Ange Pitou

by Alexandre Dumas

  It was easy to divine from the attitude of these men that they did not approve what had occurred, but on the contrary, that they would have loudly disapproved it had they dared.

  They had formed part of the procession, and had gone out to form part of the Flanders regiment; they had received invitations to the banquet, and had accepted them. Only, being more citizens than soldiers, it was they who during the debauch had uttered those disapproving words which had not been heeded.

  These words on the following day had become a reproach, a blame.

  When they came to the palace to thank the queen, they were escorted by a great crowd.

  And taking into consideration the serious nature of the circumstances, the ceremony became an imposing one.

  The parties on both sides were about to discover with whom they would have to deal.

  On their side, all those soldiers and officers who had so compromised themselves the evening before, were anxious to ascertain how far they would be supported by the queen in their imprudent demonstrations, and had placed themselves before that people whom they had scandalized and insulted, that they might hear the first official words which should be uttered from the palace.

  The weight of the whole counter-revolution was then hanging suspended over the head of the queen.

  It was, however, still within her power to withdraw from this responsibility.

  But she, proud as the proudest of her race, with great firmness cast her clear and penetrating gaze on all around her, whether friends or enemies, and addressing herself in a sonorous voice to the officers of the National Guards:—

  "Gentlemen," said she, "I am much pleased at having presented you with your colors. The nation and the army ought to love the king as we love the nation and the army. I was delighted with the events of yesterday."

  Upon these words, which she emphasized in her firmest tone of voice; a murmur arose from the crowd, and loud applause re-echoed from the military ranks:

  "We are supported," said the latter.

  "We are betrayed," said the former.

  Thus, poor queen, that fatal evening of the 1st of October was not an accidental matter; thus, unfortunate woman, you do not regret the occurrences of yesterday; you do not repent. And so far from repenting, you are delighted with them.

  De Charny, who was in the centre of a group, heard with a sigh of extreme pain this justification,—nay, more: than that, this glorification of the orgies of the king's guards.

  The queen, on turning away her eyes from the crowd, met those of the count; and she fixed her looks on the countenance of her lover in order to ascertain the impression her words had produced upon him.

  "Am I not courageous?" was the import of this look.

  "Alas, Madame, you are far more mad than courageous," replied the gloomy countenance of the count.

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  Chapter XIX

  The Wowen begin to stir

  AT Versailles the court was talking heroically against the people.

  At Paris, they were becoming knights-errant against the court; only the knights-errant were running about the streets.

  These knights of the people were wandering about in rags, their hands upon the hilt of a sabre or the butt-end of a pistol, questioning their empty pockets or their hollow stomachs.

  While at Versailles they drank too much, at Paris, alas! they did not eat enough.

  There was too much wine on the table-cloths of Versailles.

  Not sufficient flour in the bakers' shops at Paris.

  Strange circumstances! a melancholy blindness, which now that we are accustomed, to the fall of thrones, will excite a smile of pity from politicians.

  To make a counter-revolution, and provoke to a combat people who are starving!

  Alas! will say History, compelled to become a materialist philosopher, no people ever fight go desperately as those who have not dined.

  It would however have been very easy to have given bread to the people, and then most assuredly, the bread of Versailles would have appeared less bitter.

  But the flour of Corbeil ceased to arrive. Corbeil is so far from Versailles; who, then, living with the king and queen, could have thought of Corbeil?

  Unhappily, from this forgetfulness of the court, Famine, that spectre which sleeps with so much difficulty, but which so easily awakens,—Famine had descended, pale and agitated, into the streets of Paris. She listens at all the corners of the streets; she recruits her train of vagabonds and malefactors; she glues her livid face against the windows of the rich and of the public functionaries.

  The men remember those commotions which had cost so much blood; they recall to mind the Bastille; they recollect Foulon, Berthier, and Flesselles; they fear to have the opprobrious name of assassins again attached to them, and they wait.

  But the women, who have as yet done nothing but suffer! Where women suffer, the suffering is triple,—for the child, who cries and who is unjust, because it has not a consciousness of the cause; for the child who says to its mother, "Why do you not give me bread?" for the husband, who, gloomy and taciturn, leaves the house in the morning to return to it in the evening still more gloomy and taciturn; and finally, for herself, the painful echo of conjugal and maternal sufferings. The women burn to do something in their turn; they wish to serve their country in their own way.

  Besides, was it not a woman who brought about the 1st of October at Versailles?

  It was therefore for the women, in their turn, to bring about the 5th of October at Paris.

  Gilbert and Billot were sitting in the Café de Foy,1in the Palais Royal. It was at the Café de Foy that

  motions were proposed. Suddenly the door of the coffeehouse is thrown open; and a woman enters it much agitated. She denounces the black and white cockades which from Versailles have invaded Paris; she proclaims the public danger.

  It will be remembered that Charny had said to the queen:—

  "Madame, there will be really much to apprehend when the women begin to stir themselves."

  This was also the opinion of Gilbert.

