In this sorry guise did the new berlin re-enter Paris. It had departed on Monday night, and behold it returning on Saturday towards sundown, a huge, jolting, captured whale whom no miracle will compel to disgorge its prey. In order to prolong the people's jubilee and the king's shame, it was brought a league out of its direct way, so as to make an entry down the Champs Elysées, and bear its occupants back to their gilded prison with due pomp and emphasis by the front gate of the Tuileries gardens. So with serried ranks of bayonets pointed at it on every side, it reappears in Paris, and jogs on to deposit its burden on the old Médicean tile-field, an ignominious procession, royalty degraded and fettered, a spectacle of joy to the king-hating citizens. The royal family enter the Tuileries, now a prison in the most cruel and literal sense. The queen and Mme. Elizabeth are henceforth watched, [pg 387] even in their chambers—so watched that, as it is recorded, the queen being one night unable to sleep, the National Guard on duty at her open door offered to come in and converse with her majesty awhile, conversation being sometimes conducive to sleep.
Even at this distance, when we read the history of the flight to Varennes, it has the exciting effect of a fresh tale. We hold our breath, and fancy that still at the last some deliverer will arrive just as all is lost; some accident will prevent Drouet from reaching the scene in time; the fugitives will clear the bridge, and the mob be prevented by the soldiers from pursuing them. Never, even in the history of those most unfortunate of princes, the Stuarts, was there a series of mishaps, blunders, and accidents such as make up the chapter of the flight to Varennes. It is idle to conjecture what would have happened if it had ended differently. If, when the berlin was first surrounded and the travellers ordered to alight, Louis had proudly defied the insolent command, and bade the soldiers fire, how quickly the “pale paralysis” of baffled rage would have seized Drouet and his eight patriots of good-will; how the froth of ruffianism they had evoked would have melted away before that imperial word, and slunk out of sight, while the monarch fared on his way along the high-road, the troops sweeping back all possible pursuers, and landing the destinies of France safe beyond the reach of regicidal hands! All this was so much more likely to be than that which was! The reason why it was not is so mysterious! Enough that it was not; that the bloody deed of January the 20th was to consummate the outrages and sufferings of the Night of Spurs; and that the fate of France was not shaped to a different issue, as we, in our short-sighted philosophy, fancy might so easily have been done.
The Ingenious Device.
“Doth no man condemn thee? And she answered, No man, Lord.”
“Woman! thou'rt over-confident and sure
To answer thus the Infinitely Pure!
How knowest thou that He does not condemn,
And will not cast at thee th' avenging stone?”
“The pure are merciful. His stratagem