscene epithet.

One day a man named Turlot said to Cléry, loud enough for the king to hear every word : —

“If the executioner don’t guillotine this precious family soon, I ‘11 do it myself.”

When they went out for their promenade the royal family had to pass a number of sentinels. When the officers of the National Guard and the municipal officers passed, these sentinels always presented arms, but when the king appeared, they would either ground arms or turn their backs.

These insults were carried even further. One day a sentinel, not content with evincing his animosity in the manner above mentioned, wrote on the inside of the prison door : —

The guillotine is a fixture and awaits the tyrant Louis XVI.

This was a new idea and proved immensely popular, for soon the entire walls of the Temple, especially those of

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the stairways used by the royal family, were covered with such inscriptions as : —

Madame Veto has got to dance I

We mtist put the fat hog on short allowance.

Under the picture of a man dangling from a gallows was the inscription : —

Louis taking an air hath.

Their worst tormentors were two men who seldom or never left the Temple, Simon the shoemaker and E-ocher.

Simon Avas a monopolist and held all sorts of offices. He was not only a shoemaker, but a muncipal official as well. He was likewise one of six commissioners appointed to superintend the work done in and around the Temple.

This man, who became notorious on account of his subsequent cruelty to the dauphin, was impudence personified. In fact, he never entered the prisoners’ presence without inflicting some fresh outrage upon them.

If the valet desired anything for his master, Simon would say: “Tell Capet to ask for everything he wants at once. I can’t be kept running up and down stairs just to please him.”

Rocher was equally impertinent, but he was not so bad a man. It was Rocher who had caught up the little prince at the Assembly door on the 10th of August, and placed him on the presiding officer’s desk.

Originally a saddler. Rocher became a military officer under Santerre, and subsequently a sort of janitor in the Temple. He usually wore his uniform, and a big black bearskin cap, and carried a huge sabre. Around his waist he wore a belt from which dangled his big buncli of keys.

When the king desired to go out, Rocher would come to the door, but would not open it until he had made the

278 LA COMTESSE DE CHARNY.

king wait some minutes. Then, when the bolts had been drawn and tlie door opened, he would rush downstairs and take his stand at the end of the archway with his pipe in his mouth, and as each member of the royal family — and particularly the ladies — passed out, he would putt’ a cloud of smoke in their faces.