V
THE TAKING OF THE TUILERIES
Boom! Boom!
All at once Nicole and Genevieve found themselves on their feet in themiddle of the dark room. Through the open window there fell upon theirears a wild metal shriek, hoarse, furious, angry, that spoke of fireand of the dungeon--the boom of the tocsin.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Nicole bounded to the window. Below she beheld startled heads in whitenight-caps scattered down the length of the walls. As one dog wakes thepack, another and another bell took up the call, till from every pointof the horizon broke forth the jangle and clang of the iron throats ofParis.
Below, a few tiny cries rose through the murmur. Across the roofs camethe thin shrieks of a woman. Lights began to appear, forms clad innight-dress. Suddenly across the court tore into the night Barabant'sfrenzied voice.
"To arms! to arms!"
As though awaiting the signal, there burst upon the ear the rumblingof drums, the scattered popping of firearms, calls and answering callsflung from roof to roof.
"To arms, citoyens, to arms!"
A frenzy passed over Nicole. She leaned far out, and gathering hervoice, echoed:
"To arms!"
She bounded back into the room, knocking over the chair, snatched upher cloak, bounded to the window to cry "To arms!" crashed down thestairs, dragging Genevieve, flung out of the blind passage, bumping andbruising her shoulders, down and out into the streets.
From every doorway figures shot forth and passed, running toward thenorth. The two girls, at top speed, joined the crowd. They passed awoman with a torch, whose hair stood out in long streams against theracing; la Mere Corniche hobbling along as fast as her old legs wouldtake her; families of five and six running in packs, panting andsilent, while beneath, above, about, from disgorging cellars, fromloud-flung open windows, from every bell the city writhed in nightmare.
Distancing their companions, they arrived among the first before thebrasserie of Santerre, where the Quinze-Vingts were assembling,forming quickly into ranks. From one window Jambony, the crier, inan enormous red cap, was feeding pikes to a hundred outstretchedhands. The arrival of fresh torches caused the walls to loom up likelurid cliffs, sparkling in spots where a window-pane blazed back thereflection. From the windows flattened faces with black-encircled eyeslooked down,--children too young, men and women too old, to survive inthe press below: unhuman faces of unhuman beings, like a multitude ofrats driven to shelter by the influx of a torrent.
Below, the black mass surged in, spattered, under the glow of thetorches, with the red of the liberty-caps, while two banners hung likehuge blurs above the tossing surface of pikes and weapons. The noisewas deafening, the confusion beyond control. Men rushed in and out,their arms flung wide and high, bellowing:
"Death to the tyrants!"
"Death to the fat Louis!"
A slip of a girl, clinging on a window-sill, harangued the mob; afishwife, astride her husband, comic and furious, beat the air andscreamed to the crowd to dye the Seine red. Hags with threatening fistsshrieked themselves into a frenzy:
"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!"
Some, foaming, overcome with their passions, collapsed on the ground.The anger of the mob against the queen gathered at times in bursts andshouts:
"Death to Mme. Veto!"
"Death to the Austrian!"
Unthinkable obscenities were coupled with her name and tossed from eddyto eddy. The Marseillais, gathering in a body, dominated the tumultwith the swelling chords of their battle hymn that on their voicesbecame a chant of carnage and a thing of terror.
It was more than a mob: it was the populace in eruption. All thehuman passions and emotions were there, the basest and the noblest.There were the scum--the lepers, the beggars, and the criminalsdiffused among the zealots, the fanatics, and the idealists. Therewere the frankly curious and the adventurous, and those with hatredand vengeance in their hearts. There was youth, warm-blooded andchivalrous, stirred by visions, and old age impatient to see thedawn--all hoarse and all clamorous to march.
The order did not come. For an hour they waited, trembling for theword. The uproar subsided a little. The torches began to drop out:there were moments of darkness when one could hardly distinguish thefaces about. The cries to advance changed to inquiries. Boudgoustbrought back the report that Petion, the mayor, was a captive, held asa hostage in the Tuileries.
Santerre, the Goliath, passed among them, distributing hand-shakes,reassuring them, counseling patience. The Assembly would meet andsummon Petion to its bar and the court would not dare detain him. Somelistened, half satisfied; others, the Marseillais specially, criedout for action. They waited still another hour and a half. The firstoutburst had seemingly exhausted the populace: they remained quietly,awed at the immensity of their daring. Many, tiring of the long vigilon foot, imitated Nicole and Genevieve and stretched out upon thepavements, forming little shallows throughout the length of the street.A few melted away to seek sleep or food. No more torches were lighted.The few that spluttered on became pale and effaced before the drab ofthe morning. An ashen glow stole over the street. Then the army thathad huddled through the night roused itself, shook itself, gatheredspirit and anger and again clamored to advance.
