Read the book: «The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.»
CHAPTER I.
A NEW LEASE OF LIFE
France had been changed to a limited monarchy from an absolute one, and King Louis XVI. had solemnly sworn to defend the new Constitution. But it had been remarked by shrewd observers that he had not attended the Te Deum at the Paris Cathedral, with the members of the National Assembly: that is, he would tell a lie but not commit perjury.
The people were therefore on their guard against him, while they felt that his Queen, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Austria, was ever their foe.
But the murders by the rabble had frightened all property holders and when the court bought Mirabeau, the popular orator, over to its cause by paying his debts and a monthly salary the majority of the better classes, who had not fled from France in terror, thought the Royal Family would yet regain their own.
In point of fact, Mirabeau had obtained from the House of Representatives that the King should have the right to rule the army and direct it and propose war, which the Assembly would only have the sanction of. He would have obtained more in the reaction after the Taking of the Bastile but for an unknown hand having distributed full particulars of his purchase by the royalists in a broadside given away by thousands in the streets.
Hence he retired from the senate broken by his victory, though carrying himself proudly.
In face of danger the strong athlete thought of the antagonist, not of his powers.
On going home, he flung himself on the floor, rolling on flowers. He had two passionate loves: for the fair sex, because he was an ugly though robust man, and for flowers.
This time he felt so exhausted that he resisted his attendant feebly, who wanted to send for a doctor, when "Dr. Gilbert" was announced.
A man still young though with a grave expression like one tried in the furnace of personal and political heats, entered the room. He was clothed in the wholly black suit which he introduced from America, where it was popular among Republicans, for he was a friend of Washington and Marquis Lafayette, who like him had returned to make a sister Republic of France to that of the Thirteen United States.
Dr. Gilbert was a friend of Mirabeau, for he wished to preserve the King at the head of the State though he knew it was but the gilded figurehead without which, if knocked off in the tempest, the Ship rights itself and lives through all without feeling the loss.
Nevertheless, Gilbert, who was one of the Invisibles, that Secret Society which worked for years to bring about the downfall of monarchy in Europe, had been warned by its Chief, the Grand Copt Cagliostro, alias Balsamo the Mesmerist, alias Baron Zannone – since he had escaped from the Papal dungeons under cover of his being supposed dead and buried there – that the Queen cajoled him and that royalty was doomed.
"I have come to congratulate you, my dear count," said the doctor to the orator, "you promised us a victory, and you have borne away a triumph."
"A Pyrrhic one – another such and we are lost. I am very ill of it. Oh, doctor, tell me of something, not to keep me alive but to give me force while I do live."
"How can I advise for a constitution like yours," said the physician, after feeling the nobleman's pulse: "you do not heed my advice. I told you not to have flowers in the room as they spoil the air, and you are smothered in them. As for the ladies, I bade you beware and you answer that you would rather die than be reft of their society."
"Never mind that. I suffer too much to think of aught but myself. I sometimes think that as I am slandered so that the Queen hesitated to trust me, so have I been physically done to death. Do you believe in the famous poisons which slay without knowing they are used until too late?"
"Yes; I believe," for Gilbert frowned as he remembered that his secret brotherhood was allowed to use the Aqua Tofana where an enemy could not be otherwise reached: "but in your case it is the sword wearing out its sheath. The electric spark will explode the crystal chamber in which it is confined. Still I can help you."
He drew from his pocket a phial holding about a couple of thimblefuls of a green liquid.
"One of my friends – whom I would were yours – deeply versed in natural and occult sciences, gave me the recipe of this brew as a sovereign elixir of life. I have often taken it to cure what the English call the blue devils. And I am bound to say that the effect was instant and salutary. Will you taste it?"
"I will take anything from your hand, my dear doctor."
A servant was rung up, who brought a spoon and a little brandy in a glass.
"Brandy to mollify it," said Mirabeau: "it must be liquid fire, then!"
Gilbert added the same quantity of his elixir to the half-dozen drops of eau-de-vie and the two fluids mixed to the color of wormwood bitters, which the exhausted man drank off.
Immediately he was invigorated and sprang up, saying:
"Doctor, I will pay a diamond a drop for that liquor, for it would make me feel invincible."
"Count, promise me that you will take it only each three days, and I will leave you a phial every week."
"Give it, and I promise everything."
