This new and purely Parisian crowd which they now entered, silent, dark-coated and with covered heads—largely of the middle class—thronged all the length of the Champs Élysées and packed the Place de la Concorde. The myriad fixed eyes of it saw the convoy show black against the western fight upon the summit of the hill; they watched it creeping down the avenue between the double fine of soldiery, each section of which, as the King passed, reversed arms as at a funeral soldiers reverse arms.
There was no sound. The spontaneous discipline which makes Paris a sort of single thing, living and full of will, so controlled this vast assemblage that neither a cry was raised nor a hat lifted. The note of the whole was silence.
During the full half-hour of that long approach down the hill this silence endured; the carriage was at the gates of the Tuileries Gardens, had entered them. Within the riding-school, the manège where sat the Parliament, to benches that rapidly emptied as the curiosity of the Deputies drew them away, Fursy was droning out a report upon fortified places of the first, the second, and the third class. Outside, the crowd still denser but silent as ever, the berline passed, and the sections saluted—a reversed salute, on either side; it was within a furlong of its goal when, from a platform outside the Parliament building, a young member of the Royalist right, drawing himself well up that he might be observed, lifted his hat and very gravely and pronouncedly made obeisance to the Crown.
The spell was broken. There was a scuffle, a hubbub, a general war; the slowly-moving crowd crested into weapons as a deep swell at sea will crest into foam. The postillions of the berline urged their horses; a hundred yards to go, and the hedge of soldiery was forced and the mob was upon the carriage. The three Guardsmen sat still untouched, with death upon them; but the horses floundered through the deafening cries and strugglers, trampling and rearing; the great vehicle was hauled and piloted in; the wrought-iron gates clanged behind it. It was past seven, and the journey was ended.
A week had gone. On Monday night they had watched with Fersen; all Tuesday fled; on Wednesday night and morning suffered at Varennes, and in the slow drag-back to Chalons; on Thursday at Epernay met the Commissioners; all Friday suffered their captivity till Meaux was reached—and now, as the light of Saturday began to fall, the hunting was over.
CHAPTER XV
THE WAR
From Saturday, June 25, 1791, to half-past eight on the evening
of June 20, 1792
A MAN, callous or wearied by study, might still discover in the pursuit of History one last delight: the presence in all its record of a superhuman irony.