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The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.

by Alexandre Dumas · English · Gutenberg #43633 · 455,879 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.

Author: Alexandre Dumas

Translator: Henry Llewellyn Williams


        
Release date: September 3, 2013 [eBook #43633]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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PRICE, 25 CENTS.                                                 No. 81.

                           THE SUNSET SERIES.

      By Subscription, per Year, Nine Dollars.      March 1, 1894.
      Entered at the New York Post Office as second-class matter.

                   Copyright 1891, by J. S. OGILVIE.




                                  THE
                           ROYAL LIFE GUARD.

                                   BY
                              Alex. Dumas.




                               NEW YORK:
                   J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
                            57 ROSE STREET.




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                         THE ROYAL LIFE-GUARD;
                                   OR
                    THE FLIGHT OF THE ROYAL FAMILY.


                A HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE SUPPRESSION
                        OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY.


                          BY ALEXANDER DUMAS.

     Author of "Balsamo the Magician," "Monte Cristo," "The Queen's
        Necklace," "The Three Musketeers," "Chicot the Jester,"
                "The Countess of Charny," "The Knight of
                            Redcastle," etc.


               TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST PARIS EDITION.
                                   BY
                       HENRY LLEWELLYN WILLIAMS.


                               NEW YORK:
                   J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
                            57 ROSE STREET.


_Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1892, by A. E. Smith &
     Co., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington._




THE ROYAL LIFE-GUARD.




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."




CHAPTER III.

WHERE THE BASTILE STOOD.


Night came: the morning festival had been on the great parade ground;
the night rejoicing was to be on the site where the Bastile had stood.

Eighty-three trees, one for each department of France, were stuck up
to show the space occupied by the infamous states-prison, on whose
foundation these trees of liberty were planted. Strings of lamps ran
from tree to tree. In the midst rose a large pole, with a flag lettered:
"Freedom!"

Near the moats, in a grave left open on purpose were flung the old
chains, fetters, instruments of torture found in it, and its clock with
chained captives the supporters. The dungeons were left open and lighted
ghastly, where so many tears and groans had been vainly expanded.

Lastly, in the inmost courtyard, a ballroom had been set up and as the
music pealed, the couples could be seen promenading. The prediction
of Cagliostro was fulfilled that the Bastile should be a public
strolling-ground.

At one of the thousand tables set up around the Bastile, under the
shadow of the trees outlining the site of the old fortress, two men were
repairing their strength exhausted by the day's marching, and other
military manoeuvres. Before them was a huge sausage, a four-pound loaf,
and two bottles of wine.

"By all that is blue," said the younger, who wore the National Guards
captain's uniform, "it is a fine thing to eat when you are hungry and
drink when a-thirst." He paused. "But you do not seem to be hungry or
thirsty, Father Billet."

"I have had all I want, and only thirst for one thing----"

"What is that?"

"I will tell you Pitou, when the time for me to sit at my feast shall
come."

Pitou did not see the drift of the reply.

Pitou was a lover of Catherine Billet, but he self-acknowledged that he
could have no chance against the young nobleman who had captivated the
rustic maid. When her father tried to shoot the gallant, he had--while
not shielding her or her lover, helped her to conceal herself from
Billet.

It was not he, however, but Isidore who had brought the girl to Paris,
after she had given birth to a boy. This occurred in the absence of
Billet and Pitou, both of whom were ignorant of the removal.

Pitou had housed her in a quiet corner, and he went to Paris without
anything arising to cause him sadness.

He had found Dr. Gilbert, to whom he had to report that with money he
had given, Captain Pitou had equipped his Guards at Haramont in uniform
which was the admiration of the county.

The doctor gave him five-and-twenty more gold pieces to be applied to
maintaining the company at its present state of efficiency.

"While I am talking with Billet," said Gilbert, "who has much to tell
me, would you not like to see Sebastian?"

"I should think I do," answered the peasant, "but I did not like to ask
your permission."

After meditating a few instants, Gilbert wrote several words on a paper
which he folded up like a letter and addressed to his son.

"Take a hack and go find him," he said. "Probably from what I have
written, he will want to pay a visit; take him thither and wait at the
door. He may keep you an hour or so, but I know how obliging you are;
you will not find the time hang heavy when you know you are doing me a
kindness."

"Do not bother about that," responded the honest fellow; "I never feel
dull; besides, I will get in a supply of something to feed on and I will
kill time by eating."

"A good method," laughed Gilbert; "only you must not eat dry bread as a
matter of health, but wash it down with good wine."

"I will get a bottle, and some head cheese, too," replied Pitou.

"Brav0!" exclaimed the physician.

Pitou found Sebastian in the Louis-the-Great College, in the gardens.
He was a winsome young man of eighteen, or less, with handsome chestnut
curls enframing his melancholy and thoughtful face and blue eyes darting
juvenile glances like a Spring sun.

In him were combined the lofty aspirations of two aristocracies: that of
the intellect, as embodied in his father, and of race, personified in
Andrea Countess of Charny, who had become his mother while unconscious
in a mesmeric sleep, induced by Balsamo-Cagliostro, but perceived by
Gilbert, who had not in his wild passion for the beauty been able to
shrink from profiting by the trance.

It was to the countess's that Gilbert had suggested his son should go.

On the way Pitou laid in the provisions to fill up time if he had to
wait any great while in the hack for the youth to come out of his
mother's.

As the countess was at home, the janitor made no opposition to a
well-dressed young gentleman entering.

Five minutes after, while Pitou was slicing up his loaf and sausage and
taking a pull at his wine, a footman came out to say:

"Her ladyship, the countess of Charny, prays Captain Pitou to do her the
honor to step inside instead of awaiting Master Sebastian in a hired
conveyance."

The Assembly had abolished titles but the servants of the titled had not
yet obeyed.

Pitou had to wipe his mouth, pack up in paper the uneaten comestibles,
with a sigh, and follow the man in a maze. His astonishment doubled when
he saw a lovely lady who held Sebastian in her arms and who said, as she
put out her hand to the new-comer:

"Captain Pitou, you give me such great and unhoped-for joy in bringing
Sebastian to me that I wanted to thank you myself."

Pitou stared, and stammered, but let the hand remain untaken.

"Take and kiss the lady's hand," prompted Sebastian: "it is my mother."

"Your mother? oh, Gemini!" exclaimed the peasant, while the other young
man nodded.

"Yes, his mother," said Andrea with her glance beaming with delight:
"you bring him to me after nine months' parting, and then I had only
seen him once before: in the hope you will again bring him, I wish to
have no secrets from you, though it would be my ruin if revealed."

