“——I found,” continued Charles, “a mess of wholesome food in that horrible place. Every other kind of poison was there,—the poison of damps and a close atmosphere; the poison of inactivity which brings on disease and death; the poison of cruelty by which all the kindly feelings are turned into bitterness in the soul of the oppressed; and the poison of hopelessness, by which the currents of life are chilled, and the heart of the captive is sunk within him till he dies. All these poisons we found in every cell; but to all their inmates was denied that quicker poison which would have been welcome to end their woes. Some, we know, have lived thirty-five years under this slow death, while a very small mixture of drugs with their bread would have released them in fewer hours. That this quicker method was ever used, we have no proof; that it was not used in the case of those whom we released, we know, not by their state of health alone; for that, alas! was not to be boasted of;—but by the experience of some of us. When we were heated with toil and choked with dust, we drank the draughts which the prisoners left untasted in their cells. When a way was made among the ruins, women came to see what a work their husbands had achieved; and when their children craved food, rather than return home before all was finished, they gave their little ones the bread which the captives had loathed. Many thus ate and drank; and I appeal to you whether any evil came of that day; whether the sleep of the next night was not sound as became the rest which succeeds to an heroic effort. No one was poisoned with the food then provided by the government; and yet that horrible dungeon was the place, if there be any, for poison to do its work. And if not attempted there, will it be here? Here, where there are a million of eyes on the watch to detect treasons against the people? Here, where there are hundreds of thousands of defenders of the public safety? No, fellow citizens: this is not the kind of treason which is meditated against us. There are none that dare practise so directly on your lives. But there is a treason no less fatal, though more disguised, which is even at this moment in operation against you. You ask me two questions;—whether this food is of a bad quality; and whether you are not half-starved; and both these evils you ascribe to your rulers.—To the first I answer, that this food is, to the best of my judgment, good; and, whether good or bad, that the government has nothing to do with it, since it forms no part of the stores that the king has bought up for distribution. It is flour of the same harvest, the same field, the same mill, the same bin, that I and mine have been supplied from; and it has nourished me well for the work I have had to do; for letting in the light of day upon the foulest dungeon that ever deformed the earth,—for watching over those who have been released from it,—for attending to the proceedings of the Assembly,—for meditating by night and consulting by day how the rights of the people may best be attained and secured. Keep the same food to strengthen you for the same purposes. Do not forget your other complaint;—that you are starving: and remember that however much this may be owing to the misrule and courtly extravagance you denounce, the grievance will not be removed by your feeding the fishes with that which your children are craving. I spoke of another kind of treason than that which you suspect, and I see about me too many tokens of its existence;—the treason which would not poison but starve you.
“Of the motives of this treason I have nothing to say, for I am wholly ignorant of them. I only insist that there can be no truly patriotic aim under the project of depriving you of the food which is at best but scantily supplied. Do you find in the most plentiful seasons that we have corn enough to make sport with in the river? Are your houses even then so filled with grain that, after feeding your children and domestic animals, you have enough left for the eels of the Seine? Is it to give you this over-supply that the peasantry of the provinces live under roofs of rushes, and couch upon beds of straw? Tell me,—is there in the happiest of times such a superfluity that no Frenchman has a want or wish for more?”
Furious cries of denial rose from all sides, joined with curses upon the government which year by year, by its extravagance, snatched the hard-earned bread from the labourer’s hands.
