Ange Pitou

by Alexandre Dumas

  Was it forbidden by the Constitution that gentlemen should fraternize?

  The king was still the master of his regiments, and he alone commanded them; the palace of Versailles was his own property; he alone had a right to receive into it whomsoever he might please.

  And why should he not receive brave soldiers and worthy gentlemen within it,—men who had just come from Douai, where they had behaved well.

  Nothing could be more natural. No one thought of being astonished, and still less of being alarmed at it.

  This repast, to be taken thus in union, was about to cement the affection which ought always to subsist between all the corps of a French army, destined to defend both liberty and royalty.

  Besides, did the king even know what had been agreed upon?

  Since the events of Paris, the king, free, thanks to his concessions, no longer occupied himself with public matters; the burden of affairs had been taken from him. He desired to reign no longer, since others reigned for him; but he did not think that he ought to weary himself by doing nothing all day long.

  The king, while the gentlemen of the National Assembly were fraudulently cutting and contriving,—the king amused himself by hunting.

  The king, while the nobility and the reverend bishops were abandoning, on the 4th of August, their dovecots and their feudal rights, their pigeons and their parchments,—the king, who was very willing, as all the world was doing it, to make some sacrifices, abolished all his hunting train; but he did not cease to hunt on that account.

  Now, the king, while the officers of the Flanders regiment were to be dining with his body-guards, would be enjoying the pleasures of the chase, as he did every day; the tables would be cleared away before his return.

  This would even inconvenience him so little, and he would so little inconvenience the banquet in question, that it was resolved to ask the queen to allow the festival to be given within the walls of the palace itself.

  The queen saw no reason for refusing this hospitality to the Flanders soldiers.

  She gave them the theatre for their banquet-room, in which she allowed them for that day to construct a flooring even with the stage, that there might be ample space for the guards and their guests.

  When a queen wishes to be hospitable to French gentlemen, she is so to the full extent of her power. This was their dining-room, but they also required a drawing-room; the queen allowed them to use the salon of Hercules.

  On a Thursday, the 1st of October, as we have already said, this feast was given, which was destined to fill so fatal a page in the history of the blindness and improvidence of royalty.

  The king had gone out hunting.

  The queen was shut up in her own apartments, sorrowful and pensive, and determined not to hear either the ringing of the glasses when the officers gave their toasts, or the sound of their enthusiastic cheers.

  Her son was in her arms; Andrée was with her; two women were at work in one corner of the room; those were the only persons with her.

  The brilliantly attired officers, with their waving plumes and bright gleaming arms, by degrees entered the palace. Their horses neighed before the grated gates of the royal stables; their clarions sounded as they approached; and the bands of the Flanders regiment and the guards filled the air with harmonious sounds.

  Outside the gilded railings of the courtyard of the palace was a pale, inquisitive crowd, gloomily anxious, watching, analyzing, and commenting on the joyous festival within, and the airs played by the military bands.

  In gusts, like the squalls of a distant tempest, there exhaled from the open portals of the palace the sounds of merriment with the odors of the savory viands.

  It was very imprudent to allow this crowd of starving people to inhale the odors of the good cheer and wine,-to allow these morose people to hear these sounds of jovial festivity.

  The festival was however continued, without anything disturbing its conviviality; for a time all was conducted with sobriety and order. The officers, full of respect for the uniform they wore, at first conversed in an undertone and drank moderately; during the first half hour, the programme which had been agreed upon was strictly adhered to.

  The second course was put on the table.

  Monsieur de Lusignan, the colonel of the Flanders regiment, rose and proposed four toasts.They were to the health of the king, the queen, the dauphin, and the royal family.

  Four shouts of applause re-echoed from the vaulted roofs, and struck the ears of the sorrowful spectators outside the palace.

  An officer rose; perhaps he was a man of judgment and of courage,—man of sound good sense, who foresaw the issue of all this; a man sincerely attached to that royal family whose health had just been drunk so noisily.

  This man comprehended that among these toasts there was one which was omitted, which probably might present itself to their attention.

  He therefore proposed this toast, "The Nation."

  A long murmur preceded a long shout.

  "No, no!" cried every person present except the proposer of the toast.

  And then the toast to the nation was contemptuously rejected.

  The festival had just assumed its real character; the torrent had found its real course.

  It has been said, and it is still repeated, that the person who proposed this toast was but an instigator of an opposing manifestation.

  However this might be, his words produced an untoward effect. To forget the nation might have been but a trifle, but to insult it Was too much. It avenged itself.

  As from this moment the ice was broken, as to the reserved silence succeeded boisterous cries and excited conversation, discipline became but a chimerical modesty; the dragoons, the grenadiers, the "hundred Swiss" were sent for, and even all the private soldiers in the palace.

  The wine was pushed round quickly; ten times were the glasses filled; when the dessert was brought in, it was absolutely pillaged. Intoxication became general; the soldiers forgot that they were drinking with their officers; it was in reality a fraternal festival.