Every time the heart and trust of our rural friend was appealed to, one
might be sure that he would lose his hesitation and dismay.

"Oh, my lady, be you easy, your secret is here," he responded, grasping
her hand and kissing it, before laying his own with some dignity on his
heart.

"My son tells me, Captain Pitou, that you have not breakfasted," went on
the countess; "pray step into the dining-room, and you can make up for
lost time while I speak with my boy."

Soon, on the board were arrayed two cutlets, a cold fowl, and a pot of
preserves, near a bottle of Bordeaux, a fine Venice glass and a pile of
china plates. But for all the elegance of the set out edibles, Pitou
rather deplored the head cheese, bread and common wine in the cab.

As he was attacking the chicken after having put away the cutlets, the
door opened and a young gentleman appeared, meaning to cross the room.
But as Pitou lifted his head, they both recognized each other, and
uttered a simultaneous cry:

"Viscount Charny!"

"Ange Pitou!"

The peasant sprang up; his heart was violently throbbing; the sight of
the patrician aroused his most painful memories.

Not only was this his rival but his successful rival and the man who had
wronged Catherine Billet and caused her to lose her father's respect and
her place at her mother's side in the farmhouse. Isidore only knew that
Catherine was under obligations to this country lad; he had no idea of
the latter's profound love for his mistress: love out of which Pitou
drew his devotedness.

Consequently he walked right up to the other, in whom, spite of the
uniform, he only saw still the poacher and farm boy of Haramont.

"Oh, you here, Pitou," said he: "delighted to meet you to thank you for
all the services you have done us."

"My lord viscount, I did all for Miss Catherine alone," returned the
young man, in a firm voice though all his frame thrilled.

"That was all well up to your knowing that I loved her; then, I was
bound to take my share in the gratitude and as you must have gone to
some outlay, say for the letters transmitted to her----"

He clapped his hand to his pocket to prick Pitou's conscience. But the
other stopped him, saying, with the dignity sometimes astonishing to
appear in him:

"My lord, I do services when I can but not for pay. Besides, I repeat,
these were for Miss Catherine solely. She is my friend; if she believes
she is in any way indebted to me, she will regulate the account. But
you, my lord, owe me nothing; for I did all for her, and not a stroke
for you. So you have to offer me nothing."

These words, but especially the tone, struck the hearer; perhaps it was
only then that he noticed that the speaker was dressed as a captain in
the new army.

"Excuse me, Captain Pitou," said Isidore, slightly bowing: "I do owe you
something, and that is my thanks, and I offer you my hand; I hope you
will do me the pleasure of accepting one and the honor of accepting the
other."

There was such grandeur in the speech and the gesture in company with
it, that vanquished Pitou held out his hand and with the fingers' ends
touched Isidore's.

At this juncture Countess Charny appeared on the threshold.

"You asked for me, my lord," she said; "I am here."

Isidore saluted the peasant and walked into the next room; he swung the
door to behind him but the countess caught it and checked it so that it
remained ajar. Pitou understood that he was allowed, nay, invited to
hear what was spoken. He remarked that on the other side of the sitting
room was another door, leading into a bedroom; if Sebastian was there,
he could hear on that side as well as the captain on this other.

"My lady," began Isidore, "I had news yesterday from my brother George;
as in other letters, he begs me to ask you to remember him. He does not
yet know when he is to return, and will be happy to have news from you
either by letter or by your charging me."

"I could not answer the letter he sent me from want of an address; but I
will profit by your intermediation to have the duty of a submissive and
respectful wife presented him. If you will take charge of a letter for
my lord, one shall be ready on the morrow."

"Have it ready," said Isidore; "but I cannot call for it till some five
or six days as I have a mission to carry out, a journey of necessity,
of unknown duration, but I will come here at once on my return and take
your message."

As he passed through the dining-room he saw that Pitou was spooning
deeply into the preserves. He had finished when the countess came in,
with Sebastian.

It was difficult to recognize the grave Countess Charny in this radiant
young mother whom two hours of chat with her son had transformed. The
hand which she gave to Pitou seemed to be of marble still, but mollified
and warmed.

Sebastian embraced his mother with the ardor he infused in all he did.

Pitou took leave without putting a question, and was silent on the way
to the college, absorbing the rest of his head cheese, bread and wine.
There was nothing in this incident to spoil his appetite.

But he was chilled to see how gloomy Farmer Billet was.

He resolved to dissipate this sadness.

"I say, Father Billet," he resumed, after preparing his stock of words
as a sharpshooter makes a provision of cartridges, "who the devil could
have guessed, in a year and two days, that since Miss Catherine received
me on the farm, so many events should have taken place."

"Nobody," rejoined Billet whose terrible glance at the mention of
Catherine had not been remarked.

"The idea of the pair of us taking the Bastile," continued he, like the
sharpshooter having reloaded his gun.

"Nobody," replied the farmer mechanically.

"Plague on it, he has made up his mind not to talk," thought the
younger man. "Who would think that I should become a captain and you a
Federalist, and we both be taking supper under an arbor in the very spot
where the old prison stood?"

"Nobody," said Billet for the third time, with a more sombre look than
before.

The younger man saw that there was no inducing the other to speak but he
found comfort in the thought that this ought not to alienate his right.
So he continued, leaving Billet the right to speak if he chose.

"I suppose, like the Bastile, all whom we knew, have become dust, as
the Scriptures foretold. To think that we stormed the Bastile, on your
saying so, as if it were a chicken-house, and that here we sit where
it used to be, drinking merrily! oh, the racket we kicked up that day.
Talking of racket," he interrupted himself, "what is this rumpus all
about?"

The uproar was caused by the passing of a man who had the rare privilege
of creating noise wherever he walked: it was Mirabeau, who, with a lady
on his arm, was visiting the Bastile site.

Another than he would have shrank from the cheers in which were mingled
some sullen murmurs; but he was the bird of the storm and he smiled amid
the thunderous tempest, while supporting the woman, who shivered under
her veil at the simoon of such dreadful popularity.

Pitou jumped upon a chair and waved his cocked hat on the tip of his
sword as he shouted:

"Long live Mirabeau!"

Billet let escape no token of feelings either way; he folded his arms on
his burly chest and muttered in a hollow voice:

"It is said he betrays the people."

"Pooh, that has been said of all great men, from antiquity down,"
replied his friend.

In his excitement he only now noticed that a third chair, drawn up to
their table, was occupied by a stranger who seemed about to accost them.

