“A friend, Edmond? Who? Thérèse?”
Cléry coloured hotly.
“Why not Thérèse, Jacques?”
“Oh, if you like to play with gunpowder it’s no business of mine, Edmond; but the girl is Hébert’s mistress, and as dangerous as the devil, that’s all. And so she told you that?”
Cléry nodded, a trifle defiantly.
“To-morrow,” said Dangeau slowly; “where?”
“At all the prisons. One or two of the gaolers are warned, but I do not believe they will be able to do anything.”
Dangeau was thinking hard.
“They sent me away on purpose,” he said at last.
“Curse them!” said Cléry in a shaking voice.
Dangeau did not swear, but he nodded his head as who should say Amen, and his face was bitter hard.
“Is anything intended here?” he asked sharply.
“No, not from head-quarters; but Heaven knows what may happen when the mob tastes blood.”
Dangeau gave a short laugh.
“Why, Jacques?” said Cléry, surprised.
“Why, Edmond,” repeated Dangeau sardonically, “I was thinking that it would be a queer turn for Fate to play if you and I were to die to-morrow, fighting in defence of Capet against the people.”
“You would do that?” asked Edmond.
“But naturally, my friend, since we are responsible for him.”
He had been leaning carelessly against the wall, but as he spoke he straightened himself.
“Our friends upstairs will be getting impatient,” he said aloud. “Who takes the night duty with me?”
Cléry was about to speak, but received a warning pressure of the arm. He was silent, and Legros, one of the loungers, came forward.
Dangeau and he went out together. Upstairs silence reigned. The two Commissioners on duty rose with an air of relief, and passed out. The light of a badly trimmed oil-lamp showed that the little party of prisoners were all present, and Dangeau saluted them with a grave inclination of the head that was hardly a bow. His companion, clumsily embarrassed, shuffled with his feet, spat on the floor, and lounged to a seat.
The Queen raised her eyebrows at him, and, turning slightly, smiled and nodded to Dangeau. Mme Elizabeth bowed abstractedly and turned again to the chessboard which stood between her and her brother. Mme Royale curtsied, but the little Dauphin did not raise his head from some childish game which occupied his whole attention. His mother, after waiting a moment, called him to her and, laying one of her long delicate hands on his petulantly twitching shoulder, observed gently:
“Fi donc, my son; did you not see these gentlemen enter? Bid them good evening!”
The child tossed his head, but as his father’s gaze met him, he hung it down again, saying in a clear childish voice, “Good evening, Citizens.”
Mme Elizabeth’s colour rose perceptibly at the form of address, but the Queen smiled, and, giving the boy’s shoulder a little tap of dismissal, she turned to Dangeau.
“We forget our manners in this solitude, Monsieur,” she said in her peculiarly soft and agreeable voice. Then after a pause, during which Dangeau, to his annoyance, felt that his face was flushing, “It is Monsieur Dangeau, is it not?”
“Citizen Dangeau, at your service.”
Marie Antoinette laughed; the sound was pleasing but disturbing. “Oh, my good Monsieur, I am too old to learn these new forms of address. My son, you see, is quicker”; the arch eyes clouded, the laugh dropped to a sigh, then rippled back again into merriment. “Only figure to yourself, Monsieur, that I have had already to learn one new language, for when I came to France as a bride, all was strange—oh, but so strange—to me. I had hard work, I do assure you; and that good Mme de Noailles was a famous task-mistress!”
“Should it be harder to learn simplicity?” said Dangeau, a faint tinge of bitterness in his pleasant voice.
“Why, no, Monsieur,” returned the Queen, “it should not be. My liking has always been for simplicity. Good bread to eat, fresh water to drink, and a clean white dress to wear,—with these things I could be very well content. But, alas! Monsieur, the last at least is lacking us; and simplicity, though a cardinal virtue now, does not of itself afford an occupation. Pray, Monsieur Dangeau, could you not ask that my sister and I should be permitted the consolation of needlework?”
Dangeau coloured.
“The Commune has already decided against needle-work,” he said rather curtly.
“But why then, Monsieur?”
