Capture at Varennes.
An affecting scene.
The royal group.
The appeal touched the heart of the grocer and the captors by whom the king was surrounded. Tears came into the eyes of many, they hesitated; the expression of their countenances showed that they would willingly, if they dared to consult the dictates of their own hearts, let the king pass on. A more affecting scene can hardly be imagined. It was midnight. Torches and flambeaux were gleaming around. Men, women, and children were hurrying to and fro in the darkness. The alarm bell was pealing out its hurried sounds through the still air. A crowd of half-dressed peasants and artisans was rapidly accumulating about the inn. The king stood pleading with his subjects for liberty and life, far more moved by compassion for his wife and children than for himself. The children, weary and terrified, and roused suddenly from the sleep in which they had been lost in their parents' arms, gazed upon the strange scene with undefined dread, unconscious of the magnitude of their peril. The queen, seated upon a bale of goods in the shop, with her two children clinging to her side, plead, at times with the tears of despair, and again with all the majesty of her queenly nature, for pity or for justice. She hoped that a woman's heart throbbed beneath the bosom of the wife of the mayor, and made an appeal to her which one would think that, under the circumstances, no human heart could have resisted.
Appeal of the queen.
"You are a mother, madame," said the queen, in most imploring accents, "you are a wife! the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands. Think what I must suffer for these children—for my husband. At one word from you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom—more than life."
"Madame," coldly replied the selfish and calculating woman, "I should be happy to help you if I could without danger. You are thinking of your husband, I am thinking of mine. It is a wife's first duty to think of her own husband."
Telegraphic dispatch to Paris.
Intense agony of the queen.
The queen saw that all appeals to such a spirit must be in vain, and, taking her two children by the hand, with Madame Elizabeth ascended the stairs which conducted from the grocer's shop to his rooms above, where she was shielded from the gaze of the crowd. She threw herself into a chair, and, overwhelmed with anguish, burst into a flood of tears. The alarm bell continued to ring; telegraphic dispatches were sent to Paris, communicating tidings of the arrest; the neighboring villagers flocked into town; the National Guard, composed of people opposed to the king, were rapidly assembled from all quarters, and the streets barricaded to prevent the possibility of any rescue by the soldiers who advocated the royal cause. Thus the dreadful hours lingered away till the morning dawned. The increasing crowd stimulated one another to ferocity and barbarity. Insults, oaths, and imprecations incessantly fell upon the ears of the captives. The queen probably endured as much of mental agony that night as the human mind is capable of enduring. The conflict of indignation, terror, and despair was so dreadful, that her hair, which the night previous had been auburn, was in the morning white as snow. This extraordinary fact is well attested, and indicates an enormity of woe almost incomprehensible.