To be sure it was a day of fraternity, and familiarity was allowable
among fellow-citizens, but Pitou, who had not finished his repast,
thought it going too far. The stranger did not apologize but eyed the
pair with a jeering manner apparently habitual to him.

Billet was no doubt in no mood to support being "quizzed," as the
current word ran, for he turned on the new-comer; but the latter made a
sign before he was addressed which drew another from Billet.

The two did not know each other, but they were brothers.

Like Billet, he was clad like one of the delegates to the Federation.
But he had a change of attire which reminded Billet that so were dressed
the party with Anacharsis Clootz, the German anarchist, representing
Mankind.




CHAPTER IV.

THE LODGE OF THE INVISIBLES.


"You do not know me, brothers," said the stranger, when Billet had
nodded and Pitou smiled condescendingly, "but I know you both. You are
Captain Pitou, and you, Farmer Billet. Why are you so gloomy? because,
though you were the first to enter the Bastile, they have forgotten to
hang at your buttonhole the medal for the Conquerors of the Bastile and
to do you the honors accorded to others this day?"

"Did you really know me, brother," replied the farmer with scorn, "you
would know that such trifles do not affect a heart like mine."

"Is it because you found your fields unproductive when you returned home
in October?"

"I am rich--a harvest lost little worries me."

"Then, it must be," said the stranger, looking him hard in the face,
"that something has happened to your daughter Catherine----"

"Silence," said the farmer, clutching the speaker's arm, "let us not
speak of that matter."

"Why not if I speak in order that you may be revenged?"

"Then that is another thing--speak of it," said the other, turning pale
but smiling at the same time.

Pitou thought no more of eating or drinking, but stared at their new
acquaintance as at a wizard.

"But what do you understand by revenge?" went on he with a smile: "tell
me. In a paltry manner, by killing one individual, as you tried to do?"

Billet blanched like a corpse: Pitou shuddered all over.

"Or by pursuing a whole class?"

"By hunting down a whole caste," said Billet, "for of such are the
crimes of all his like. When I mourned before my friend Dr. Gilbert,
he said: 'Poor Billet, what has befallen you has already happened to a
hundred thousand fathers; what would the young noblemen have in the way
of pastime if they did not steal away the poor man's daughter, and the
old ones steal away the King's money?'"

"Oh, Gilbert said that, did he?"

"Do you know him?"

"I know all men," replied the stranger, smiling: "as I know you two, and
Viscount Charny, Isidore, Lord of Boursonnes; as I know Catherine, the
prettiest girl of the county."

"I bade you not speak her name, for she is no more--she is dead."

"Why, no, Father Billet," broke in Pitou, "for she----"

He was no doubt going to say that he saw her daily, but the farmer
repeated in a voice admitting of no reply,

"She is dead."

Pitou hung his head for he understood.

"Ha, ha," said the stranger: "if I were my friend Diogenes, I should
put out my lantern, for I believe I have found an honest man." Rising,
he offered his arms to Billet, saying: "Brother, come and take a stroll
with me, while this good fellow finishes the eatables."

"Willingly," returned Billet, "for I begin to understand to what feast
you invite me. Wait for me here," he added to his friend; "I shall
return."

The stranger seemed to know the gastronomical taste of Pitou for he sent
by the waiter some more delicacies, which he was still discussing, while
wondering, when Billet reappeared. His brow was illumined with something
like pleasure.

"Anything new, Father Billet?" asked the captain.

"Only that you will start for home to-morrow while I remain."

This is what Billet remained for.

A week after, he might have been seen, in the dress of a well-to-do
farmer, in Plastriere Street. Two thirds up the thoroughfare was blocked
by a crowd around a ballad singer with a fiddler to accompany him, who
was singing a lampoon at the characters of the day.

Billet paused only an instant to listen to the strain, in which, from
the Assembly being on the site of the old Horse-training ground, the
attributes of horses were given to the members, as "the Roarer," to
Mirabeau, etc.

Slipping in at an alleyway at the back of the throng, he came to a low
doorway, over which was scrawled in red chalk--symbols effaced each time
of usage:

"L. P. D."

This was the way down into a subterranean passage. Billet could not read
but he may have understood that these letters were a token, He took the
underground road with boldness.

At its end a pale light glimmered, by which a seated man was reading or
pretending to read a newspaper, as is the custom of the Paris janitor of
an evening.

At the sound of steps he got up and with a finger touching his breast
waited. Billet presented his forefinger bent and laid it like the ring
of a padlock on his lips. This was probably the sign of recognition
expected by the door-guard, for he opened a door on his right which was
wholly invisible when shut, and pointed out to the adventurer a narrow
and steep flight of steps going down into the earth.

When Billet entered, the door shut behind him swiftly and silently. He
counted seventeen steps, and though he was not talkative could not help
saying: "Good, I am going right."

Before a door floated tapestry: he went straight to it, lifted it and
was within a large circular hall where some fifty persons were gathered.
The walls were hung with red and white cloth, on which were traced the
Square, the Compass and the Level. A single lamp, hung from the center
of the ceiling, cast a wan light insufficient to define those who
preferred to stand out of its direct beams.

A rostrum up which four steps led, awaited orators or new members, and
on this platform, next the wall, a desk and chair stood for the
chairman.

In a few minutes the hall filled so that there was no moving about.
The men were of all conditions and sorts from the peasant to the
prince, arriving like Billet solitarily, and standing wherever they
liked, without knowing or being known to each other. Each wore under
his overcoat the masonic apron if only a mason, or the scarf of the
Illuminati, if affiliated to the Grand Mystery. Only three restricted
themselves to the masonic apron.

One was Billet; another a young man, and the third a man of forty-two
who appeared by his bearing to belong to the highest upper class.

Some seconds after he had arrived, though no more noticed than the
meanest, a second panel opened and the chairman appeared, wearing the
insignia of the Grand Orient and the Grand Copt.

Billet uttered faintly his astonishment, for the Master was the man who
had accosted him at the Bastile.

He mounted the dais and turning to the assembly, said:

"Brothers, we have two pieces of business to do this day: I have to
receive three new candidates; and I have to render account of how the
Work has gone on: for as it grows harder and harder, it is meet that
you should know if I am ever worthy of your trust and that I should
know if I still deserve it. It is only by receiving light from you and
imparting it that I can walk in the dark way. Let the chiefs alone stay
in the lodge to receive or reject the applicants. They dealt with, all
are to return into session, from the first to the last, for it is in the
presence of all and not only within the Supreme Circle, I wish to lay
bare my conduct and receive censure or ask for recompense."

