THE CENTRE OF CATASTROPHES.
After the repast, the King called the three Lifeguards into council with the Queen and Lady Elizabeth.
"Gentlemen," he began, "yesterday, M. Petion proposed that you should flee in disguise, but the Queen and I opposed the plan for fear it was a plot. This day he repeats the offer, pledging his honor as a representative, and I believe you ought to hear the idea."
"Sire, we humbly beg," replied Charny for the others, "that we may be free to take the hint or leave it."
"I pledge myself to put no pressure on you. Your desires be done."
The astonished Queen looked at Charny without understanding the growing indifference she remarked in his determination not to swerve from his duty. She said nothing but let the King conduct the conversation.
"Now that you reserve freedom, here are Petion's own words," he went on. "Sire, there is no safeguard for your attendants in Paris. Neither I, nor Barnave nor Latour can answer for shielding them even at peril of our lives, for their blood is claimed by the people.'"
Charny exchanged a look with the other two bodyguards who smiled with scorn.
"Well?" he said.
"M. Petion suggests that he should provide three National Guards suits and you might in them get away this night."
Charny consulted his brother officers who replied with the same smile.
"Sire," he replied, "our days are set apart for your Majesty, having deigned to accept the homage, it is easier for us to die than separate. Do us the favor to treat us as you have been doing. Of all your court and army and Lifeguards, three have stood staunch; do not rob them of the only glory they yearn for, namely to be true to the last."
"It is well, gentlemen," said, the Queen; "but you understand that you are no longer servants but brothers." She took her tablets from her pockets. "Let us know the names of your kinsfolk so that, should you fall in the struggle, we can tell the loved ones how it happened and soothe them as far as in our power lies."
Malden named his old, infirm mother and Valory his young orphan sister. The Queen stopped in her writing to wipe her eyes.
"Count," she said, turning to Charny, "we know that you have no one to mention as you have lost your two brothers——"
"Yes, they had the happiness to perish for your sake," said the nobleman "but the latter to fall leaves a poor girl recommended in a kind of will found upon him. He stole her away from her family which will never forgive her. So long as I live she and her child never shall want, but, as your Majesty says with her admirable courage, we are all in the face of death, and if death strikes me down, she and her babe will be penniless. Madam, deign to write the name of this poor country girl, and if I die like the others of the house of Charny, for my august master and noble mistress, lower your generosity to Catherine Billet and her child, in Villedovray."
No doubt the idea of George Charny expiring like his brothers was too dreadful a picture for the hearer, for in swaying back with a faint cry, she let the tablets fall and sank giddily on a chair. The two Guards hastened to her while Charny caught up the memo-book and inscribed the name and address.
The Queen recovered and said: "Gentlemen, do not leave me without kissing my hand."
The Lifeguards obeyed, but when it came Charny's turn he barely brushed the hand with his lips. It seemed to him sacrilege when he was carrying Andrea's letter on his heart. The Queen sighed: never had she so accurately measured the depth of the gulf between her and her lover, widening daily.
As the Guards therefore replied next day to the Committeemen that they would not change their attire from what the King authorized them to wear, Barnave had an extra seat placed in front of them with two grenadiers to occupy it so as to shield them in some degree.
At ten A. M. they quitted Meaux for Paris, from which they had been five days absent.
What an unfathomable abyss had deepened in those few days.
At a league beyond Meaux the accompanying sightseers took an aspect more frightful than before. All the dwellers of the Paris suburbs flocked to the road. Barnave tried to make the postillions go at a trot but the Claye National Guard blocked the way with their bayonets and it would be imprudent to try to break that dam: comprehending the danger, the Queen supplicated the deputies not to vex the mob—it was a formidable storm growling and felt to be coming.
Such was the press that the horses could hardly move at a walk.
It had never been hotter, the air seemed fire.
The insolent curiosity of the people pursued the royal prisoners right up to the carriage interior. Men mounted upon it and clung to the horses. It was a miracle that Charny and his comrades were not killed over and over again. The two grenadiers failed to fend off the attacks: appeals in the name of the Assembly were drowned by the hooting.
Two thousand men formed the vanguard, and double that number closed up the rear. On the flanks rolled an incalculable gathering.
The air seemed to fail as they neared Paris as though that giant inhaled it all. The Queen was suffocating, and when the King begged for a glass of wine it was proposed that he should have a sponge dipped in gall and vinegar.
