CHAPTER XI.
IN THE MORNING.
The early sunbeams shone on two horsemen riding at a walking pace alongthe deserted water-side by the Tuileries. They were Colonel Mandat andhis aid.
At one A. M. he was summoned to the City Hall, and refused togo; but on the order being renewed more peremptorily at two, AttorneyRoederer said to him:
"Mark, colonel, that under the law the commander of the National Guardis to obey the City Government."
He decided to go, ignorant of two things.
In the first place, forty-seven sections of the forty-eight had joinedto the town rulers each three commissioners, with orders to work withthe officials and "save the country." Mandat expected to see the oldboard as before, and not at all to behold a hundred and forty-one freshfaces. Again, he had no idea of the order from this same board toclear the New Bridge of cannon and vacate St. John's Arcade, an orderso important that Danton and Manuel personally had superintended itsexecution.
Consequently, on reaching the Pont Neuf, Mandat was stupefied to findit utterly deserted. He stopped and sent his aid to scout. In tenminutes this officer returned with the word that he saw no guns orNational Guards, while the neighborhood was as lonesome as the bridge.
Mandat continued his way, though he perhaps ought to have gone backto the palace; but men, like things, must wend whither their destinyimpels.
Proportionably to his approach to the City Hall, he seemed to enterinto liveliness. In the same way as the blood in some organizationsleaves the extremities cold and pale on rushing back to fortify theheart, so all the movement and heat--the Revolution, in short--wasaround the City Hall, the seat of popular life, the heart of that greatbody, Paris.
He stopped to send his officer to the Arcade; but the National Guardhad been withdrawn from there, too. He wanted to retrace his steps; butthe crowd had packed in behind him, and he was carried, like a waif onthe wave, up the Hall steps.
"Stay here," he said to his follower, "and if evil befalls me, run andtell them at the palace."
Mandat yielded to the mob, and was floated into the grand hall, wherehe met strange and stern faces. It was the insurrection complete,demanding an account of the conduct of this man, who had not only triedto crush it in its development, but to strangle it in its birth.
One of the members of the Commune, the dread body which was to stiflethe Assembly and struggle with the Convention, advanced and in thegeneral's name asked:
"By whose order did you double the palace guard?"
"The Mayor of Paris'."
"Show that order."
"I left it at the Tuileries, so that it might be carried out during myabsence."
"Why did you order out the cannon?"
"Because I set the battalion on the march, and the field-pieces movewith the regiment."
"Where is Petion?"
"He was at the palace when I last saw him."
"A prisoner?"
"No; he was strolling about the gardens."
The interrogation was interrupted here by a new member bringing anunsealed letter, of which he asked leave to make communication. Mandathad no need to do more than cast a glance on this note to acknowledgethat he was lost; he recognized his own writing. It was his orderto the commanding officer at St. John's Arcade, sent at one in themorning, for him to attack in the rear the mob making for the palace,while the battalion on New Bridge attacked it in flank. This order hadfallen into the Commune's hands after the dismissal of the soldiers.
The examination was over; for what could be more damning than thisletter in any admissions of the accused?
The council decided that Mandat should be imprisoned in the abbey.The tale goes that the chairman of the board, in saying, "Remove theprisoner," made a sweep of the hand, edge downward, like chopping withan ax. As the guillotine was not in use then, it must have been anarranged sign--perhaps by the Invisibles, whose Grand Copt had divinedthat instrument.
At all events, the result showed that the sign was taken to imply death.
Hardly had Mandat gone down three of the City Hall steps before apistol-shot shattered his skull, at the very instant when his son rantoward him. Three years before, the same reception had met Flesselles.
Mandat was only wounded, but as he rose, he fell again with a score ofpike-wounds. The boy held out his hands and wailed for his father, butnone paid any heed to him. Presently, in the bloody ring, where barearms plunged amid flashing pikes and swords, a head was seen to surgeup, detached from the trunk.
The boy swooned.
The aid-de-camp galloped back to the Tuileries to report what he hadwitnessed.
The murderers went off in two gangs: one took the body to the river, tothrow it in, the other carried the head through the streets.
This was going on at four in the morning.
Let us precede the aid to the Tuileries, and see what was happening.