At these words a door flew open opposite that he had come in by; vast
vaulted depths were beheld, as the crypt of an ancient basilica.

The arcades were feebly lighted by brass lamps hung so as to make
darkness visible.

Only three remained, the novices. Chance fixed it that they should be
standing up by the wall at nearly regular distances. They looked at each
other with astonishment, only thus and now learning that they were the
heroes of the occasion.

At this instant the door by which the chairman had come, opened to admit
six masked men who came to place themselves beside the Master, three on
each hand.

"Let Numbers Two and Three disappear for the time," said the Master;
"none but the supreme chiefs must know the secrets of the reception or
refusal of a would-be mason in the Order of the Illuminated."

The young man and the high-born one retired by the lobby by which they
had come, leaving Billet alone.

"Draw nearer," said the chairman. "What is your name among the profane?"
he demanded when obeyed.

"François Billet, and it is Strength, among the elect."

"Where did you first see the Light?"

"In the lodge of the Soissons Friends of Truth."

"How old are you?"

"Seven years," replied Billet, making the sign to show what rank he had
attained in the order.

"Why do you want to rise a step and be received among us?"

"Because I am told that it is a step nearer the Universal Light."

"Have you supporters?"

"I have no one to speak for me save him who came to me and offered to
have me welcomed." He looked fixedly at the chairman.

"With what feelings would you walk in the way which we may open unto
you?"

"With hate of the powerful and love for equality."

"What answers for these feelings?"

"The pledge of a man who has never broken his word."

"What inspired your wish for equality?"

"The inferior condition in which I was born."

"What the hatred of those above you?"

"That is my secret; yet it is known to you; why do you want me to say
aloud what I hesitate to say in a whisper to myself?"

"Will you walk in the way to Equality and with you lead all those whom
you can control?"

"Yes."

"As far as your will and strength can go, will you overthrow all
obstacles opposing the freedom of France and the emancipation of the
world?"

"I will."

"Are you free from any anterior engagement or if made will you break it
if contrary to this new pledge?"

"I am ready."

Turning to the chiefs, the Master said:

"Brothers, this man speaks the truth. I invited him to be one of ours. A
great grief binds him to our cause by the ties of hatred. He has already
done much for the Revolution and may do more. I propose him, and answer
for him in the past, the present and the future."

"Receive him," said all the six.

The presiding officer raised his hand and said in a slow and solemn
voice:

"In the name of the Architect of the Universe, swear to break all carnal
bonds still binding you to parents, sister, brother, wife, kinsmen,
mistress, kings, benefactors, and to whomsoever you have promised faith,
obedience, service or gratitude."

Billet repeated in a voice as firm as the speaker's.

"Good! henceforth you are freed from the so-called oath of allegiance
made to the country and the laws. Swear therefore to reveal to your new
chief what you see and do, hear or learn, read or divine, and moreover
to seek out and find which is not offered to the sight."

"I swear," said Billet.

"Swear to honor and respect steel, fire and poison as sure and prompt
means necessary to purge the world by the death of those who try to
lessen truth or snatch it from our hands.

"Swear to avoid Naples, Rome, Spain and all accursed places. To shun the
temptation of revealing anything seen and heard in our meetings, for the
lightning is not swifter to strike than our invisible and inevitable
knife, wherever you may hide. And now, live in the Name of the Three!"

A brother hidden in the crypt, opened the door where the inferior
members were strolling till the initiation was over. The Master waved
Billet to go there, and, bowing, he went to join those whom the dreadful
words he had uttered made his associates.

The second candidate was the famous St. Just, the Revolutionist whom
Robespierre sent to the guillotine. He was initiated in the same terms
as Billet and similarly joined the band.

The third candidate was Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans whom hatred
of his relatives had induced to take this step to have the aid of
powerful partners in his attempt to seize the throne. He was already
at the degree of Rose-Croix. He took the oath which was administered
in a different order from before in order to test him at the outset,
and instead of saying, Yes, he repeated the very words of the section
binding him to break all ties, of affection or allegiance to royalty.

When he darted into the crypt he exclaimed:

"At last I shall have my revenge!"




CHAPTER V.

THE CONSPIRATORS ACCOUNT.


On being left together, the six masked men and the chairman whispered
among themselves.

"Let all come in," said Cagliostro, for he was the Master; "I am ready
to make the report I promised."

The door was instantly opened: the members of the league walked in; to
crowd the hall once more.

Hardly was the door closed behind the last before the Master said
holding up his hand quickly like one who knew the value of time, and
wished not to lose a second:

"Brothers, there may be some here who were present at a meeting held
just twenty years ago, a couple of miles from Danenfels, in a cavern of
Thunder Mountain, five miles from the Rhine; if so, let the venerable
upholders of the Great Cause which we have embraced, signify the same by
holding up the hand, saying: 'I was there!'"

Five or six hands were held above the throng and as many voices cried:
"I was there."

"So far good," continued the speaker; "the others are in the Temple
above, or scattered over the earth, working at the common and holy work,
for it is that of all mankind. Twenty years ago, this work which we have
pursued in its different periods was scarce commenced. The light was
at its dawning and the steadiest eyes beheld the future only through
the cloud which none but the eyes of the chosen could pierce. At that
meeting, I explained by what miracle death did not exist for me, it
being merely for man forgetfulness of the past, or rather how, during
twenty centuries, I had dwelt in succeeding bodies for my immortal soul.
Slowly I saw peoples pass from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to the
state of those aspirations for freedom which precede it. Like the stars
of the night hinting what a sun can be, we have seen the republics try
their rules, at Genoa, Venice, Switzerland; but this is not what we
needed.

"A great country was wanted to give the impetus, a wheel in which should
be cogged all the others, a planet which should illumine the world."

A cheering murmur ran through the audience and Cagliostro proceeded with
an inspired air:

"Heaven indicated to me, France. Indeed, having tried all systems, she
appeared likely to suit our purpose, and we decided on her being first
freed. But look back on France twenty years ago, and grant that it was
great boldness or rather sublime faith to undertake such a task. In
Louis XV.'s hands so weakly, it was still the realm of Louis XIV., an
aristocratic kingdom, where the nobles had all the rights and the rich
all the privileges. At the head was a man who represented at once the
lowest and the loftiest, the grandest and the paltriest, heaven and the
masses. With a word he could make you wealthy or a beggar, happy or
miserable, free or captive, keep you living or send you to death.