"Now, I have come for another matter. I want you to come out of town for carriage exercise and at the same time to select a residence there."
"It chances that I was looking for one, and my man found a nice house at Argenteuil, recommended by a fellow countryman of his, one Fritz, whose master, a foreign banker, had lived in it. It is delightful and being vacant could be moved into at once. My father had a house out there, whence he drove me with his cane."
"Let us go to Argenteuil, then," said Gilbert; "your health is so valuable that we must study everything bearing upon it."
Mirabeau had no establishment and a hack had to be called for the gentlemen. In this they proceeded to the village where, a hundred paces on the Besons Road, they saw a house buried in the trees. It was called the Marsh House.
On the right of the road was a humble cottage, in front of which sat a woman on a stool, holding a child in her arms who seemed devoured with fever.
"Doctor," said the orator, fixing his eyes on the sad sight, "I am as superstitious as an ancient. If that child dies, I would not live in this house. Just see what you think of the case."
Gilbert got down while the carriage went on.
A gardener was keeping the house which he showed to the inquirer. It belonged to St. Denis Abbey and was for sale under the decree confiscating Church property. Over against the gardener's lodge was another, a summerhouse simply overgrown with flowers. Mirabeau's passion for them made this sufficient lure; for this alone he would have taken the house.
"Is this little cottage, this Temple of Flora, on the property?" he asked.
"Yes, sir: it belongs to the big house but it is at present occupied by a lady with her child, a pretty lady, but of course she will have to go if the house and estate are bought."
"A lovely neighbor does no harm," said the count: "Let me see the interior of the house."
The rooms were lofty and elegant, the furniture fine and stylish. In the main room Mirabeau opened a window to look out and it commanded a view of the summerhouse. What was more, he had a view of a lady, sewing, half reclining, while a child of five or six played on the lawn among flowering shrubs.
It was the lady tenant.
It was not only such a pretty woman as one might imagine a Queen among the roses, but it was the living likeness of Queen Marie Antoinette and to accentuate the resemblance the boy was about the age of the Prince Royal.
Suddenly the beautiful stranger perceived that she was under observation for she uttered a faint scream of surprise, rose, called her son, and drew him inside by the hand, but not without looking back two or three times.
At this same moment Mirabeau started, for a hand was laid on his shoulder. It was the doctor who reported that the peasant's child had caught swamp fever from being set down beside a stagnant pool while the mother reaped the grass. The disease was deadly but the doctor hoped to save the sufferer by Jesuit's Bark, as quinine was still styled at this date.
But he warned his friend against this House in the Marsh, where the air might be as fatal to him as that of the senate house, where bad ventilation made the atmosphere mephitic.
"I am sorry the air is not good, for the house suits me wonderfully."
"What an eternal enemy you are to yourself? If you mean to obey the orders of the Faculty, begin by renouncing the idea of taking this residence. You will find fifty around Paris better placed."
Perhaps Mirabeau, yielding to Reason's voice, would have promised; but suddenly, in the first shades of evening, behind a screen of flowers, appeared the head of a woman in white and pink flounces: he fancied that she smiled on him. He had no time to assure himself as Gilbert dragged him away, suspecting something was going on.
"My dear doctor," said the orator, "remember that I said to the Queen when she gave me her hand to kiss on our interview for reconciliation: 'By this token, the Monarchy is saved.' I took a heavy engagement that time, especially if they whom I defend plot against me; but I shall hold to it, though suicide may be the only way for me to get honorably out of it."
In a day Mirabeau bought the Marsh House.
CHAPTER II.
THE FEDERATION OF FRANCE
All the realm had bound itself together in the girdle of Federation, one which preceded the United Europe of later utopists.
Mirabeau had favored the movement, thinking that the King would gain by the country people coming to Paris, where they might overpower the citizens. He deluded himself into the belief that the sight of royalty would result in an alliance which no plot could break.
Men of genius sometimes have these sublime but foolish ideas at which the tyros in politics may well laugh.
There was a great stir in the Congress when the proposition was brought forward for this Federation ceremony at Paris which the provinces demanded. It was disapproved by the two parties dividing the House, the Jacobins (So called from the old Monastery of Jacobins where they met) and the royalists. The former dreaded the union more than their foes from not knowing the effect Louis XVI. might have on the masses.
The King's-men feared that a great riot would destroy the royal family as one had destroyed the Bastile.