“Because we all know that the needle may be used instead of the pen, and that it is as easy to embroider treason on a piece of stuff as to write it on paper,” he replied, with some annoyance.
The Queen gave a little light laugh.
“Oh, de grace! Monsieur,” she said, “my sister and I are not so clever! But may we not at least knit? There is nothing treasonable in a few pins and a little wool, is there, M. le Député?”
Dangeau shook his head doubtfully. Consciousness of the Queen’s fascination rendered his outward aspect austere, and even ungracious.
“I will ask the Council,” was all he permitted himself to say, but was thanked as charmingly as though he had promised some great concession. This did not diminish his discomfort, and he was acutely conscious of Mme Elizabeth’s frown, and of a coarse grunt from Legros.
The prisoners did not keep late hours. Punctually at ten the King rose, embraced Mme Royale, kissed his sister’s forehead and the Queen’s hand, and retired to his own apartment, accompanied by M. le Dauphin, his valet, and the Deputy Legros. The Queen, Mme Elizabeth, and Mme Royale busied themselves for a moment with putting away the chessmen, and a book or two that lay about. They then proceeded to their own quarters, which consisted of two small rooms opening from an ante-chamber. There Marie Antoinette embraced her sister and daughter, and they separated for the night. Dangeau was obliged to enter each apartment in turn, in order to satisfy himself that all was in order, after which he locked both doors, and drew a pallet-bed across that which led to the Queen’s room. Here he stretched himself, but it was long ere he slept, and his thoughts were very bitter. No Jacobin of them all could go as far as he in Republican principles. To him the Republic was not only the best form of government, but the only one under which the civic virtues could flourish. It was his faith, his ardent religion, the inspiration of his life and labours, and it was this faith which he was to see clouded, this religion defiled, this inspiration befouled,—and at the hands of his co-devotees, Hébert, Marat, and their crew. They worshipped at the same altar, but they brought to it blood-stained hands, lives foul with license, and the smoking blood of tortured sacrifices.
Paris let loose on the prisoners! He shuddered at the thought. Once the tiger had tasted blood, who could assuage his thirst? There would be victims enough and to spare. Curled fops of the salons; scented exquisites of the Court; indolent, luxurious priests; smooth-skinned, bright-eyed women; children foolish and unthinking. He saw the sea of blood rise and rise till it engulfed them all.
Strange that he should think of the girl he had seen for an instant on Rosalie’s stairway. How uneasily she had looked at him, and with what a rising colour. How young she seemed, how delicately proud. Her face stayed with him as he sank into a sleep, vexed by prophetic dreams.
The next morning passed uneasily. It was a hot, cloudless day, and the small room in which the prisoners were confined became very oppressive. The King spent a part of the time in superintending the education of his son, and whilst thus engaged certainly appeared to greater advantage than at any other time. The child was wayward, wilful, and hard to teach; but the father’s patience appeared inexhaustible, and his method of imparting information was not only painstaking, but attractive.
The Princesses read or conversed. Presently the King got up and began pacing the room. It was a habit of his, and, after glancing at him once or twice, Mme Elizabeth rose and joined him. Now and then they stood at the window and looked out. The
last few houses to be demolished were falling fast, and the King amused himself by speculating on the direction likely to be taken by each crashing mass of masonry. He made little wagers with his sister, was chagrined when he lost, and pleased out of all reason when he won. Dangeau’s lip curled a little as he watched the trivial scene, and perhaps the Queen read his thought, for she said smilingly:
“Prisoners learn to take pleasure in small things, Monsieur”; and Dangeau bit his lip. The quick intuition, the arch glance, confused him.
“All things are comparative,” continued Marie Antoinette. “When I had many amusements and occupations, I would not have turned my head to remark what now constitutes an event in my monotonous day. Yesterday a workman hurt his foot, and I assure you, Monsieur, that we all regarded him with as much interest as if he had been a dear friend. Trifles have ceased to be trifles, and soon I shall look out for a mouse or a spider to tame, as I have heard of prisoners doing.”
“I cannot imagine even the loneliest of unfortunates caring for a spider,” said Dangeau, with a smile.