"He had three grandsons, young princes called to succeed him. Chance had
it that he whom nature designated was also the choice of the people, if
the people had any choice at the epoch. He was accounted kind, just,
honest, learned, almost a lover of wisdom. In order to quench the wars
which the fatal succession of Charles II. enkindled, the daughter of
Maria Theresa was chosen for his wife: the two nations were to be
indissolubly united which are the counterbalances west and east of
Europe, France and Austria. So calculated Maria Theresa the foremost
politician of Europe.

"It was at this period, none the less, when France, supported on
Austria, Spain and Italy, was to enter on a new and desired reign that
we determined--not that she should be the chief of kingdoms but that the
French should be the first people free.

"It was demanded who would be the new Theseus to rush into the den of
this Minotaur, thread the innumerable turnings of the maze while guided
by the light of Truth, and face the royal monster. I replied it should
be me. Some eager spirits, uneasy characters, wanted to know how long
a time it would take to accomplish the first period of my enterprise,
divided into three portions, and I required twenty years. They cried out
against that. Can you understand this? man had been serf or slave for
twenty centuries, and he mocked at me because I wanted twenty years to
make him free!"

He looked upon the meeting, where his last words had provoked ironical
smiles.

"In short, I obtained the twenty years. I gave my brothers the famous
device: 'Lilia Pedibus Destrue--the Lilies shall be trodden underfoot!'
and I set to work, urging all to do likewise. I entered France under
arches of triumph; the rose and the laurel made the road from Strasburg
to Paris one trellis garlanded with flowers. Everybody was shouting:
'Long live the Dauphiness! our future Queen!' Now, far from me to take
credit to myself for the initiative or the merit of events; the Builder
had planned all this and He laid each stone well and truly. He allowed
this humble mason who officiates in this fane to see the Hand divinely
wielding the Line and the Level and, praise unto Him! I have done some
levelling: the rocks have been removed off the way, the bridge has been
thrown over the flood, and the gulfs have been filled up so that the
car has rolled smoothly. List brothers, to what has been performed in a
score of years.

"Parliaments broken up: Louis XV., called once the Well-Beloved, dies
amid general scorn! The Queen, after seven years, unfruitful wedlock,
gives birth to children whose paternity is contested, so that she is
defamed as mother of the Crown Prince, and dishonored as a woman in the
case of the Diamond Necklace.

"The new King consecrated under the name of Louis the Desired, impotent
in politics as in love, tries one utopia after another, until he reaches
national bankruptcy, and has all kinds of ministers down to a Calonne.
The Assembly of Worthies decrees the States General Congress, which
appointed by universal suffrage, declares itself the National Assembly.
The clergy and nobility are overcome by the other classes; the Bastile
is stormed and the foreign troops driven out of the capital; the night
of Aug. 4th, 1789, shows the aristocracy that they are reduced to
nothing; on the 5th and 6th October, the King and Queen are shown that
royalty is nothing; on the 14th of July, 1790, the unity of France is
shown to the world.

"The princes are deprived of popularity by their absconding; the
King's brother loses his hold by the Favras conspiracy showing that he
casts off his friends to save his neck. Lastly, the Constitution is
sworn unto, on the Altar of the Country; the Speaker of the House of
Representatives sits on a chair on the level with the King's; it is the
Law and the Nation sitting side by side; attentive Europe leans towards
us, silently watching--all who do not applaud are trembling. Now, is not
France the cornerstone on which Free Europe shall be laid, the wheel
which turns all the machine, the sun which shall illuminate the Old
World?"

"Yea, yea, yea!" shouted all voices.

"But, brothers," continued the magician, "do you believe the work is
so far advanced that we may leave it to get on by itself? Although the
Constitution has been sworn to, can we trust to the royal vow?"

"Nay, nay, nay," cried every voice.

"Then we begin the second stage of the revolutionary work," pursued
Cagliostro. "As your eyes see, I perceive with delight that the
Federation of 1790 is not the goal but a halting-place: after the
repose the court will recommence the task of counter-revolution: let
us also gird up our loins and start afresh. No doubt for timid hearts
there will be hours of weakening and of distrust; often the beam from
the All-seeing Eye will seem to be eclipsed--the Hand that beckons us
will cease to be seen. More than once during the second period, the
cause will appear injured, even lost, by some unforeseen and fortuitous
accident; all will seem to show that we are wrong; circumstances
will look as if unfavorable; our enemies will have some triumph, our
fellow-citizens will be ungrateful. After many real fatigues and
apparent uselessness, many will ask themselves if they have not gone
astray on the bad path.

"No, brothers, no; I tell you at this hour for the words to ring
everlastingly in your ears, in victory as a blast of trumpets, in
defeat as the rallying cry--No! leading races have their providential
mission which must be unerringly accomplished. The Arch-Designer laid
down the road and found it true and straight; His mysterious goal
cannot be revealed until it is attained in its full splendor; the cloud
may obscure it and we think it gone; an idea may recoil but, like the
old-time knights, it is but to set the lance in rest and rush forward to
hurl over the dragon.

"Brothers, brothers, our goal is the bonfire on the high mount, believed
extinct because the ridge concealed it as we sank in the vale: then the
weaklings muttered as they halted and whined: 'We have no beacon--we are
blundering in the dark: let us stay where we are; what is the good of
getting lost?' But the strong hearts keep right on confidently smiling,
and soon will the light on the height reappear, albeit it may disappear
again, but each time it is brighter and clearer because it is more near!

"Thus will it be with the chosen band who, struggling, pressing on,
persevering and above all believing in the Republic to be, arrive
at the foot of the lighthouse of which the radiance will join that
cast across the Atlantic by the Republic which we have also helped to
throw off the tyrant's yoke. Let us swear, brothers, for ourselves
and our descendants, since the eternal idea and principle serves many
a generation, never to stop until we establish on this temple of the
Architect the holy device of which we have conquered one portion:
'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.'"

The speech was hailed with uproarious approbation.

"But do not confine it to France solely: inscribe it on the banner of
mankind as the whole world's motto. And now, brothers, go out upon your
task, which is great, so great that, through whatever vale of tears and
of the shadow of death you must pass, your descendants will envy the
holy errand you shall have accomplished, and like the crusaders who
became more and more numerous and eager as their foregoers were slain,
they march over the road whitened by the bones of their fathers. Be of
good cheer, apostles; courage, pilgrims of freedom; courage, soldiers,
Apostles, converts! pilgrims, march on! soldiers, fight!"