But there was no means to oppose the movement which had not its like since the Crusades.
The Assembly did its utmost to impede it, particularly by resolving that the delegates must come at their own expense; this was aimed at the distant provinces. But the politicians had no conception of the extent of the desire: all doors opened along the roads for these pilgrims of liberty and the guides of the long procession were all the discontented – soldiers and under-officers who had been kept down that aristocrats should have all the high offices; seamen who had won the Indies and were left poor: shattered waifs to whom the storms had left stranded. They found the strength of their youth to lead their friends to the capitol.
Hope marched before them.
All the pilgrims sang the same song: "It must go on!" that is, the Revolution. The Angel of Renovation had taught it to all as it hovered over the country.
To receive the five hundred thousand of the city and country, a gigantic area was required: the field of Mars did for that, while the surrounding hills would hold the spectators; but as it was flat it had to be excavated.
Fifteen thousand regular workmen, that is, of the kind who loudly complain that they have no work to do and under their breath thank heaven when they do not find it – started in on the task converting the flat into the pit of an amphitheatre. At the rate they worked they would be three months at it, while it was promised for the Fourteenth of July, the Anniversary of the Taking of the Bastile.
Thereupon a miracle occurred by which one may judge the enthusiasm of the masses.
Paris volunteered to work the night after the regular excavators had gone off. Each brought his own tools: some rolled casks of refreshing drink, others food; all ages and both sexes, all conditions from the scholar to the carter; children carried torches; musicians played all kinds of instruments to cheer the multitude, and from one hundred thousand workers sounded the song "It shall go on!"
Among the most enfevered toilers might be remarked two who had been among the first to arrive; they were in National Guards uniform. One was a gloomy-faced man of forty, with robust and thickset frame; the other a youth of twenty.
The former did not sing and spoke seldom.
The latter had blue eyes in a frank and open countenance, with white teeth and light hair; he stood solidly on long legs and large feet. With his full-sized hands he lifted heavy weights, rolling dirt carts and pulling hurdles without rest. He was always singing, while watching his comrade out of the corner of the eye, saying joking words to which he did not reply, bringing him a glass of wine which he refused, returning to his place with sorrow, but falling to work again like ten men, and singing like twenty.
These two men, newly elected Representatives by the Aisne District, ten miles from Paris, having heard that hands were wanted, ran in hot haste to offer one his silent co-operation, the other his merry and noisy assistance.
Their names were François Billet and Ange Pitou. The first was a wealthy farmer, whose land was owned by Dr. Gilbert, and the second a boy of the district who had been the schoolmate of Gilbert's son Sebastian.
Thanks to their help, with that of others as energetic and patriotically inspired, the enormous works were finished on the Thirteenth of July 1790.
To make sure of having places next day, many workers slept on the battlefield.
Billet and Pitou were to officiate in the ceremonies and they went to join their companions on the main street. Hotel-keepers had lowered their prices and many houses were open to their brothers from the country. The farther they came the more kindly they were treated, if any distinction was made.
On its part the Assembly had received a portion of the shock. A few days before, it had abolished hereditary nobility, on the motion of Marquis Lafayette.
Contrarily, the influence of Mirabeau was felt daily. A place was assigned in the Federation to him as Orator. Thanks to so mighty a champion, the court won partisans in the opposition ranks. The Assembly had voted liberal sums to the King for his civil list and for the Queen, so that they lost nothing by pensioning Mirabeau.
The fact was, he seemed quite right in appealing to the rustics; the Federalists whom the King welcomed seemed to bring love for royalty along with enthusiasm for the National Assembly.
Unhappily the King, dull and neither poetical nor chivalric, met the cheers coolly.
Unfortunately, also, the Queen, too much of a Lorrainer to love the French and too proud to greet common people, did not properly value these outbursts of the heart.
Besides, poor woman, she had a spot on her sun: one of those gloomy fits which clouded her mind.
She had long loved Count Charny, lieutenant of the Royal Lifeguards, but his loyalty to the King, who had treated him like a brother in times of danger, had rendered him invulnerable to the woman's wiles.
Marie Antoinette was no longer a young woman and sorrow had touched her head with her wing, which was making the threads of silver appear in the blonde tresses – but she was fair enough to bewitch a Mirabeau and might have enthralled George Charny.