  Therefore, on seeing that the women were actually bestirring themselves, he turned to Billot, uttering only these five words:—

  "To the Hôtel de Ville!"

  Since the conversation which had taken place between Billot, Gilbert, and Pitou,—and in consequence of which Pitou had returned to Villers-Cotterets with young Sebastien Gilbert,—Billot obeyed Gilbert upon a single word, a gesture, a sign; for he had fully comprehended that if he was strength, Gilbert was intelligence.

  They both rushed out of the coffee-house, crossed the garden of the Palais Royal diagonally, and then through the Cour des Fontaines reached the Rue St. Honored.

  When they were near the corn-market, they met a young girl coming out of the Rue Bourdonnais, who was beating a drum.

  Gilbert stopped astonished.

  "What can this mean?" said he.

  "Zounds! Doctor, don't you see," said Billot, "it is a pretty girl who is beating a drum,—and really, not badly, on my faith."

  "She must have lost something," said a passer-by.

  "She is very pale," rejoined Billot.

  "Ask her what she wants," said Gilbert.

  "Ho, my pretty girl!" cried Billot, "what are you beating that drum for?"

  "I am hungry," she replied in a weak but shrill voice.

  And she continued on her way beating the drum.

  Gilbert had waited.

  "Oh, oh!" cried he, "this is becoming terrible."

  And he looked more attentively at the women who were following the young girl with the drum.

  They were haggard, staggering, despairing.

  Among these women there were some who had not tasted food for thirty hours.

  From among these women, every now and then, would break forth a cry which was threatening even from its very feebleness, for it could be divined that it issued from famished mouths.

  "To Versailles!" they cried, "to Versailles!"r />
  And on their way they made signs to all the women Whom they perceived in the houses, and they called to all the women who were at their windows.

  A carriage drove by; two ladies were in that carriage. They put their heads out of the windows and began to laugh.

  The escort of the drum-beater stopped. About twenty women seized the horses, and then, rushing to the coach-doors, made the two ladies alight and join their group, in spite of their recriminations and a resistance which two or three hard knocks on the head soon terminated.

  Behind these women, who proceeded but slowly, on account of their stopping to recruit as they went along, walked a man with his hands in his pockets.

  This man, whose face was thin and pale, of tall, lank stature, was dressed in an iron-gray coat, black waistcoat, and small-clothes; he wore a small shabby three-cornered hat, placed obliquely over his forehead.

  A long sword beat against his thin but muscular legs.

  He followed, looking, listening, devouring everything with his piercing eyes, which rolled beneath his black-eyelids.

  "Hey! why, yes," cried Billot, "I certainly know that face; I have seen it at every riot."

  "It is Maillard, the usher," said Gilbert.

  "Ah, yes! that's he,—the man who walked over the plank after me at the Bastille; he was more skilful than I was, for he did not fall into the ditch."

  Maillard disappeared with the women at the corner of a street.

  Billot felt a great desire to do as Maillard had done; but Gilbert dragged him on to the Hôtel deVille.

  It was very certain that the gathering would go there, whether it was a gathering of men or of women. Instead of following the course of the river, he went straight to its mouth.

  They knew at the Hôtel de Ville what was going on in Paris; but they scarcely noticed it. Of what importance was it, in fact, to the phlegmatic Bailly, or to the aristocrat Lafayette, that a woman had taken it into her head to beat a drum? It was anticipating the carnival, and that was all.

  But when at the heels of this woman who was beating the drum, they saw two or three thousand women; when at the sides of this crowd which was increasing. every minute, they saw advancing a no less considerable troop of men, smiling in a sinister manner, and carrying their hideous weapons; when they understood that these men were smiling at the anticipation of the evil which these women were about to commit, an evil the more irremediable from their knowing that the public forces would not attempt to stop the evil before it was committed, and that the legal powers would not punish afterwards,—they began to comprehend the serious nature of the circumstances.

  These men smiled, because the ill they had not dared to commit, they would gladly see committed by the most inoffensive half of the human kind.

  In about half an hour there were ten thousand women assembled on the Place de Grève.

  These ladies, seeing that their numbers were sufficient, began to deliberate with their arms akimbo.

  The deliberation was by no means a calm one; those who deliberated were for the most part porteresses, market-women, and prostitutes. Many of these women were royalists, and far from thinking of doing any harm to the king and queen, would have allowed themselves to be killed to serve them. The noise which was made by this strange discussion might have been heard across the river, and by the silent towers of Notre-Dame, which, after seeing so many things, were preparing themselves to see things still more curious.

  The result of the deliberation was as follows:—

  "Let us just go and burn the Hôtel de Ville, where so many musty papers are made out to prevent our eating our daily food."

  And in the Hôtel de Ville they were at that moment trying a baker who had sold bread to the poor under weight.

  It will be easily comprehended that the dearer bread is, the more profitable is every operation of this nature; only the more lucrative it is, the more dangerous.

  In consequence, the admirers of lamp-justice were only waiting for the baker with a new rope.