Cagliostro stopped, but that would have happened from the applause.
Three times the cheering rose and was extinguished in the gloomy vaults
like an earthquake's rumbling. Then the six masked men bowed to him one
after another, kissed his hand and retired. Each of the brothers, bowing
unto the platform where the new Peter the Hermit preached the renewal of
the political crusade, passed out, repeating the motto:

"We shall Trample the Lilies under."

As the last went forth, the lamps were extinguished.

Alone remained the Arch-Revolutionist, buried in the bowels of the
earth, lost in silence and darkness like those divinities of the Indies,
into whose mysteries he asserted himself to have been initiated two
thousand years before.




CHAPTER VI.

WOMEN AND FLOWERS.


Some months after recorded events, about the end of March, 1791, Dr.
Gilbert was hurriedly called to his friend Mirabeau, by the latter's
faithful servant Deutsch, who had been alarmed.

Mirabeau had spoken in the House on the question of Mines, the interests
of owners and of the State not being very clearly defined. To celebrate
his victory, he gave a supper to some friends and was prostrated by
internal pains.

Gilbert was too skillful a physician not to see how grave the invalid
was. He bled him and the black blood relieved the sufferer.

"You are a downright great man," said he.

"And you a great blockhead to risk a life so precious to your friends
for a few hours of fictitious pleasure," retorted his deliverer.

The orator smiled almost ironically, in melancholy.

"I think you exaggerate and that my friends and France do not hold me so
dear."

"Upon my honor," replied Gilbert laughing, "great men complain of
ingratitude and they are really the ungrateful ones. If it were a most
serious malady of yours, all Paris would flock under your window; were
you to die, all France would come to your obsequies."

"What you say is very consoling, let me tell you," said the other,
merrily.

"It is just because you can see one without risking the other that I
say it, and indeed, you need a great public demonstration to restore
your morale. Let me take you to Paris within a couple of hours, my dear
count; let me tell the first man on the street corner that you are
ailing and you will see the excitement."

"I would go if you put off the departure till this evening, and let me
meet you at my house in Paris at eleven."

Gilbert looked at his patient and the latter saw that he was seen
through.

"My dear count, I noticed flowers on the Dining-room table," said he:
"it was not merely a supper to friends."

"You know that I cannot do without flowers; they are my craze."

"But they were not alone."

"If they are a necessity I must suffer from the consequences they
entail."

"Count, the consequences will kill you."

"Confess, doctor, that it will be a delightful kind of suicide."

"I will not leave you this day."

"Doctor, I have pledged my word and you would not make me fail in that."

"I shall see you this night, though?"

"Yes, really I feel better."

"You mean you drive me away?"

"The idea of such a thing."

"I shall be in town; I am on duty at the palace."

"Then you will see the Queen," said Mirabeau, becoming gloomy once more.

"Probably; have you any message for her?"

Mirabeau smiled bitterly.

"I should not take such a liberty, doctor; do not even say that you have
seen me: for she will ask if I have saved the monarchy, as I promised,
and you will be obliged to answer No! It is true," he added with a
nervous laugh, "that the fault is as much hers as mine."

"You do not want me to tell her that your excess of exertions in the
tribune is killing you."

"Nay, you may tell her that," he replied after brief meditation: "you
may make me out as worse than I am, to test her feelings."

"I promise you that, and to repeat her own words."

"It is well: I thank you, doctor--adieu!"

"What are you prescribing?"

"Warm drinks, soothing, strict diet and--no nurse-woman less than
fifty----"

"Rather than infringe the regulation I would take two of twenty-five!"

At the door Gilbert met Deutsch, who was in tears.

"All this through a woman--just because she looks like the Queen," said
the man; "how stupid of a genius, as they say he is."

He let out Gilbert who stepped into his carriage, muttering:

"What does he mean by a woman like the Queen?"

He thought of asking Deutsch, but it was the count's secret, and he
ordered his coachman to drive to town.

On the way he met Camille Desmoulins, the living newspaper of the day,
to whom he told the truth of the illness because it was the truth.

When he announced the news to the King, the latter inquired if the count
had lost his appetite.

"Yes, Sire," was the doctor's reply.

"Then it is a bad case," sighed the monarch, shifting the subject.

When the same words were repeated to the daughter of Maria Theresa, her
forehead darkened.

"Why was he not so stricken on the day of his panegyric on the tricolor
flag?" she sneered. "Never mind," she went on, as if repenting the
expression of her hatred before a Frenchman, "it would be very
unfortunate for France if this malady makes progress. Doctor, I rely on
your keeping me informed about it."

At the appointed hour, Gilbert called on his patient at his town house.
His eyes caught sight of a lady's scarf on a chair.

"Glad to see you," said Mirabeau, quickly as though to divert his
attention from it, "I have learnt that you kept half your promise.
Deutsch has been busy answering friendly inquiries from our arrival. Are
you true to the second part? have you been to the palace and seen the
King and Queen?"

"Yes; and told them you were unwell. The King sincerely condoled when he
heard that you had lost your appetite. The Queen was sorry and bade me
keep her informed."

"But I want the words she used."

"Well, she said that it was a pity you were not ill when you praised the
new flag of the country."

He wished to judge of the Queen's influence over the orator.

He started on the easy chair as if receiving the discharge of a galvanic
battery.

"Ingratitude of monarchs," he muttered. "That speech of mine blotted
out remembrance of the rich Civil List and the dower I obtained for
her. This Queen must be ignorant that I was compelled to regain the
popularity I lost for her sake; but she no more remembers it than my
proposing the adjournment of the annexation of Avignon to France in
order to please the King's religious scruples. But these and other
faults of mine I have dearly paid for," continued Mirabeau. "Not that
these faults will ruin them, but there are times when ruin must come,
whether faults help them forward or not. The Queen does not wish to be
saved but to be revenged; hence she relishes no reasonable ideas.

"I have tried to save liberty and royalty at the same time; but I am
not fighting against men, or tigers, but an element--it is submerging
me like the sea: yesterday up to the knee, today up to the waist,
to-morrow I shall be struggling with it up to my neck. I must be open
with you, doctor; I felt chagrin first, then disgust. I dreamt of being
the arbiter between the Revolution and monarchy. I believed I should
have an ascendancy over the Queen as a man, and some day when she was
going under the flood, I meant to leap in and rescue her. But, no! they
would not honestly take me; they try to destroy my popularity, ruin me,
annihilate me, and make me powerless to do either good or evil. So,
now that I have done my best, I tell you, doctor, that the best thing
I can do is die in the nick of time; fall artistically like the Dying
Gladiator, and offer my throat to be cut with gracefulness; yield up the
ghost with decency."