But, married to save the Queen's reputation to a lady of the court, Andrea de Taverney, he was falling in love with her, she having loved him at first sight, and this love naturally fortified his tacit pledge never to wrong his sovereign.
Hence the Queen was miserable, and all the more as Charny had departed on some errand for the King of which he had not told her the nature.
Probably this was why she had played the flirt with Mirabeau. The genius had flattered her by kneeling at her feet. But she too soon compared the bloated, heavy, leonine man with Charny.
George Charny was elegance itself, the noble and the courtier and yet more a seaman, who had saved a war-ship by nailing the colors to the mast and bidding the crew fight on.
In his brilliant uniform he looked like a prince of battles, while Mirabeau, in his black suit, resembled a canon of the church.
The fourteenth of July came impassibly, draped in clouds and promising rain and a gale when it ought to have illumined a splendid day.
But the French laugh even on a rainy day.
Though drenched with rain and dying of hunger, the country delegates and National Guards, ranked along the main street, made merry and sang. But the population, while unable to keep the wet off them, were not going to let them starve. Food and drink were lowered by ropes out of the windows. Similar offerings were made in all the thoroughfares they passed through.
During their march, a hundred and fifty thousand people took places on the edges of the Field of Mars, and as many stood behind them. It was not possible to estimate the number on the surrounding hills.
Never had such a sight struck the eye of man.
The Field was changed in a twinkling of the plain into a pit, with the auditorium holding three hundred thousand.
In the midst was the Altar of the Country, to which led four staircases, corresponding with the faces of the obelisk which overtowered it.
At each corner smoked incense dishes – incense being decreed henceforth to be used only in offerings to God.
Inscriptions heralded that the French People were free, and invited all nations to the feast of Freedom.
One grand stand was reserved for the Queen, the court and the Assembly. It was draped with the Red, White and Blue which she abhorred, since she had seen it flaunt above her own, the Austrian black.
For this day only the King was appointed Commander-in-chief, but he had transferred his command to Lafayette who ruled six millions of armed men in the National Guards of France.
The tricolor surmounted everything – even to the distinctive banners of each body of delegates.
At the same time as the President of the Assembly took his seat, the King and the Queen took theirs.
Alas, poor Queen! her court was meager: her best friends had fled in fright: perhaps some would have returned if they knew what money Mirabeau had obtained for her; but they were ignorant.
She knew that Charny, whom she vainly looked for, would not be attracted by the power or by gold.
She looked for his younger brother, Isidore, wondering why all the Queen's defenders seemed absent from their post.
Nobody knew where he was. At this hour he was conducting his sweetheart, Catherine, daughter of the gloomy farmer Billet, to a house in Bellevue, Paris, for refuge from the contumely of her sisters in the village and the wrath of her father.
Who knows, though, but that the heiress to the throne of the Caesars would have consented to be an obscure peasant girl to be loved by George again as Isidore loved the farmer's daughter.
She was no doubt revolving such ideas when Mirabeau, who saw her with glances, half thunderous weather, half sunshine, and could not help exclaiming:
"Of what is the royal enchantress thinking?"
She was brooding over the absence of Charny and his love died out.
The mass was said by Talleyrand, the French "Vicar of Bray," who swore allegiance to all manner of Constitutions himself. It must have been of evil augury. The storm redoubled as though protesting against the false priest who burlesqued the service.
Here followed the ceremony of taking the oath. Lafayette was the first, binding the National Guards. The Assembly Speaker swore for France; and the King in his own name.
When the vows were made in deep silence, a hundred pieces of artillery burst into flame at once and bellowed the signal to the surrounding country.
From every fortified place an immense flame issued, followed by the menacing thunder invented by man and eclipsing that of heaven if superiority is to be measured by disasters. So the circle enlarged until the warning reached the frontier and surpassed it.
When the King rose to declare his purpose the clouds parted and the sun peered out like the Eye of God.
"I, King of the French," he said, "swear to employ all the power delegated to me by the Constitutional Law of the State to maintain the Constitution."
Why had he not eluded the solemn pledge as before; for his next step, flight from the kingdom, was to be the key to the enigma set that day. But, true or false, the cannon-fire none the less roared the oath to the confines. It took the warning to the monarchs:
"Take heed! France is afoot, wishing to be free, and she is ready like the Roman envoy to shake peace or war, as you like it, from the folds of her dress."