At Lavillette, the multitude was beyond the power of sight to estimate; the pavement was so covered that they could not move. Windows, walls, doors, all were crammed. The trees were bending under the novel living fruit.
Everybody wore their hats, for the walls had been placarded:
"Flogging for whoever salutes the King: hanging for him who insults him."
All this was so appalling that the Commissioners dared not go down St. Martin's Street Without-the-City, a crowded way full of horrors, where Berthier Savigny had been torn to pieces and other barbarities committed.
So they made the circuit and went by the Champs Elysees.
The concourse of spectators was still more great and broke up the ranks of the soldiery.
It was the third time Louis had entered by this dread entrance.
All Paris rushed hither. The King and the Queen saw a vast sea of heads, silent, sombre and threatening, with hats on. Still more alarming was the double row of National Guards, all the way to the Tuileries, their muskets held butt up as if at a funeral. It was a funeral procession indeed, for the monarchy of seven centuries!
This slowly toiling carriage was the hearse taking royalty to the grave.
On perceiving this long file of Guards the soldiers of the escort greeted them with "Long Live the Nation!" and that was the cry bursting out along the line from the barrier to the palace.
All the bystanders joined in, a cry of brotherhood uttered by the whole of France, but this one family was excluded.
Behind the cab following the royal carriage came a chaise, open but covered with green boughs on account of the heat; it contained Drouet and two others who had arrested the King. Fatigue had forced them to ride.
Billet alone, indefatigable, as if revenge made him bronze, kept on horseback and seemed to lead the whole procession.
Louis noticed that the statue of his ancestor, on Louis XV. Square, had the eyes bandaged; in token of the blindness of rulers, Petion explained.
Spite of all, the mob burst all bars and stormed the carriage. Suddenly the Queen saw at the windows those hideous men with implacable speech who come to the surface on certain days like the sea monsters seen only in tempestuous weather.
Once she was so terrified that she pulled down the sash, whereupon a dozen furious voices demanded the reason.
"I am stifling," she stammered.
"Pooh, we will stifle you in quite another way, never fear," replied a rough voice while a dirty fist smashed the window.
Nevertheless the cortege reached the grand terrace steps.
"Oh, gentlemen, save the Lifeguards," cried the Queen, particularly to Barnave and Petion.
"Have you any preference?" asked the former.
"No," she answered, looking at him full and square.
She required that the King and the royal children should first alight.
The next ten minutes were the cruelest of her life. She was under the impression, not that she would be killed—prompt death would be nothing—but made the sport of the mob or dragged away into jail whence she would issue only after a trial handing her over to ignominious death.
As she stepped forth, under the ceiling of steel made by the swords and bayonets of the soldiers, Barnave gathered to cover her. Even as a giddiness made her close her eyes, she caught a glimpse down the flashing vista of a face she remembered. This face seemed to be the centre of the multitudinous eyes of the mob: from his glance would come the cue for her immolation. It was the terrible man who had in a mysterious manner at Taverney Manor raised the veil over the future. He whom she had seen at Sevres on returning from Versailles. He who appeared merely to foretell great catastrophes or to witness their fulfillment.
And yet if Cagliostro, was he not dead in the dungeons of the Pope?
To be assured that her sight did not deceive her, she darted down the tunnel of steel, strong against realities but not against this sinister vision.
It seemed to her that the earth gave way under her tread; that all whirled round her, palace, gardens, trees, the countless people; that vigorous arms seized her and carried her away amid deafening yells. She heard the Lifeguards shouting, calling the wrath upon them to turn it aside from its true aim. Opening her eyes an instant, she beheld Charny between the pair hurled from the box—pale and handsome, as ever, he fought with ten men at once, with the nobleman's smile of scorn and the martyr's light in his gaze. From Charny her eyes went back to the man whose myrmidons ruled the storm and swept her out of the maelstrom. With terror she undoubtedly recognized the magician of Taverney and Sevres.
"You, it is you!" she gasped, trying to repel him with her rigid hands.
"Yes, it is I," he hissed in her ear. "I still need you to push the throne into its last gulf, and so I save you!"
She could support no more, but screaming, she swooned.
Meanwhile the mob, defrauded of the chief morsel, were tearing the Lifeguards to pieces and carrying Billet and Drouet in triumph.