  The guards of the Hôtel de Ville wished to save the unhappy culprit, and used all their strength to effect it. But for some time past it has been seen that the result but ill accorded with these philanthropic intentions.

  The women rushed on these guards, dispersed them, made a forcible entry into the Hôtel de Ville; and the sack began.

  They wished to throw into the Seine all they could find, and burn on the spot all that they could not carry away.

  The men were therefore to be cast into the water, the building itself set fire to.

  This was rather heavy work.

  There was a little of everything in the Hôtel de Ville.

  In the first place, there were three hundred electors.

  There were also the assistants.

  There were the mayors of the different districts.

  "It would take a long time to throw all these men into the water," said a sensible woman, who was in a hurry to conclude the affair.

  "They deserve it richly, notwithstanding," observed another.

  "Yes; but we have no time to spare."

  "Well, then," cried another, "the quickest way will be to burn them all, and everything with them."

  They ran about looking for torches, and to get fagots to set fire to the municipality. While this was doing, in order not to lose time, they caught an abbé, the Abbé Lefèvre d'Ormesson, and strung him up.

  Fortunately for the abbé, the man in the gray coat was there; he cut the rope, and the poor abbé fell from a height of seventeen feet, sprained one of his feet, and limped away amid shouts of laughter from these Megæras.

  The reason for the abbé being allowed to get away was that the torches were lighted, and the incendiaries had already these torches in their hands, and they were about to set fire to the archives; in two minutes the whole place would have been in a blaze.

  Suddenly the man in the gray coat rushed forward and snatched torches and fagots out of the women's hands; the women resisted. The man laid about him right and left with the lighted torches, setting fire to their petticoats; and while they were occupied in extinguishing them, he extinguished the papers which had already been ignited.

  Who, then, is this man who thus opposes the frightful will of ten thousand furious creatures?

  Why then, do they allow themselves to be governed by this man? They had half hanged the Abbé Lefèvre; they could hang that man more effectually, seeing that he would be no longer there to prevent them from hanging whom they pleased.

  Guided by this reasoning, a frantic chorus arose from them, threatening him with death; and to these threats deeds were added.

  The women surrounded the man with the gray coat, and threw a rope round his neck.

  But Billot hastened forward. Billot was determined to render the same service to Maillard which Maillard had rendered the abbé.

  He grasped the rope, which he cut into three pieces with a well-tempered and sharp knife, which at that moment served its owner to cut a rope, but which in an extremity, wielded as it was by a powerful arm, might serve him for another purpose.

  And while cutting the rope and getting piece by piece of it as he could, Billot cried:—

  "Why, you unfortunate wretches, you do not then recognize one of the conquerors of the Bastille, who passed over the plank to effect the capitulation, while I lay floundering in the moat Do you not recognize Monsieur Maillard?"

  At that well-known and redoubtable name all these women at once paused; they looked at one another, and wiped the perspiration from their brows.

  The work had been a difficult one; and although they were in the month of October, they might well perspire in accomplishing it.

  "A conqueror of the Bastille! and that conqueror Maillard! Maillard, the usher of the Châtelet! Long live Maillard!"

  Threats are immediately turned into caresses; they embrace Maillard, and all cry, "Long live Maillard!"

  Maillard exchanged a hearty shake of the hand and a look with Billot.


  The shake of the hand implied, "We are friends!"

  The look implied, "Should you ever stand in need of me, you may calculate upon me."

  Maillard had resumed an influence over these women, which was so much the greater from their reflecting that they had committed some trifling wrong towards him, and which he had to pardon.

  But Maillard was an old sailor on the sea of popular fury; he knew the ocean of the faubourgs, which is raised by a breath, and calmed again by a word.

  He knew how to speak to these human waves, when they allow you time enough to speak.

  Moreover, the moment was auspicious for being heard. They had all remained silent around Maillard.

  Maillard would not allow that Parisian women should destroy the municipal authorities,—the only power to protect them; he would not allow them to annihilate the civic registers, which proved that their children were not all bastards.

  The harangue of Maillard was of so novel a nature, and delivered in so loud and sarcastic a tone, that it produced a great effect.

  No one should be killed; nothing should be burned.

  But they insist on going to Versailles. It is there that exists the evil. It is there that they pass their nights in orgies, while Paris is starving. It is Versailles that devours everything. Corn and flour are deficient in Paris, because, instead of coming to Paris, they are sent direct from Corbeil to Versailles.

  It would not be thus if the "great baker," the "baker's wife," and the "baker's little boy" were at Paris.

  It was under these nicknames that they designated the king, the queen, and the dauphin,—those natural distributors of the people's bread.

  They would go to Versailles.

  Since these women are organized into troops, since they have muskets, cannon, and gunpowder, -and those who have not muskets nor gunpowder, have pikes and pitchforks,—they ought to have a general.

  "And why not? the National Guard has one."

  Lafayette is the general of the men.

  Maillard is the general of the women.

  Monsieur de Lafayette commands his do-little grenadiers, which appear to be an army of reserve, for they do so little when there is so much to be done.