From midnight of Monday, June 20, 1791, to just after seven in the
evening of Saturday, June 25, 1791
IT was no longer night; it was near day, the brightening air smelt of morning. The links of the harness-chains clattered a little as the relay horses were hacked against the pole of the big carriage. Fersen sauntered to the carriage window of that side upon which the Queen sat. He called out loudly her supposed mistress’s assumed name, “Madame Korff,” saluted her and turned to go on his lonely cross-country ride to Bourget and the Brussels road, by which he also purposed to fly. But, even as he turned, they say that she held his hand a moment and slipped upon his finger a ring. It was a ring of yellowish gold, broad and heavy, and having set in it an unknown stone. It is still preserved. Here is the story of the ring:—
It was again the 20th of June—the summer solstice that strikes, and strikes again and again, at the Bourbons and at the soldiers of the Bourbons. Nineteen years had passed since the dawn when Fersen had left the Queen at Bondy, seventeen since he had broken his heart at her death and had become silent. His campaigns had forbidden him to show prematurely the effect of advancing age; indeed, as men now count age, he had not reached the limits of decline—his fifty-fifth year was not accomplished.... But emotions so inhuman and so deep had so torn him in his vigour that there had followed a complete and an austere silence of the soul: he had long seemed apart from living men. His face preserved a settled severity, his eyes a contempt for the final moment of danger: that moment had come.
He was Marshal of the Forces; the populace of Stockholm was in rumour, for the North still had vigour in it, impregnated from France. He had been torn from his carriage, chased from the refuge of a room, and now stood bleeding on the steps of the Riddenholm alone (the Squires were within the church, barricaded: they had left him outside to die). The populace, hating him, hated even more a ring which they saw large and dull upon his finger, for they said among themselves that the ring was Faëry and that death issued from its gem whenever it was held forward; Death flashed from it and struck whomsoever it was turned upon. Charles Augustus himself had seen it upon parade; it had lowered upon him and he had fallen dead from his horse.... Fersen, so standing, wounded and alone, with the mob roaring round the steps, held his sword drawn in his right hand—but the ring upon his left was a better weapon, and no one dared come forward.
At last a traitor (since there is a traitor in every tragedy), a servant of his who had turned fisherman, drew other fishermen round him and whispered to them to gather stones: thus, from a distance, standing upon the steps above them, Fersen was stoned and died.
When he was quite dead the populace drew round his body, but they would not go too near, and even as they approached they shielded their eyes from the ring. But this traitor, Zaffel, bolder than the rest, went forward also with an axe, and, shielding his eyes also, he hacked the finger off. The people cheered as they would cheer a man that had plucked a fuse from a shell. He ran, with his head still turned, to the river-side, and he threw the finger with the Queen’s ring upon it far out into the stream.
Next day Stockholm was as calm as though there had been no evening tumult. Zaffel at early morning took his boat out upon the cold lake water by a pleasant breeze, and pointed up river: he had a plan to fish. When he had left the many islands of the town behind him and had passed into a lonely reach of pine-trees, he felt a gentle shock upon the keel, and the boat stood still.... He went forward to the bows and looked over; he could see nothing but very deep green water bubbling below. As he came back aft the masthead caught his eye, and there, clasping it, was a severed hand; the blood which was apparent at the wrist was not running. The hand grasped the trunk of the mast with rigour, and Zaffel, as he saw it, shuddered, for one finger of that hand was gone.
The boat went forward in spite of the tide and aslant the wind, with the sheet loose and the sail at random, and he in the boat could feel for hours that the impulsion of its course was from the masthead to which he no longer dared a look upwards. The boat cut steadily across the eddies of the Moelar. At times he tried the tiller, but he found the fixed movement unresponsive to his helm.