  From all parts were heard shouts of "Long live the king! long live the queen!" So many flowers, so many lights, illuminating the brilliantly gilded arches, so many faces bright with happiness, so many loyal lightning darting from the eyes of these brave men,—was a spectacle which would have been grateful to the eyes of the queen, and reassuring to those of the king.

  This so unfortunate king, this so sorrowful queen, why were they not present at such a festival I

  Some officious partisans withdrew from the dining-room, and ran to Marie Antoinette's apartments, and related, exaggerated to her what they had seen.

  Then the sorrowing eyes of the queen become reanimated, and she rises from her chair. There is, then, some loyalty left, some affection in French hearts!

  There is therefore something still to hope!

  At the doors were soon assembled a crowd of courtiers; they entreat, they conjure the queen to pay a visit, merely to show herself for a moment in the festive hall, where two thousand enthusiastic subjects are consecrating, by their hurrahs, veneration for monarchical principles.

  "The king is absent," she sorrowfully replied. "I cannot go there alone."

  "But with Monseigneur the Dauphin," said some imprudent persons who still insisted on her going.

  "Madame! Madame!" whispered a voice into her ear, "remain here; I conjure you to remain."

  The queen turned round; it was the Count de Charny.

  "What!" cried she; "are you not below with all those gentlemen?"

  "I was there, Madame, but have returned. The excitement down yonder is so great that it may prejudice your Majesty's interests more than may be imagined."

  Marie Antoinette was in one of her sullen, her capricious days, with regard to De Charny. It pleased her on that day to do precisely the contrary of everything that might have been agreeable to the count.

  She darted at him a disdainful look, and was about to address some disagreeable words to him,
when, preventing her by a respectful gesture:—

  "For mercy's sake, Madame," added he, "at least await the king's advice!"

  He thought by this to gain time.

  "The king! the king!" exclaimed several voices; "the king has just returned from hunting."

  And this was the fact.

  Marie Antoinette rose and ran to meet the king, who, still booted and covered with dust, entered the room.

  "Sire," cried she, "there is below a spectacle worthy of the King of France Come with me! come with me!"

  And she took the king's arm and dragged him away without looking at De Charny, who could not conceal his distress.

  Leading her son with her left hand, she descended the staircase. A whole flood of courtiers preceded or urged her on. She reaches the door of the theatre at the moment when for the twentieth time the glasses were being emptied with shouts of "Long live the king! long live the queen!"

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  Chapter XVIII

  The Banquet given by the Guards

  AT the moment when the queen appeared with the king and their son on the stage of the theatre, an immense acclamation, as sudden and as loud as the explosion of a mine, was heard from the banqueting table and boxes. The inebriated soldiers, the officers delirious with wine and enthusiasm, waving their hats and sabres above their heads, shouted, "Long live the king I long live the queen! long live the dauphin!"

  The bands immediately played, "Oh, Richard! oh, my king!"

  The allusion of this air had become so apparent, it so well expressed the thoughts of all present, it so faithfully translated the meaning of this banquet, that all, as soon as the air began, immediately sang the words.

  The queen, in her enthusiasm, forgot that she was in the midst of inebriated men; and the king, though surprised, felt, with his accustomed sound sense, that it was no place for him, and that it was going beyond his conscientious feelings; but weak, and flattered at once more finding a popularity and zeal which he was no longer habituated to meet from his people, he, by degrees, allowed himself to be carried away by the general hilarity.

  De Charny, who during the whole festival had drunk nothing but water, followed the king and queen. He had hoped that all would have terminated without their being present, and then it would have been but of slight importance; they might have disavowed, have denied everything; but he turned pale at the thought that the presence of the king and queen would become an historical fact.

  But his terror was increased greatly when he saw his brother George approach the queen, and encouraged by her smile, address some words to her.

  Charny was not near enough to hear the words, but by his brother's gestures he could comprehend that he was making some request.

  To this request the queen made a sign of assent, and suddenly taking from her cap the cockade she wore upon it, gave it to the young man.

  De Charny shuddered, stretched forth his arms, and uttered a cry.

  It was not even the white cockade—the French cockade—which the queen presented to her imprudent knight; it was the black cockade,—the Austrian cockade; the cockade which was so hateful to French eyes.

  What the queen then did was no longer a mere imprudence; it was an act of absolute treason.

  And yet all these poor fanatics, whom God had doomed to ruin, were so insensate that when George de Charny presented to them this black cockade, those who wore the white cockade threw it from them; those who had the tricolored one trampled it beneath their feet.

  And then the excitement became so great that unless they had wished to be stifled with their kisses, or to trample under foot those who threw themselves on their knees before them, the august hosts of the Flanders regiment felt obliged to retreat towards their apartments.

  All this might have been considered as a sample of French folly, which the French are always ready enough to pardon, if these orgies had not gone beyond the point of enthusiasm; but they soon went much farther.

  Good royalists, when eulogizing the king, must necessarily somewhat ill-treat the nation.

  That nation, in whose name so much vexation had been offered to the king that the bands had undoubtedly the right to play:—

  "Pent on affliger ce qu'on aime?"