He sank back on the reclining chair and bit the pillow savagely. Gilbert
knew what he sought, on what Mirabeau's life depended.

"What will you say if the King or the Queen should send to inquire after
your health?" he asked.

"The Queen will not do it--she will not stoop so low."

"I do not believe, but I suppose, I presume----"

"I will wait till to-morrow night."

"And then?"

"If she sends a confidential man I will say you are right and I wrong.
But if on the contrary none come, then it will be the other way."

"Keep tranquil till then. But this scarf?"

"I shall not see her, on my honor," he said, smiling.

"Good, try to get a good quiet night, and I will answer for you," said
Gilbert, going out.

"Your master is better, my honest Deutsch," said he to the attendant at
the door.

The old valet shook his head sadly.

"Do you doubt my word?"

"I doubt everything since his bad angel will be beside him."

He sighed as he left the doctor on the gloomy stairs. At the landing
corner Gilbert saw a veiled shadow which seemed waiting: on perceiving
him, it uttered a low scream and disappeared so quickly by a partly
opened door that it resembled a flight.

"Who is that woman?" questioned the doctor.

"The one who looks like the Queen," responded Deutsch.

For the second time Gilbert was struck by the same idea on hearing this
phrase: he took a couple of steps as though to chase the phantom, but he
checked himself, saying,

"It cannot be."

He continued his way, leaving the old domestic in despair that this
learned man could not conjure away the demon whom he believed the agent
of the Inferno.

Next day all Paris called to inquire after the invalid orator. The crowd
in the street would not believe Deutsch's encouraging report but forced
all vehicles to turn into the side streets so that their idol should not
be disturbed by their noise.

Mirabeau got up and went to the window to wave a greeting to these
worshipers, who shouted their wishes for his long life.

But he was thinking of the haughty woman who did not trouble her head
about him, and his eyes wandered over the mob to see if any servants in
the royal blue livery were not trying to make their way through the
mass. By evening his impatience changed into gloomy bitterness.

Still he waited for the almost promised token of interest, and still it
did not come.

At eleven, Gilbert came; he had written his best wishes during the day:
he came in smiling, but he was daunted by the expression on Mirabeau's
face, faithful mirror of his soul's perturbations.

"Nobody has come," said he. "Will you tell me what you have done this
day?"

"Why, the same as usual----"

"No, doctor and I saw what happened and will tell you the same as though
present. You called on the Queen and told her how ill I was: she said
she would send to ask the latest news, and you went away, happy and
satisfied, relying on the royal word. She was left laughing, bitter and
haughty, ignorant that a royal word must not be broken--mocking at your
credulity."

"Truly, had you been there, you could not have seen and heard more
clearly," said Gilbert.

"What numbskulls they are," exclaimed Mirabeau. "I told you they never
did a thing at the right time. Men in the royal livery coming to my door
would have wrung shouts of 'Long live the King!' from the multitude and
given them popularity for a year."

He shook his head with grief.

"What is the matter, count?" asked Gilbert.

"Nothing."

"Have you had anything to eat?"

"Not since two o'clock."

"Then take a bath and have a meal."

"A capital idea!"

Mirabeau listened in the bath until he heard the street door close after
the doctor.

Then he rang for his servant, not Deutsch but another, to have the table
in his room decked with flowers, and "Madam Oliva" invited to sup with
him.

He closed all the doors of the supper-room except that to the rooms of
the strange woman whom the old German called his bad angel.

At about four in the morning, Deutsch who sat up, heard a violent ring
of the room bell. He and another servant rushed to the supper-room, but
all the doors were fastened so that they had to go round by the strange
lady's rooms. There they found her in the arms of their master, who had
tried to prevent her giving the alarm. She had rung the table-bell from
inability to get at the bell pull.

She was screaming as much for her own relief as her lover's, as he was
suffocating her in his convulsive embrace.

It seemed to be Death trying to drag her into the grave.

Jean ran to rouse Dr. Gilbert while Deutsch got his master to a couch.
In ten minutes the doctor drove up.

"What is it now?" he asked of Deutsch, in the hall.

"That woman again and the cursed flowers! Come and see."

At this moment something like a sob was heard; Gilbert, ran up the
stairs at the top step of which a door opened, and a woman in a white
wrapper ran out suddenly and fell at the doctor's feet.

"Oh, Gilbert," she screamed, "save him!"

"Nicole Legay," cried the doctor; "was it you, wretch, who have killed
him?" A dreadful thought overwhelmed him. "I saw her bully Beausire
selling broadsides against Mirabeau, and she became his mistress. He is
undoubtedly lost, for Cagliostro set himself against him."

He turned back into his patient's room, fully aware that no time was
to be lost. Indeed, he was too versed in secrets of his craft still to
hope, far less to preserve any doubt. In the body before his eyes, it
was impossible to see the living Mirabeau. From that time, his face
assumed the solemn cast of great men dying.

Meanwhile the news had spread that there was a relapse and that the doom
impended. Then could it be judged what a gigantic place one man may fill
among his fellows. The entire city was stirred as on great calamities.
The door was besieged by persons of all opinions as though everybody
knew they had something to lose by his loss.

He caused the window to be opened that he might be soothed by the hum of
the multitude beneath.

"Oh, good people," he murmured: "slandered, despised and insulted like
me, it is right that those Royals should forget me and the Plebes bear
me in mind."

Night drew near.

"My dear doctor," he said to him who would not leave him, "this is my
dying day. At this point nothing is to be done but embalm my corpse and
strew flowers roundabout."

Scarcely had Jean, to whom everybody rushed at the door for news, said
he wanted flowers for his master, than all the windows opened, and
flowers were offered from conservatories and gardens of the rarest
sorts. By nine in the morning the room was transformed into a bower of
bloom.

"My dear doctor, I beg a quarter of an hour to say good-bye to a person
who ought to quit the house before I go. I ask you to protect her in
case they hoot her."

"I leave you alone," said Gilbert, understanding.

"Before going, kindly hand me the little casket in the secretary."

Gilbert did as requested; the money-box was heavy enough to be full of
gold.

At the end of half an hour, spent by Gilbert in giving news to the
inquirers, Jean ushered a veiled lady out to a hackney-carriage at the
door.

Gilbert ran to his patient.

"Put the casket back," said he in a faint voice. "Odd, is it not?" he
continued, seeing how astonished the doctor looked at its being as heavy
as before, "but where the deuce will disinterestedness next have a
nest?"

Near the bed, Gilbert picked up a lace handkerchief wet with tears.

