The tables were set in a horse-shoe, and two hundred and ten places were laid: more than the two messes were concerned! Eighty seats were for the Guards—for all that could be found connected with the Guards—and the Guards were there in full; double their usual number were in Versailles: there were others, strange guests and chosen volunteers. There were others, men whose presence proved a certain plan, officers of the local national militia, the new armed force of the Revolution, but officers picked carefully for their weakness or their secret disapproval of the national movement. So they sat down and began to eat and drink; there were provided two bottles a man.[[13]]
[13]. 210 men, 400 bottles.
Outside the great empty theatre the autumn evening closed; within, by the thousand lights of it, the ladies of the Court, coming, as the banquet rose higher, into the boxes to applaud, saw one by one the white cockades of the Guards transferred to their guests. The national colours were regulation for Flanders; they were the essential mark of the new national Militia—yet, first one guest then another, eagerly or reluctantly, weakly or defiantly, took on the white cockade of the old Monarchy which the Guards still legally wore. The women folded paper cockades and threw them down ... at last all seated there were under the emblem; some say that black cockades for the Queen were also shown. They drank to the King, the Queen, the Heir; the noise of laughter and of enthusiasm grew, the toasts and the cheers were exchanged from the boxes to the stage; the floor of the theatre filled with new-comers—speech and the exhilaration of companionship gained on them and rose. Some there in wine felt now again, like a memory in the blood, the old and passionate French love of the kings. Some, who had come to Versailles secretly determined for the Crown, now at last gave full rein and let the soul gallop to its end. All were on fire with that Gallic ardour for adventure against great odds, and in all that Gallic passion for comradeship was aflame. Some few of the rank and file were admitted ... the heavy men of Flanders ... they also drank. The Queen (the meat being now gone, the fruits served) was seen, whether come by reluctance or willing, in her box.... They cried her name and swords were drawn. They clamoured for her to come down from where she sat there radiant, hearing at last the voices and the mood upon which (so little did she understand of war) she imagined and had imagined her victory to depend.
She came down and passed slowly before them and their delirium, smiling highly, holding in her arms her little son; and the King, less certain of the issue, heavy, splashed with the mud of his hunting, went with her as she proceeded. They passed. The height of their fever was upon these soldiers; one leant over to the band and suggested, “Pleasant it is to be....” The band consulted; they were not sure of the tune. “Well, then, play ‘O Richard! O my King!’” That everybody knew, any one could sing it; it was a tune of the day—and with the music madness took them. They poured out into the cold night air of the marble court, singing, cheering, all armed—defiant of the new world. The whole life of the palace and its thousands, invigorated, mixed with music and re-heightened the strain. Sundry bugles were blown as though for a charge. The noise of that clamour rang through the town, the populace without the gate was gathering, the Militia armed; and the crowd thus alarmed in the far night could see, beyond the palace railings under the brilliant windows of the front, a herd of men still cheering madly, the gleam of swords raised, and one dark figure climbing to the King’s window to seize and kiss his hand; and against the lights within, the shadows of the family approving.
The colonel of the Versailles Militia went to the palace and returned: the crowd dispersed, the cheering of the revellers died away. Next day was sober; yet even all next day the exaltation, though now sober, grew. The national uniform of the Militia was insulted and challenged in Versailles, turned out of the palace. The Queen, ineffably ignorant, gave colours to a deputation of that Militia, and begged them, with a smile, to believe that yesterday had pleased her greatly—she had seen certain of their officers at the feast—and so little was enough to deceive her! There was another milder meeting (for the men), a mere exchange of glasses, and all Saturday, the 3rd of October, the armament of the Crown, such as it was—some thousands—stood ready and did not forget the valour and the ardent loyalty which their chiefs had lit with such memorable cheers and songs.
But another noise and another life began beyond that fringe of woods which eastward veiled Paris. The million of that place were in a hum: messages came from them and to them. Marat had explored the new force in Versailles, the Presses in Paris were raining pamphlets—something confused and enormous, a vision of their national King abandoning them, a nightmare of treason; all this mixed with hunger oppressed the mind of the million. I say “mixed with hunger,” for though there was by this time plenty of grain there was little flour, and in the lack of bread violent angers had risen: some thought the Assembly (their talisman), the very nation itself, to be again in peril from the soldiers. So all Sunday, October 4, the hive of Paris droned in its narrow streets and gathered; upon Monday, for the second time that year, it swarmed.
To the west and to the south of Paris there runs a ring of clean high land against the sky, and it is clothed with forest; one part of it, still charming and in places abandoned, is called the Forest of Meudon, and many who read this have walked through it and have seen at the end of some one of its long rides the great city below.
In the morning of Monday, the 5th of October 1789, the far corner of these woods near Chatillon rang with shots, and down one alley or another would come from time to time the soft and heavy beat of horses at a canter, as grooms and servants moved with the guns. The King was shooting. A south-west wind blew through the trees with no great violence; some rain had fallen and more threatened from the shredded, low, grey clouds above. Of all the company in those alleys and between those high trees, on which the leaves, though withering, still hung, the King alone was undisturbed. His pleasure in horsemanship and his seven miles’ ride from the palace, his delight in the morning air, and his keen attention to the sole occupation that called out his lethargic energy, forbade him to consider other things; but all his suite were wondering, each in his degree, what might be happening in the plain below them, or in Paris, or in the town of Versailles which they had left—for it was known that Paris was moving.
All morning long they shot in those woods until, when it was already perhaps past noon and rain had again begun to fall, a sound of different riding came furiously up the main alley which follows the ridge and springs from the high road. It was the riding of a man who rides on a fresh horse and changes post, and is a courier. His name was Cubieres, and he was a gentleman of the Court flying with news, straight in the long French stirrup, with a set face, and his mount belly to ground. He took one turning, then another, came thundering up to the King and drew rein.