XXIV.
Pétion himself could not for any length of time feign ignorance of the gathering of 40,000 persons in Paris since the morning, and the entry of this armed mob into the Assembly and the Maison of the Tuileries. His prolonged absence recalled to mind the sleep of La Fayette on the 6th of October; but the one was an accomplice, and the other innocent. Night approached, and might conceal in its shades the disorders and attempts which would go even beyond the views of the Girondists. Pétion appeared in the court-yard, amidst shouts of Vive Pétion! They carried him in their arms to the lowest steps of the staircase, and he entered the apartment where for three hours Louis XVI. had been undergoing these outrages. "I have only just learned the situation of your majesty," said Pétion. "That is very astonishing," replied the king, in a tone of deep indignation, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."
Pétion, mounted on a chair, then made several addresses to the mob, without inducing it to move in the least. At length, being put on the shoulders of four grenadiers, he said, "Citizens, male and female, you have used with moderation and dignity your right of petition; you will finish this day as you began it. Hitherto your conduct has been in conformity with the law, and now in the name of the law I call upon you to follow my example and to retire."
The crowd obeyed Pétion, and moved off slowly through the long avenue of apartments of the chateau. Scarcely had the mass begun to grow perceptibly less, than the king, released by the grenadiers from the recess in which he had been imprisoned, went to his sister, who threw herself into his arms: he went out of the apartment with her by a side door, and hastened to join the queen in her apartment. Marie Antoinette, sustained until then by her pride against showing her tears, gave way to the excess of her tenderness and emotion on again beholding the king. She threw herself at his feet, and clasping his knees, sobbed bitterly but not loudly. Madame Elizabeth and the children, locked in each other's arms, and all embraced by the king, who wept over them, rejoiced at finding each other as if after a shipwreck, and their mute joy was raised to heaven with astonishment and gratitude for their safety. The faithful national guard, the generals attached to the king, Marshal de Mouchy, M. d'Aubier, Acloque, congratulated the king on the courage and presence of mind he had displayed. They mutually related the perils which they had escaped, the infamous remarks, gestures, looks, arms, costumes, and sudden repentance of this multitude. The king at this moment having accidently passed a mirror, saw on his head the bonnet rouge, which had not been taken off; he turned very red, and threw it at his feet, then casting himself into an arm-chair, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and looking at the queen, exclaimed, "Ah, madame! why did I take you from your country to associate you with the ignominy of such a day?"
XXV.
It was eight o'clock in the evening. The agony of the royal family had lasted for five hours. The national guard of the neighbouring quarters, assembling by themselves, arrived singly, in order to lend their aid to the constitution. There were still heard from the king's apartment tumultuous footsteps, and the sinister cries of the columns of people, who were slowly filing off by the courts and garden. The constitutional deputies ran about in indignation, uttering imprecations against Pétion and the Gironde. A deputation of the Assembly went over the château in order to take cognisance of the violence and disorder resulting from this visitation of the faubourgs. The queen pointed out to them the forced locks, the bursten hinges, the bludgeons, pike irons, panels, and the piece of cannon loaded with small shot, placed on the threshold of the apartments. The disorder of the attire of the king, his sister, the children, the bonnets rouges, the cockades forcibly placed on their heads; the dishevelled hair of the queen, her pale features, the tremulousness of her lips, her eyes streaming with tears, were tokens more evident than these spoils left by the people on the battle ground of sedition. This spectacle moistened the eyes, and excited the indignation, even of the deputies most hostile to the court. The queen saw this: "You weep, sir?" she said to Merlin. "Yes, madame," replied the stoic deputy; "I weep over the misfortunes of the woman, the wife, and the mother; but my sympathy goes no further. I hate kings and queens!"
Such was the day of the 20th of June. The people displayed discipline in disorder, and forbearance in violence: the king, heroic intrepidity in his resignation; and some of the Girondists, a cold brutality which gives to ambition the mask of patriotism.
XXVI.
Every thing was preparing in the departments to send to Paris the 20,000 troops ordered by the Assembly. The Marseillais, summoned by Barbaroux at the instigation of Madame Roland, were approaching the capital. It was the fire of the soul in the south coming to rekindle the revolutionary hearth, which, as the Girondists believed, was failing in Paris. This body of twelve or fifteen hundred men was composed of Genoese, Ligurians, Corsicans, Piedmontese, banished from their country and recruited suddenly on the shores of the Mediterranean; the majority sailors or soldiers accustomed to warfare, and some bandits, hardened in crime. They were commanded by young men of Marseilles, friends of Barbaroux and Isnard. Rendered fanatic by the climate and the eloquence of the provincial clubs, they came on amidst the applauses of the population of central France, received, fêted, overcome by enthusiasm and wine at the patriotic banquets which hailed them in constant succession on their way. The pretext of their march was to fraternise, at the federation of the 14th of July[25], with the other fédérés of the kingdom. The secret motive was to intimidate the Parisian national guard, to revive the energy of the faubourgs, and to be the vanguard of that camp of 20,000 men which the Girondists had made the Assembly vote, in order at the same time to control the Feuillants, the Jacobins, the king, and the Assembly itself, with an army from the departments wholly composed of their creatures. The sea of people was violently agitated on their approach. The national guard, the fédérés, the popular societies, children, women, all that portion of the population which lives on excitement of the streets, and runs after public spectacles, flew to meet the Marseillais. Their bronzed faces, martial appearance, eyes of fire, uniforms covered with the dust of their journey, their Phrygian head-dress, their strange weapons, the guns they dragged after them, the green branches which shaded their bonnets rouges, their strange language mingled with oaths, and accentuated by savage gestures, all struck the imagination of the multitude with great force. The revolutionary idea appeared to have assumed the guise of a mortal, and to be marching under the aspect of this horde, to the assault of the last remnant of royalty. They entered the cities and villages beneath triumphal arches. They sang terrible songs as they progressed. Couplets, alternated by the regular noise of their feet on the road, and by the sound of drums, resembled chorusses of the country and war, answering at intervals to the clash of arms and weapons of death in a march to combat. This song is graven on the soul of France.