  "Can we afflict those whom we love?"

  It was while this air was being played that the king, the queen, and the dauphin withdrew.

  They had scarcely left the theatre when, exciting each other, the boon companions metamorphosed the banqueting-room into a town taken by assault.

  Upon a signal given by Monsieur de Perseval, aide-de-camp to the Count d'Estaing, the trumpets sounded a charge.

  A charge, and against whom Against the absent enemy.

  Against the people!

  A charge! music so enchanting to French ears that it had the effect of transforming the stage of the Opera-House at Versailles into a battle-field, and the lovely ladies who were gazing from the boxes at the brilliant spectacle were the enemy.

  The cry "To the assault!" was uttered by a hundred voices, and the escalade of the boxes immediately commenced. It is true that the besiegers were in a humor which inspired so little terror that the besieged held out their hands to them.

  The first who reached the balcony was a grenadier in the Flanders regiment. Monsieur de Perseval tore a cross from his own breast and decorated the grenadier with it.

  It is true that it was a Limbourg cross,—one of those crosses which are scarcely considered crosses.

  And all this was done under the Austrian colors, with oud vociferations against the national cockade.

  Here and there some hollow and sinister sounds were uttered.

  But, drowned by the howling of the singers, by the hurrahs of the besiegers, by the inspiring sounds of the trumpets, these noises were borne with threatening import to the ears of the people, who were, in the first place, astonished, and then became indignant.

  It was soon known outside the palace, in the square, and afterwards in the streets, that the black cockade had been substituted for the white one, and that the tricolored cockade had been trampled under foot. It was also known that a brave officer of the National Guard, who had, in spite of threats, retained his tricolored cockade, had been seriously wounded even in the king's apartments.

  Then it was vaguely rumored that one officer alone had remained motionless, sorrowful, and standing at the entrance of that immense banqueting-room converted into a circus, wherein all these madmen had been playing their insensate pranks, and had looked on, listened to, and had shown himself, loyal and intrepid soldier as he was, submissive to the all-powerful will of the majority, taking upon himself the faults of others, accepting the responsibility of all the excesses committed by the army, represented on that fatal day by the officers of the Flanders regiment; but the name of this man, wise and alone amid so many madmen, was not even pronounced; and had it been, it would never have been believed that the Count de Charny, the queen's favorite, was the man, who, although ready to die for her, had suffered more painfully than any other from the errors she had committed.

  As to the queen, she had returned to her own apartments, completely giddy from the magic of the scene.

  She was soon assailed by a throng of courtiers and flatterers.

  "See," said they to her, "what is the real feeling of your troops; judge from this whether the popular fury or anarchical ideas, which has been so much spoken of, would withstand the ferocious ardor of French soldiers for monarchical ideas." And as all these words corresponded with the secret desires of the queen, she allowed herself to be led away by these chimeras, not perceiving that De Charny had remained at a distance from her.

  By degrees, however, the noises ceased; the slumber f the mind extinguished all the ignes-fatui, the phantasmagoria of intoxication. The king, besides, paid a visit to the queen at the moment she was about to retire, and let fall these words, replete with profound wisdom:—

  "We shall see to-morrow."

  The impruden
t man! by this saying, which to any other person but the one to whom it was addressed would have been a warning and sage counsel, he had revivified in the queen's mind feelings of provocation and resistance which had almost subsided.

  "In fact," murmured she, when the king had left her, this flame, which was confined to the palace this evening, will spread itself in Versailles during the night, and to-morrow will produce a general conflagration throughout France. All these soldiers, all these officers, who have this evening given me such fervent pledges of their devotedness, will be called traitors, rebels to the nation, murderers of their country. They will call the chiefs of these aristocrats the subalterns of the stipendiaries of Pitt and Coburg, of the satellites of power, of the barbarians, the savages of the North.

  "Each of these heads which has worn the black cockade will be doomed to be fixed to the lamp-post on the Place de Grève.

  "Each of those breasts from which so loyally escaped those shouts of 'Long live the queen!' will, on the first popular commotion, be pierced with ignoble knives and infamous pikes.

  "And it is I, again—I, always I, who have been the cause of all this! I shall have condemned to death all these brave and faithful servants,—I, the inviolable sovereign. They are hypocritically left unassailed when near me, but when away from me will be insulted from hatred.

  "Oh, no, rather than be ungrateful to such a degree as that, towards my only, my last friends,—rather than be so cowardly and so heartless, I will take the fault upon myself. It is for me that all this has been done; upon me let all their anger fall. We shall then see how far their anger will be carried; we shall see up to which step of my throne the impure tide will dare to ascend."

  And to the queen, animated by these thoughts, which drove sleep from her pillow, and on which she meditated during the greater part of the night, the result of the events of the next day was no longer doubtful.

  The next day came, clouded over with gloomy regrets, and ushered in by threatening murmurs.

  On that day the National Guards, to whom the queen had presented their colors, came to the palace with heads cast down and averted eyes, to thank her Majesty.