“No, Monsieur, nor I,” returned the Queen. She seemed about to speak again, and, indeed, her lips had already opened, when, above the crash of the falling masonry, there came the heavy boom of a gun. Dangeau started up. It came again, and yet a third time.
“It is the alarm,” said Legros stolidly.
Immediately there was a confused noise of voices, shouting, footsteps. Dangeau and his colleague pressed forward to the window. The workmen were throwing down their tools; here a group stood talking, gesticulating, there half a dozen were running,—all was confusion.
Louis had recoiled from the window. His great face was a sickly yellow, and the sweat stood in large beads upon the skin.
“Is there danger? What is it?” he stammered, and caught at the table for support.
Mme Royale sat still, her long, mournful features steadily composed. She neither moved nor cried out, but Dangeau saw the thin, unchildish shoulders tremble. Mme Elizabeth embraced first her brother, and then her sister, demanding protection for them in agitated accents. Only the Queen appeared unmoved. She had risen and, passing her arm through that of her husband, rapidly addressed a few words to him in an undertone. Inaudible to others, they had an immediate effect upon him, for he retired to the back of the room, sat down, and drew his little son upon his knee.
The Queen then turned to the Commissioners.
“What is it, Messieurs?” she asked. “Is there danger?”
“I don’t know,” answered Legros bluntly.
Dangeau threw her a reassuring glance.
“It is a street riot, I think,” he said calmly. “It is probably of no consequence; and in any case, Madame, we are here to protect you, with our lives if necessary. You may be perfectly assured of that.”
The Queen thanked him with an earnest look and resumed her seat. The noise outside decreased, and presently the routine of the day fell heavily about them once more.
If Dangeau were disturbed in mind his face showed nothing, and if he found the day of an interminable length he did not say so. When the evening brought him relief, he found the Council in considerable excitement. The prisons had been raided, “hundreds killed,” said one. “Bah! only one or two, nothing to speak of,” maintained another.
Edmond Cléry looked agitated.
“It is only the beginning,” he whispered, as he passed his friend. He was on duty with the prisoners, so further conversation was impossible; but Dangeau’s sleep in the Council-room was not much sounder than that of the night before in the Queen’s ante-chamber.
CHAPTER V
A CARNIVAL OF BLOOD
SEPTEMBER THE THIRD DAWNED heavy with murky clouds, out of which climbed a sun all red, like a ball of fire. The mists of the autumn morning caught the tinge, but no omens could add to the tense foreboding which wrapt the city. It needed no signs in the sky to prophesy a day of terror.
At La Force a crowded court-yard held those of the prisoners who had escaped the previous day’s massacre. They had been driven from their cells at dawn, and, after an hour or two of strained anticipation, had gathered into their accustomed coteries. Mme de Lamballe, who had heard the mob howling for her blood, sat placidly beautiful. Now and then she spoke to a friend, but for the most part she kept her eyes on the tiny copy of The Imitation of Christ which was found in her blood-stained clothes later on in that frightful day. Others, less devout, or less alarmed, were gossipping, chattering, even laughing, or playing cards, as if La Force were Versailles, and the hands on the clock of Time had never moved for the last four years.
Mme de Maillé was gone. Her hacked corpse still lay in its pool of blood, her dead eyes stared unburied at the lowering sky; but Mme de Montargis sat in her old place, her attendant Vicomte at her side. If her face was pale the rouge hid it, and at least her smile was as ready, her voice as careless, as ever. Bault, the gaoler, stared as he passed her.
“These aristocrats!” he muttered; “any honest woman would be half-dead of fright after yesterday, and what to-day will bring, Heaven knows! I myself, mille diables! I myself, I shake, my hand trembles, I am in the devil’s own sweat,—and there she sits, that light woman, and laughs!”
As he passed into his own room, his wife caught him by the arm——
“Jean, Jean, mon Dieu, Jean! They are coming back!” He strained his ears, listening, gripping his wife, as she gripped him.
“It is true,” he murmured hoarsely.
