The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

For a boy of his age, the pensiveness and composure of that expression were indeed almost unnatural, and they combined with a calm firmness and immobility of feature, which promised, I know not what of resolution and tenacity of purpose. It was not gravity, much less sternness, or sadness, that lent so powerful an expression to that young face; nor was there a single line which indicated coldness or hardness of heart, or which would have led to a suspicion that he had been schooled by those hard monitors, suffering and sorrow. No, it was pure thoughtfulness, and that of the highest and most intellectual order, which characterized the boy’s expression.

Yet, though it was so thoughtful, there was nothing in the aspect whence to forebode a want of the more masculine qualifications. It was the thoughtfulness of a worker, not of a dreamer—the thoughtfulness which prepares, not unfits a man for action. If the powers portrayed in that boy’s countenance were not deceptive to the last degree, high qualities were within and a high destiny before him.

But who, from the foreshowing and the bloom of sixteen years, may augur of the finish and the fruit of the threescore-and-ten, which are the sum of human toil and sorrow?

It was now nearly noon, when the outer drawbridge of the Bastile was lowered, and its gate opened; and forth rode, two abreast, a troop of the musquetaires or lifeguard, in the bright steel casques and cuirases, with the musquetoons, from which they derived their name, unslung and ready for action. As they issued into the wider space beyond the bridge, the troopers formed themselves rapidly into a sort of hollow column, the front of which, some eight file deep, occupied the whole width of the street, two files in close order composing each flank, and leaving an open space in the centre completely surrounded by the horsemen.

Into this space, without a moment’s delay, there was driven a low, black cart, or hurdle as it was technically called, of the rudest construction, drawn by four powerful black horses—a savage-faced official guiding them by the ropes which supplied the place of reins. On this ill-omened vehicle there stood three persons—the prisoner, and two of the armed wardens of the Bastile—the former ironed very heavily, and the latter bristling with offensive weapons.

Immediately in the rear of this car followed another troop of the lifeguard, which closed up in the densest and most serried order around and behind the victim of the law, so as to render any attempt at rescue useless.

The person, to secure whose punishment so strong a military force had been produced, and to witness whose execution so vast a multitude was collected, was a tall, noble-looking man of forty or forty-five years, dressed in a rich mourning-habit of the day, but wearing neither hat nor mantle. His dark hair, mixed at intervals with thin lines of silver, was cut short behind, contrary to the usage of the times, and his neck was bare, the collar of his superbly-laced shirt being folded broadly back over the cape of his pourpoint.

His face was very pale, and his complexion being naturally of the darkest, the hue of his flesh, from which all the healthful blood had receded, was strangely livid and unnatural in its appearance. Still it did not seem that it was fear which had blanched his cheeks, and stolen all the color from his compressed lip, for his eye was full of a fierce, scornful light, and all his features were set and steady with an expression of the calmest and most iron resolution.

As the fatal vehicle which bore him made its appearance on the esplanade without the gates of the prison, a deep hum of satisfaction ran through the assembled concourse, rising and deepening gradually into a savage howl like that of a hungry tiger.

Then, then blazed out the haughty spirit, the indomitable pride of the French noble! Then shame, and fear, and death itself, which he was looking even now full in the face, were all forgotten, all absorbed, in his overwhelming scorn of the people!