Santerre, besieged by the eager, hesitated. He sent off a band ofpikemen and then the Marseillais, but the rest he held irresolutely.
Suddenly a cry started up from the outskirts of the crowd. A tall manwas seen running toward them with outstretched hands, trying to piercethe crowd that closed around him. A great shout went up:
"The news! The news!"
On the outskirts a hundred hands were flung up, then a thousand. Thesound of a mighty cry could be heard indistinguishable, rumbling,gathering volume, sweeping over the crowd.
"Petion is free!"
"Petion is at the Hotel de Ville!"
Santerre hesitated no longer. He descended from his brasserie and gavethe signal. The enormous mass started, moving swiftly, consuming itsway like a glacier. A scullion, with the sudden converging impulsetoward comradeship that now permeated the throng, sought anxiously fora familiar face.
A pikeman from a group, seeing his trouble, called out:
"He, comrade, you seek friends. We are your brothers. March with us."
In measure, as they swarmed toward the Tuileries, fresh reports cameback. Mandat had been summoned. The artillery at the Pont Neuf had beenwithdrawn. Mandat was at the Hotel de Ville. Mandat had fallen beforethe vengeance of the crowd.
They hastened forward and rolled into the Place de la Greve. It wasthen seven o'clock in the morning. There, where they expected the orderto attack, they were compelled again to wait. When they clamored theywere told that they were delaying for the Faubourg St. Marceau, whichwas to join them at the Pont Neuf. Then these hordes, who had passedthe night in suspense, in the midst of rumors and counterrumors, sentup a great shout of anger:
"Treachery!"
The populace that could dare anything could not stand suspense. A panicwas imminent; but firmer spirits began to exhort them. On all sidesknots of men flung one of their number into the air, where, from theshoulders of a comrade, witty, brilliant, and magnetic, he calmed thecrowd with laughter.
Nicole and Genevieve, circulating from group to group, were halted by afamiliar voice, and beheld, aloft the giant shoulders of Javogues, theardent figure of Barabant addressing the throng.
"Peace, good, kind, gentle, loyal citizens," he was saying mockingly,"you will disturb the royal slumbers. Why such impatience? The Austriancannot see you at such an hour. You are forgetting etiquette!" A roarof laughter showed him his ground. "I assure you, aristocrats willnot fight before breakfast, before they are shaved and powdered anddressed. Patience, my Sans-Culottes; we do not want to stab them intheir beds; give them time to sleep and breakfast, that we may showthem how Sans-Culottes can fight. They are not Sans-Culottes; onlySans-Culottes can fight w
ith empty stomachs!
"For shame, citizens; one does not grumble in the face of danger. Lookabout you. The moment is sublime. You who have felled the Bastille, youwho brought Capet back from Versailles--you are now to strike the greatblow for freedom, and you grumble. What matters it if we have waitedtwenty hours or twenty days, if we may see such an event? Who would notrather die at such a moment than live in any age or in any conditionthe world has ever known? Citizens, the moment is sublime; be ye alsosublime!"
He slid to the ground, amid uproarious approval, satisfied and elate.Javogues, the Atlas, bellowed out, "That's the way to talk; he isright! Vive la Nation!"
"Vive le Citoyen Barabant!"
Barabant, recognizing the voice of Nicole, turned, while the crowd,eagerly catching up his name, saluted it with cheers.
"Bravo the Parisian!"
The second voice was Louison's. The two girls, each armed with acutlass, sent him their applause over the crowd. But, while the frankenthusiasm of Nicole inspired him, there was something in the tolerantsmile of Louison that seemed to mock his elation. Before he could reachthem, the crowd, abandoning the cries of treachery, exploded in angerat the Faubourg St. Marceau.
"Fine patriots!"
"What the devil are they doing?"
"We do not need them; to the Tuileries without them!"
"Give us news of them!"
"Citoyens, I'll bring you news," Barabant retorted. "A little patienceand you shall know of the Faubourg St. Marceau."
He returned through the chafing multitude, and departed down theRue St. Honore as fast as his legs could carry him. At the Placedu Carrousel the mob was besieging the entrance to the Tuileries,clamoring for admittance. As he hesitated, the gate was flung open andthe mass, with the quickness of gunpowder seeking an outlet, crashedin. Barabant, all else forgotten, hurled himself forward in a blindendeavor to reach the court. He tripped and fell, and before he couldgain his feet the mob had passed him.
