If the marquis had carried a bold front, nothing would have happened to him, any more than to his companion; but his slouched hat, halting gait, and shrinking deportment at once drew attention upon him. The consequence was that he heard double the number of threats, and imprecations ten times more horrid than had met Charles’s ears before. If he had now regained entrance into the palace, he could have told that which would have made even the queen’s fiery blood run cold, and have given the whole household a foretaste of worse horrors than even those of the ensuing day.
When they had arrived at the last of the line of fires, the marquis believed his purgatory to be nearly over, and indulged himself in a few ejaculations of thankfulness on the occasion. He was overheard, seized, dragged to the light, his coat torn open, and his hat pushed back. The queue looked suspicious; the manner of speech, mixed up, as even these people could perceive, of high breeding and imbecility, gave assurance that he was a court adherent; to which there was to be opposed only his own and Charles’s assurance that he was a companion and friend of Orleans. The knot of drinkers hesitated whether to cut off his head or let him go, and the marquis stood panting with open lips and closed teeth, when an amiable creature, partly masculine in her attire, and wholly so in her address, proposed a half measure.
“If he is one of them,” she observed, “we shall find him again in the palace presently; so let us mark him.”
With the word, she seized the poor man’s nose with the left hand, a burning stick with the right, and branded his forehead with a cross; then pushed him away, and turned to Charles, offering to drink to him in his own liquor, the choicest in Paris, if Orleans said true. She pointed at the same time to a waggon near, on which, to his amazement, Charles saw piled wine-casks with his own mark, and brandy-bottles sealed with his own seal.
Perceiving at a glance that his cellars must have been forced since he left home, and that all further resistance would be useless, he determined to yield to his wife’s desire to quit Paris; and he hastened to discharge his duty of rousing and warning the general, before turning his back on this scene of disorder.
Lafayette was up in a moment, and, though still trusting in the peaceable disposition of the people, dressed himself hastily, that he might be among them by daybreak. Before he could leave his hotel, however, warning sounds came from the direction of the palace, and messengers succeeded one another rapidly, stating that an attack was being made on the great iron gates, that blood had already been shed, and that the lives of the whole royal family seemed to be at the people’s mercy. The general threw himself upon a horse which happened to be standing saddled below, and galloped off, before Charles could recommend the marquis de Thou to his protection, should he happen to find him in the hands of the populace. His own anxiety to get home was such as ill to brook any delay, and to admit little other interest of any kind; but chance threw him once more in the path of the old man.
As he was making the best of his way towards the Paris road, stemming the tide of people that was rushing towards the palace, he was suddenly jostled and thrown down by an impulse in the contrary direction. Nor was he the only one. Many were bruised, some trampled, while a fugitive burst through the throng, followed by a knot of pursuers, who overthrew all that came in their way, while their mingled curses and laughter contrasted strangely with the panting cry of the pursued. Some cried out that it was the king; others uttered imprecations against him as one of the hated guards; while Charles saw, amidst his tattered, scared, and helpless condition, that it was no other than the poor marquis. His desperation gave the hunted man strength to clear the mob, and to fly some way beyond, till he reached the trees of the avenue, where there was an end of his safety unless some better aid was brought him than his own failing strength. His enemies dogged him, surrounded him;—some brandishing pitchforks, others large knives, and not a few firing off their muskets to give a new impulse to his terror. This sight was intolerable to Charles, who saw in such cruelty none of the palliations which he had admitted in the case of some former acts of violence. Forgetting all but what was before his eyes, he snatched a pike, threw himself in front of the pursuit, reached the victim just as he fell exhausted at the foot of a tree, and stood astride over him, with one hand in an attitude of defence, while the other beckoned to the people to listen. He shouted amid the din, and the few words which were heard by those nearest to him served his purpose of diverting their thoughts from immediate murder. He told them that, in the name of the marquis’s tenantry, he demanded that the marquis should be placed in the custody of the Assembly of deputies, to answer for an infringement of the new laws by which the property of the peasantry was protected. He told them that the general was gone to the palace, to mediate between the queen and the poissardes, and as it would be a pity that those who heard him should be absent from so interesting a spectacle, he and one or two more would take charge of the criminal, and convey him before the sitting deputies. A well-timed roll of the drums and discharge of musketry confirmed his appeal, and drew away his auditors, so that in a few moments, when the last lingerers had gratified themselves with pricking their victim a little with the points of their various weapons, Charles found himself alone with the almost lifeless old man.
On hearing that his further existence probably depended on his reaching the assembly while the mob was engaged elsewhere, the marquis made an effort to rise and walk, and found himself so much less hurt than frightened that he accomplished the transit with small difficulty. Such a deplorable object was never before presented to the Assembly, at least under the title of a marquis. He had scarcely a shred of clothing under the soldier’s cloak which Charles had borrowed from a sentinel at the door. His powdered hair was dripping with rain, and his face smeared with blood. He wept bitterly; murmuring, in the tones of a woman, his wonder as to what he could have ever done to offend the people, and how the world could have grown so cruel and ungrateful. The Assembly had little leisure at this time, and were glad to accept Charles’s offer of conveying the prisoner away, and his guarantee that the marquis should set out for his estate in the provinces without delay, and not return till the troubles of the capital were at an end. The marquis was little disposed to make opposition.
“Take me away,” he said, “though I only fly from one doom to another. You say my tenants are enraged against me; and I say that they will drink my blood. The vile are sovereigns in these days, and the noble have the knife at their throats from day to day. O, if they had killed me under the tree, it would have been over; but now it is still to come. O save me! Do not leave me! Make me your servant. Employ me as you will; but do not let them kill me!”
Charles recommended that the old man should in fact travel into Guienne as his servant, and take possession of his chateau or not, according to the apparent disposition of the peasantry when they should arrive.—Not a moment was to be lost in proceeding to Paris, if the departure of the family was to take place while the populace and the troops were engaged at Versailles, and the whole attention of the magistracy was directed upon what was passing there.