“This is all true,” replied Charles, “and is in course of being reformed: but when did even a tyrannical government inflict upon you such evils as you are this day inflicting upon yourselves? When has it robbed the shops of one of the most useful class of men among you, and carried away boat-loads of the food for which thousands are pining, and destroyed your means of life before your eyes? A worse enemy than even a weak king and a licentious court is making sport of your miseries, and overwhelming you with such as cannot be repaired. Yes! let it not hurt your pride to hear of woes that cannot be repaired; for even the power of the sovereign people is not unlimited, great as you have proved it to be. You have abolished servile parliaments, and obtained a virtuous assembly of representatives. You have swept away the stronghold of oppression, and can tread with free steps the turf from which its very foundations have been extracted. You have rejected a constitution which was an insufficient warrant for your liberties, and are in the way to obtain universal assent to that noble Declaration of Rights which shall become the social contract of every civilized nation.—All these things, and others which would have been called impossibilities ten years ago, you have achieved. But there are impossibilities remaining which more truly deserve the name. You cannot prevent multitudes dying when famine is in the land; you cannot call up a new harvest before the seed has sprouted; you cannot insist upon supplies from other lands which are already drained. You can waste your resources, but you cannot recall them. With however much pride or levity you may at this hour fling away the staff of your life, you cannot retard the day when you will sink for want of it,—when you will kneel in the mud by the brink of this very current, and crave the waters to give up what you have buried in them, or to drown your miseries with your life.—Will you suffer yourselves thus to be made sport of? Will you permit yourselves to be goaded into madness, in order that you may be ready for madmen’s deeds? Will you throw away what is in your own hands, that others may reduce you to crave the small pittance which will remain in theirs? Those who have incited you to the deeds of this day take very good care that all our granaries shall not be emptied. They reserve a few, that you may at length,—when all their schemes are ripe,—be their tools through your literal dependence[dependence] on them for bread.—Disappoint this plot as far as you can. It is now too late to keep plenty in your own hands; but baffle the approaches of famine to the last moment; for with hunger comes slavery; or, if you will not have slavery, death; and in either case, your country must surrender your services at the very moment when she wants them most.—Where is the patriotism of bringing things to this pass?—Where also is the justice of condemning unheard so useful a class of men as those from whom you have taken their property without accusation, and, in many cases, their lives, on nothing better than suspicion of their having communicated with the court?—We must respect rights, as well as frame a Declaration of them. We must cherish the innocent and useful of society, if we wish to restrain those who are neither the one nor the other. Let there be a contrast between the oppressors and the friends of the people. Let tyrants tremble, while industrious citizens dwell in peace.”
It was now easy to wind up the discourse to the point contemplated. Charles proposed that Maigrot should be permitted, under proper guardianship, to bake a provision of loaves out of this very flour; and if they proved good, that all that remained of his property should be restored to him. The crowd rather relished the idea of waiting the operation, in full prospect of a batch of hot rolls gratis as the result, and the proposal was received with acclamations.—Charles immediately singled out Maigrot, as he stood on the outskirts of the mob, requested him to lead the way homewards, put a loaf into each arm of his little son, swung a sack of flour on his own shoulders, and headed the most singular of all the extraordinary processions which attracted the gaze of Paris in those times.
The duke of Orleans made no opposition. He saw that the game was up for this day, and departed in an opposite direction, having no particular wish to hear the verdict which he knew would be passed upon the bread, or to witness the exultation of the baker.—Before night, Maigrot not only felt his head safe upon his shoulders, but was the most eminent baker in Paris; and, if he had but had any flour remaining, might have boasted such a business as he had till now never thought of aspiring to.
Chapter VII.
MOB SOVEREIGNTY.
The endeavours of individuals like Charles to make the people wise were of little avail, however successful at the moment, in opposition to influences of a different character which were perpetually at work upon the mob of Paris. The obstinacy of the king in refusing to sign the declaration of rights, the imbecility of the ministry, the arts and clamours of the leaders of different parties, and, above all, the destitution of which they took advantage, overcame all principles of subordination, all sentiments of loyalty, and filled the people with a rage which rendered them as blind to their own interests as unjust towards those of the ranks above them. Riot and waste spread and grew from day to day, and the wise saw no more prospect of relief than the foolish of danger.
The king had been told, on the day the Bastille was taken, that his capital was in a state of revolution; but, nearly three months afterwards, he was still wondering what the event might mean; talking over with the queen the kindnesses he had always intended showing to his people, and assuring the people’s parliament that the best thing he could do for them was to preserve his dignity and prerogative. He could still at Versailles ride abroad unmolested in the mornings, feast his body-guard in the middle of the day, and look on while the ladies of the court were dancing in the evening, and sleep the whole night without hearing the drums and larums which kept all Paris awake; and could not therefore believe that all would not come right, when the people should have been persuaded of the atrocious unreasonableness of the Declaration they wanted him to sign. When he heard that they drowned their flour in hatred of him, he did all he could think of in ordering that more should be given them; and when the queen discovered that which every one would have kept from her,—that she was hated,—she curled her proud lip, and reared her graceful head, and thought that the citizens must be ignorant indeed if they fancied they could understand her springs of action, or believed that they could intimidate her. With the dauphin at her knee, she expatiated to the ladies of her court on the misfortune of kings and queens having any connexion at all with the people beneath them, whom it was at all times difficult to manage, and who might, as now, cause serious trouble, and interfere materially with the peace of royalty. She had at that moment little idea how the peace of royalty was to be invaded this very day.