There had been not a moment of hesitation. They rushed into the trap,heeding neither the windows, bristling with muskets, that confrontedthem nor the walls that hemmed them in. Leaping and shouting, they ranto the vestibule at the end. There they saw a mass of red that coloredit from top to bottom--a mass perfectly ordered. It was the Swiss,drawn up line by line on every step, their muskets at aim, awaiting theword.
The first assailants stopped irresolutely, but the impetus of thosebehind swept them on, until the vestibule was consumed and the firstranks looked into the threatening barrels. Still no sound. The twoforces, the machine and the monster, looked into each other's eyes,noting little details. The populace, gaining confidence, began to jest,saluting the soldiers with friendly greetings, inviting them to jointhem.
Some one in the mob, extending a long crook, hooked a Swiss and drewhim into the vortex, amid shouts of laughter. They clapped their hands,laughing like children, and set to work at this new game. A second, athird, five Swiss, were thus fished out of the ranks without resisting.
All at once, from the balcony above, a voice cried:
"Fire!"
As the sea with an immense impulse recoils from an earthquake, therewas a vast recoil in the mob, an exact explosion from the machine. Thesmoke, rushing down the vestibule, swirled into the air and lifted.The officer leaned curiously over the balcony and gave the order toadvance. The red ranks moved down and over the inanimate mound; of allthose who a moment before had laughed incredulously not one survived.
Outside, the mob broke and fled up the Place du Carrousel, recoilingfrom the horrid vestibule, where suddenly there formed a bubble of red,that grew larger and trickled over the garden, widening and assumingmass and shape. At times across the red, like a diamond meeting thesun, there ran a brilliant flash. At every flash men stumbled in theirflight and pitched forward. Pell-mell into the Rue St. Honore they ran,routed, but full of anger and enthusiasm.
At this moment the sections of the Marais swept in, gathered them up,and, burning with vengeance at the sight of their wounds, rushed on tothe attack. Barabant, who had received a flesh-wound in the hand, hadbarely time to bind it up before he was swept again into the Carrousel.
Then a vast hurrah burst from them, a shout of relief and of battle.From the quais the guerrilla band of the Marseillais were rollingforward, formidable, grim, and unleashed. Suddenly their ranks partedand two tongues of fire lashed out; in the solid bank of the Swiss twogaps appeared. A frenzy possessed the assaulting mass. It flung itselfforward, without method, attacking only with its anger. The Swissreentered the vestibule, issuing forth from time to time to deliver avolley.
Barabant, in the midst of the swirl, lost consciousness of his acts,swayed by sudden, unreasoning passion. He fired fast and faster, caughtby the infection of his comrades, cursing, exhorting wildly, laughing;but his bullets, without objective, flattened themselves against thedeath-dealing walls. At times he saw, through the thick smoke, Javoguesand his comrades dragging a cannon forward toward the barracks. Atanother moment there suddenly emerged out of the melee the figure ofthe two bouquetieres.
Amid the swirl of smoke, Nicole appeared to Barabant's excited sensesas a goddess exhorting them to battle. Her hair had tumbled, rioting,her dress was torn open at the throat, her bare arms were stained withpowder and red with the contact of the wounded; and yet, as she loadeda musket, or presented it to a volunteer, or showed him the flashingwalls, she laughed one of those laughs sublime with the indifference todanger and the joy of heroism that inflame the souls of those who hearit, and transform the wavering with the frenzy of sacrifice.
On the contrary, Louison, among all the confusion and the tumult, movedquietly, gathering the bullets from the fallen and returning them toher friend. Her face was calm, cold; her eyes sought everything andshowed nothing; and though she moved incessantly on her quests, she wasapart from all--a spectator.
Barabant, unable to join them, was carried step by step toward thebarracks. Once he slipped in a pool of blood and went down, hiscompanion falling across him. He called to him to rise, but the man wasdead. A woman of the halles freed him.
A series of explosions almost hurled him back; the next momentthe barracks, rent in gaps, were swept with a sheet of flame. Theassailants, with a cry of triumph, hurled themselves into the palace,while the Swiss, forced up the staircase, broke and fled, pursued andshot down by the victors.
Through the apartments, shattering doors, overturning furniture,howling along the empty corridors, the mob crashed in, as the firstvictorious blast of a tempest, shrieking:
"A la mort! A la mort!"