Having confessed, and made easy about matters since his conscience wastranquilized, the king, unable to resist the cravings of nature, wentto bed. But we must say that he lay down dressed.
On the alarm-bells ringing more loudly, and the roll of the drumsbeating the reveille, he was roused.
Colonel Chesnaye, to whom Mandat had left his powers, awoke the monarchto have him address the National Guards, and by his presence and sometimely words revive their enthusiasm.
The king rose, but half awake, dull and staggering. He was wearing apowdered wig, and he had flattened all the side he had lain upon. Thehair-dresser could not be found, so he had to go out with the wig outof trim.
Notified that the king was going to show himself to the defenders, thequeen ran out from the council hall where she was.
In contrast with the poor sovereign, whose dim sight sought noone's glance, whose mouth-muscles were flabby and palpitating withinvoluntary twitches, while his violet coat suggested he was wearingmourning for majesty, the queen was burning with fever, although pale.Her eyes were red, though dry.
She kept close to this phantom of monarchy, who came out in the dayinstead of midnight, with owlish, blinking eyes. She hoped to inspirehim with her overflow of life, strength, and courage.
All went well enough while this exhibition was in the rooms, though theNational Guards, mixed in with the noblemen, seeing their ruler closeto this poor, flaccid, heavy man, who had so badly failed on a similaroccasion at Varennes, wondered if this really was the monarch whosepoetical legend the women and the priests were already beginning toweave.
This was not the one they had expected to see.
The aged Duke of Mailly--with one of those good intentions destined tobe another paving-stone for down below--drew his rapier, and sinkingdown at the foot of the king, vowed in a quavering voice to die, heand the old nobility which he represented, for the grandson of HenryIV. Here were two blunders: the National Guards had no great sympathyfor the old nobility, and they were not here to defend the descendantof Henry IV., but the constitutional king.
So, in reply to a few shouts of "Hail to the king!" cheers for thenation burst forth on all sides.
Something to make up for this coolness was sought. The king was urgedto go down into the royal yard. Alas! the poor potentate had no willof his own. Disturbed at his meals, and cheated, with only one hour'ssleep instead of seven, he was but an automaton, receiving impetus fromoutside its material nature.
Who gave this impetus? The queen, a woman of nerve, who had neitherslept nor eaten.
Some unhappy characters fail in all they undertake, when circumstancesare beyond their level. Instead of attracting dissenters, Louis XVI.,in going up to them, seemed expressly made to show how little glamourmajesty can lend a man who has no genius or strength of mind.
Here, as in the rooms, when the Royalists managed to get up a shout of"Long live the king!" an immense hurrah for the nation replied to them.
The Royalists being dull enough to persist, the patriots overwhelmedthem with "No, no, no; no other ruler than the nation!"
And
the king, almost supplicating, added: "Yes, my sons, the nation andthe monarch make but one henceforward."
"Bring the prince," whispered Marie Antoinette to Princess Elizabeth;"perhaps the sight of a child may touch them."
While they were looking for the dauphin, the king continued the sadreview. The bad idea struck him to appeal to the artillerists, whowere mainly Republicans. If the king had the gift of speech-making,he might have forced the men to listen to him, though their belief ledthem astray, for it would have been a daring step, and it might havehelped him to face the cannon; but there was nothing exhilarating inhis words or gesture; he stammered.
The Royalists tried to cover his stammerings with the luckless hail of"Long live the king!" already twice a failure, and it nearly broughtabout a collision.
Some cannoniers left their places and rushed over to the king,threatening him with their fists, and saying:
"Do you think that we will shoot down our brothers to defend a traitorlike you?"
The queen drew the king back.
"Here comes the dauphin!" called out voices. "Long live the hope of therealm!"
Nobody took up the cry. The poor boy had come in at the wrong time; astheatrical language says, he had missed his cue.
The king went back into the palace, a downright retreat--almost aflight. When he got to his private rooms he dropped, puffing andblowing, into an easy-chair.
Stopping by the door, the queen looked around for some support. Shespied Charny standing up by the door of her own rooms, and she wentover to him.
"Ah, all is lost!" she moaned.
"I am afraid so, my lady," replied the Life Guardsman.
"Can we not still flee?"
"It is too late."
"What is left for us to do, then?"
"We can but die," responded Charny, bowing.
The queen heaved a sigh, and went into her own rooms.