A sullen, heavy drone burdened the air. It was like the sound of the rising tide on a day of storm,—far off, but nearer, every moment nearer, nearer, until it drowned the thumping of the frightened pulses which beat so loudly at his ears. A buzz as of infernal bees,—its component parts, laughter of hell, audible lust of cruelty, just retribution clamorous, and the cry of innocent blood shed long ago. All this, blent with the howl of the beast who scents blood, made up a sound so awful, that it was small wonder that the sweat dripped heavily from the brow of Bault, the gaoler, or that his wife clung to his arm, praying him to think of their children.
To his honour be it said that he risked his life, and more than his life, to save some two hundred of his prisoners, but for the rest—their doom was sealed.
It had been written long ago, in letters of cumulative anguish, when the father of Mme de Montargis had torn that shrieking peasant bride from her husband’s side on their marriage-day, when her grandfather hanged at his gates the starving wretches who clamoured over-loudly for release from the gabelle,—hardly a noble family in France but had some such record at their backs, signs in an alphabet that was to spell “The Terror.” At the hands of the fathers was sown the seed of hate, and the doom of the reaping came fast upon their children.
King Mob was at his revels, but he must needs play a ghastly comedy with the victims. There should be a trial for each, a really side-splitting affair. “A table, Bault,” and up with the judges, three of them, wrapped in a drunken dignity, a chair apiece, a bonnet rouge on each august head; and prisoner after prisoner hurried up, and interrogated. A look was enough for some, a word too much for others. Here and there a lucky answer drew applause, and won a life, but for the most part came the sentence, “A l’Abbaye,”—and straightway off went the condemned to the inviolable cloisters of death.
Mme de Montargis came up trippingly upon the Vicomte de Sélincourt’s arm. Their names were enough—both stank in the nostrils of the crowd. There was a shout of “Austrians, Austrian spies! take them away, take them out!”
“To the Abbaye,” bawled the reverend judges, and Madame made them a little curtsey. This was better than she expected.
“I thank you, Messieurs,” she murmured; and then to the Vicomte: “Mon ami, we are in luck. The Abbaye can hardly be more incommodious than La Force.”
“Quelle comédie!” responded Sélincourt, with a shrug, and with that the door before them opened.
Let us give them the credit of their qualities. That open door ga
ve straight into hell,—an inferno of tossing pikes which dripped with blood, dripped to a pavement red and slippery as a shambles, whilst a hoarse, wild-beast roar, full of oaths, and lust, and savage violence, broke upon their ears.
If Mme de Montargis hesitated, it was for the hundredth part of a second only. Then she raised her scent-ball carelessly to her nostrils, and the hand that held it did not shake.
“Tiens, mon ami,” she said, “your comedy becomes tragedy. I never thought it my rôle, but it seems le bon Dieu thinks otherwise”; and with that she stepped daintily out on to the reeking cobble-stones. One is glad to think that the first pike-thrust was well aimed, and that it was an unconscious form that went down to the mire and blood below.
The beautiful Lamballe was just behind. They say she knew she was going to her death. There is a tale of a dream—God! what a dream!—an augury, what not? Heaven knows no great degree of prescience was required. She turned very pale, her eyes on her book until the last moment, when she slipped it into her pocket, with one of those unconscious movements dictated by a brain too numb to work otherwise than by habit. She met the horror with dilated eyes,—eyes that glazed to a faint before death struck her. Nature was merciful, and death a boon, for over her corpse began a carnival of lust and blood so hideous that imagination staggers at it, and history veils it in shuddering generalities. No need to dwell upon its details.
What concerns us is that, having her head upon a pike, and the mutilated body trailing by the heels, the whole mad mob set off to the Temple, to show Marie Antoinette her friend, and to serve the Queen as they had served the Princess.
It was between twelve and one in the day that news of what was passing came to the Temple. It was the fat Butin who brought it. He came in on the Council panting, gasping, dripping with the moisture of heat and fear. All his broad, scarlet face was drawn, and his lips, under the bristling moustache, were pale—a thing very strange and arresting. It was plain that he had news of the first importance, but it was some time before he could speak. When his voice came it was all out of key, and his whole portly body quivered with the effort to control it.
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