One by one the flying Swiss were overtaken. Packs of the invadersleaped upon them, burying them from view, until, stabbed with a dozenuseless thrusts, their bodies were flung with exulting cries from thewindows; while as the foremost stopped to enjoy their prey, the herdswept to the front with hungry arms and the ever-rising shout:
"Death to all! Death to all!"
Barabant, racing ahead to save the women, soon found himself in front,running beside a Marseillais, who cried to him with the voice ofJavogues:
"Keep with me, citoyen, keep with me! Leave the curs to the others!"
A Swiss, hearing them at his back, fell on his knees, shrieking formercy.
"Leave him. Don't stop!" Javogues panted. Seizing Barabant's arm, hebore him down a side gallery, shouting:
"There he is! There he is!"
At the end of the corridor Barabant beheld a tall form disappearing atthe head of a narrow stairway.
Up this they rushed, into the single outlet, a guard-room, only tofind it empty. Javogues threw himself furiously against the walls.
"I saw him, I saw him; he is here somewhere!"
"Who?"
"Dossonville! He was among the Swiss. I saw him." He ran around theroom, assailing it with his huge fists. All at once he gave a cry, andlifting the hatchet he bore, he sent a secret door crashing in.
"He is here!"
He hacked his way through and disappeared, thunderi
ng down the passage.Barabant, only half comprehending what had happened, remained a momentin perplexity. But the sound of women's cries startled him again toactivity. He darted back into the current of the mob and gained thewomen's apartments. At the foot of the staircase an officer of theNational Guard was crying:
"We don't kill women!"
"Spare the women!" Barabant echoed.
A dozen others took up the cry.
"The Republic does not make war on women!"
The mob, balked of half its vengeance by the firmness of a dozenofficers, turned to desecration and pillage. Troops of women, likefuries, swarmed through the royal apartments, tearing the beds topieces, exulting, foul and crazed.
Barabant, sickening at the sight of unnamable excesses, retraced hisway down the strewn galleries, heaped with overturned furniture,and tapestries pulled from the wall, spattered with blood and dirt.Heedless of the shouts above him, he passed down the vestibule andover the mountain of slain, suffocated by the stench and the horror ofwide-mouthed corpses. Now that the crisis was over, his inflammablenature recoiled before the ugliness of the triumph.
* * * * *
While Louison and Genevieve had been drawn into the frantic mob whichswept the palace, Nicole had remained outside, joining the hundreds ofwomen who visited the wounded or sought, in agony, among the dead. Shealso, with a new anxiety, sped among the slain with a sinking dreadbefore each upturned face.
All at once a familiar voice cried at her side:
"Help! help!"
The cry came from beneath the body of a Marseillais. With the aid of afishwife she pulled away the corpse, discovering the shaken, limp formof the mountebank Cramoisin.
"Ah, mon Dieu," she cried, forgetting the rancor of the woman in thepatriot, "are you wounded?"
"I--I think so."
"Where?"
"I don't know," he stammered, rising weakly to his feet. "Is it ended?"
"In thy stomach, I guess, my brave fellow!" the fishwife cried withrough scorn. "It seems to have failed thee!"
"You do not know him: he is a hero!" Nicole cried, ironically. "Wait amoment; we'll find the wound!"
With a laugh, the two sought to seize him; but Cramoisin, havingrecovered the use of his legs, escaped in a ludicrous, snarling flight.
Suddenly Nicole beheld Barabant stumbling forth from the vestibule. Allcoquetry forgot, she sprang to him with the cry:
"Barabant, you are wounded!"
He looked at his arm and saw it was covered with blood. He passedhis hand over his face; a scalp-wound trickled a red stream downhis forehead. He sat down while she hurriedly washed the wounds andbandaged them. When he essayed to rise, a dizziness made his step sounsteady that Nicole drew his arm over her shoulder, laughing at hisfeeble resistance.
"Allons, this is the hour of the women. I'll bring you back. Don't beafraid to lean on me!"
She put her arm about his waist and impelled him gently. He resistedno longer, and together slowly they moved homeward over the strickenfield, amid the groaning and the silent.
He had a misty recollection of a phantasmagoric passage, of rapidlymoving figures hideous with blood, of heads dancing on pikes above him,of stretchers bearing inanimate things, of rushing, floating women,of the sudden rumbling of drums, of companies swinging past him, ofinterminable streets, and of cliffs, mountains high, that gave forthshrieks of triumph. Then in the city, delirious with joy and sorrow,delirium, too, rushed through his brain, his head fell heavily uponNicole's bare shoulder, and the will deserting his limbs, he slippedfrom her arms heavily to the ground.