The king was in a deep recess of the centre window; Acloque, Vaunot, d'Hervilly, twenty volunteers and national guards, made him a rampart with their bodies. Some of the officers drew their swords. "Put your swords into their scabbards," said the king, calmly, "this multitude is more excited than guilty." He got upon a bench in the window, the grenadiers mounted beside him, the others in front of him; they thrust aside, parried, and lowered the sticks, scythes, and pikes lifted above the heads of the people. Ferocious vociferations now rose confusedly from this irritated mass. "Down with the veto!—the camp of Paris! give us back our patriotic ministers! where is the Austrian woman?" Some ringleaders advanced from the ranks every moment to utter louder threats and menaces of death to the king. Unable to reach him through the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet. One of them tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands in a pail of water the heads of Berthier and Foulon, and, carrying them by the hair to the Quai de la Ferraille, had thrown them amongst the people for symbols of carnage, and incentives to fresh murders.
A fair young man, elegantly dressed, with menacing gesture continually attacked the grenadiers, and cut his fingers with their bayonets in order to move them aside and make a clear passage. "Sire—Sire!" he shouted, "I summon you in the name of one hundred thousand souls who surround me, to sanction the decree against the priests: that is death!" Other persons in the crowd, although armed with drawn swords, pistols, and pikes, made no violent gestures, and warded off every attempt on the life of the king. There were even seen expressions of respect and grief in the countenances of a great many. In this review of the Revolution, the people displayed themselves as very terrible, but did not identify themselves with assassins. A certain order began to establish itself in the staircases and apartments: the crowd, pressed by the crowd, after having seen the king, and uttered threats against him, wandered into other apartments, and went triumphantly over this palace of despotism.
Legendre the butcher drove before him, in order to find room, these hordes of women and children accustomed to tremble at his voice. He made signs that he desired to speak, and silence being established, the national guard separated a little in order to allow him to address the king. "Monsieur!" he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder: the king, at this word, which was a degradation, made a movement of offended dignity; "yes, Sir," continued Legendre, with more emphasis on the word, "listen to us; you were made to listen to us! you are a traitor! you have deceived us always—you deceive us again; but beware! the measure is heaped up. The people are weary of being your plaything and your victim." Legendre, after these threatening words, read a petition in language as imperious, in which he demanded, in the name of the people, the restitution of the Girondist ministers and the immediate sanction of their decrees. The king replied with intrepid dignity, "I will do what the constitution orders me to do."
XXI.
Scarcely had one sea of people gone away, than another succeeded. At each new invasion of the mob, the strength of the king and the small number of his defenders was exhausted in the renewed struggles with a crowd which never wearied. The doors no longer sufficed to the impatient curiosity of these thousands of men assembled in this pillory of royalty; they entered by the roof, the windows, and the high balconies which open on to the terraces. Their climbing up amused the multitude of spectators crowded in the gardens. The clapping of hands, the cheers of laughter of this multitude without encouraged the assailants. Menacing dialogues in loud tones took place between the malcontents above and the impatient who were below. "Have they struck him?—is he dead?—throw us the heads!" they shouted. Members of the Assembly, Girondist journalists, political characters, Garat, Gorsas, Marat, mingled in this crowd, and uttered their jokes as to this martyrdom of shame to which the king was being subjected. There was for a moment a report of his assassination.
There was no cry of horror thereat among the populace, which raised its eyes towards the balcony, expecting to see the carcase. Still, in the very whirlwind of its passion, the multitude appeared to require reconciliation. One of the multitude handed a bonnet rouge to Louis XVI. at the end of a pike. "Let him put it on! let him put it on!" exclaimed the mob, "it is the sign of patriotism, if he puts it on we will believe in his good faith." The king made a signal to one of his grenadiers to hand him the bonnet rouge, and smiling, he put it on his head; and then arose shouts of Vive le Roi! The people had crowned its chief with the symbol of liberty, the cap of democracy replaced the bandeau of Rheims. The people were conquerors, and felt appeased.
However, fresh orators, mounting on the shoulders of their comrades, demanded incessantly of the king, sometimes by entreaties, sometimes with threats, to promise the recall of Roland, and the sanction of the decrees. Louis XVI., invincible in his constitutional resistance, eluded, or refused to acquiesce in the injunctions of the malcontents. "Guardian of the prerogative of the executive power, I will not surrender to violence," he answered: "this is not the moment for deliberation, when it is impossible to deliberate freely." "Do not fear, sire," said a grenadier of the national guard to him. "My friend," was the king's reply, taking his hand, and placing it on his breast, "place your hand there, and see if my heart beats quicker than usual." This action, and the language of unshaken intrepidity, seen and heard in the crowd, had its effect on the rebels.
A fellow in tatters, holding a bottle in his hand, came towards the king, and said, "if you love the people, drink to their health!" Those who surrounded the prince, afraid of poison as much as the poignard, entreated the king not to drink. Louis XVI., extending his arm, took the bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank "to the nation!" This familiarity with the multitude, represented by a beggar, consummated the king's popularity. Renewed cries of Vive le Roi! burst from all tongues and reached even the staircases: these cries created consternation in the terrace of the garden amongst the groups who were expecting a victim, and thus learnt that his executioners were softened.
XXII.
Whilst the unfortunate prince thus contended alone against a whole people, the queen, in another apartment, was undergoing the same outrages and the same torments; more hated than the king, she ran more risks. Agitated nations require to have their hatreds personified as well as their love. Marie Antoinette represented in the eyes of the nation all the corruptions of courts, all the pride of despotism, and all the infamies of treason. Her beauty, her youthful inclination for pleasure, tenderness of heart provoked by calumny into excesses, the blood of the house of Austria, her pride, which she derived from her nature even more than from her blood, her close connection with the Comte D'Artois, her intrigues with the emigrants, her presumed complicity with the coalition, the scandalous or infamous libels disseminated against her for four years—made this princess the spied victim of public opinion. The women despised her as a guilty wife, the patriots detested her as a conspirator, political men feared her as the counsellor of the king. The name of Autrichienne which the people gave her, summed up all their alleged wrongs against her. She was the unpopularity of a throne of which she should have been the grace and forgiveness.