"Ah, she would take nothing away--but she left something," remarked
Mirabeau.

Feeling it was damp he pressed it to his forehead.

"Tears? is she the only one who has a heart?" he murmured.

He fell back on the bed, with closed eyes; he might have been believed
dead or swooning but for the death-rattle in his breast.

How came it that this man of athletic, herculean build should die?

Was it not because he had held out his hand to stay the tumbling throne
from toppling over? Was it not because he had offered his arm to that
woman of misfortune known as Marie Antoinette?

Had not Cagliostro predicted some such fate to Gilbert for Mirabeau? and
the two strange creatures--one, Beausire, blasting the reputation, the
other, Nicole, blasting the health of the great orator who had become
the supporter of the monarchy--were they not for him, Gilbert, a proof
that all things which were obstacles to this man--or rather the idea he
stood for--must go down before him as the Bastile had done?

Nevertheless he was going to try upon him the elixir of life which he
owed to Cagliostro; it was irony to save his victim with his own remedy.

The patient had opened his eyes.

"Nay," said he, "a few drops will be vain. You must give me the whole
phial. I had the stuff analyzed and found it was Indian hemp; I had some
compounded for myself and I have been taking it copiously not to live
but to dream."

"Unhappy man that I am," sighed Gilbert; "he has led to my dealing out
poison to my friend."

"A sweet poison, by which I have lengthened out the last moments of my
life a hundredfold. In my dream I have enjoyed what has really escaped
me, riches, power, and love. I do not know whether I ought to thank God
for my life, but I thank you, doctor, for your drug. Fill up the glass
and let me have it."

Gilbert presented the extract which the patient absorbed with gusto.

"Ah, doctor," he said after a short pause, as if the veil of the future
were raised at the approach of eternity; "blessed are those who die
in this year, 1791! for they will have seen the sunny side of the
Revolution. Never has a great one cost so little bloodshed up to now,
because it is the mind that was conquered: but on the morrow the war
will be upon facts and in things. Perhaps you believe that the tenants
of the Tuileries will mourn for me? not at all. My death rids them of
an engagement. With me, they had to rule in a certain way: I was less
support than hindrance. _She_ excused herself for leaning on me, to her
brother: 'Mirabeau believes that he is advising me--I am only amusing
myself with him.' That is why I wished that woman, her likeness, to be
my mistress, and not my Queen.

"What a fine part he shall play in History who undertook to sustain the
young nation with one hand and the old monarchy in the other, forcing
them to tread the same goal--the happiness of the governed and the
respect of the governors. It might have been possible and might be but
a dream; but I am convinced that I alone could have realized the dream.
My sorrow is not in dying, but in dying with work unfinished. Who will
glorify my idea left mangled, an abortion? What will be known of me will
be the part that should be buried in oblivion--my wild, reckless, rakish
life and my obscene writings.

"I shall be blamed for having made a bond with the court out of which
comes gain for no man; I shall be judged, dying at forty-two, like one
who lived man's full age. They will take me to task as if instead of
trying to walk on the waters in a storm, I had trodden a broad way paved
with laws, statutes, and regulations. To whom shall I league my memory
to be cleansed and be an honor to my country?

"But I could do nothing without her, and she would not take my helping
hand. I pledged myself like a fool, while she remained unfettered. But
it is so--all is for the best; and if you will promise one thing, no
regret will trouble my last breath."

"Good God, what would I not promise?"

"If my passing from life is tedious, make it easy? I ask the aid not
only of the doctor but of the man and the philosopher--promise to aid
me. I do not wish to die dead,--but living, and the last step will not
be hard to take."

The doctor bent his head towards the speaker.

"I promised not to leave you, my friend; if heaven hath condemned
you--though I hope we have not come to that point--leave to my affection
at the supreme instant the care of accomplishing what I ought to do. If
death comes, I shall be at hand also."

"Thanks," said the dying one as if this were all he awaited.

The abundant dose of cannabis indicus had restored speech to the doomed
one: but this vitality of the mind vanished and for three hours the cold
hand remained in the doctor's without a throb. Suddenly he felt a start:
the awakening had come.

"It will be a dreadful struggle," he thought.

Such was the agony in which the strong frame wrestled that Gilbert
forgot that he had promised to second death, not to oppose it. But,
reminded of his pledge, he seized the pen to write a prescription for
an opiate. Scarcely had he written the last words than Mirabeau rose on
the pillow and asked for the pen. With his hand clenched by death he
scrawled:

"Flee, flee, flee!"

He tried to sign but could only trace four letters of his name.

"For her," he gasped, holding out his convulsed arm towards his
companion.

He fell back without breath, movement or look--he was dead.

Gilbert turned to the spectators of this scene and said:

"Mirabeau is no more."

Taking the paper whose destination he alone might divine, he rapidly
departed from the death chamber.

Some seconds after the doctor's going, a great clamor arose in the
street and was prolonged throughout Paris.

The grief was intense and wide. The Assembly voted a public funeral, and
the Pantheon, formerly Church of St. Genevieve, was selected for the
great man's resting-place. Three years subsequently the Convention sent
the coffin to the Clamart Cemetery to be bundled among the corpses of
the publicly executed.

Petion claimed to have discovered a contra-revolutionary plot written in
the hand of Mirabeau, and Congress reversed its previous judgment and
declared that genius could not condone corruption.




CHAPTER VII.

THE KING'S MESSENGER.


On the morning of the second of April, an hour before Mirabeau yielded
up his last breath, a superior officer of the navy, wearing his full
dress uniform of captain, entered the Tuileries Palace like one to whom
the ways were familiar.

He took the private stairs to the King's apartments, where, by the
study, a valet saw him and uttered a cry of surprise.

"Hue," he said, laying a finger on his lips, "can the King receive me?"

"His Majesty gave word that you were to be shown in whenever you
arrived."

He opened a door and as a proof that the King was alone, he called out:

"The Count of Charny!"

"Let him enter," said the King; "I have been expecting him since
yesterday."

Charny entered quickly and said as he went up to his royal master with
respectful eagerness:

"Sire, I am a few hours behindhand, but I hope to be forgiven when your
Majesty hears the reasons for the delay."

"Come, come, my lord; I awaited you with impatience, it is true; but I
was of your opinion beforehand that an important cause alone could delay
your journey. You have come, and you are welcome."

He held out his hand which the courier kissed with reverence.

"Sire, I received your order early the day before yesterday and I
started at three A. M. yesterday from Montmedy by the post."

"That explains the few hours delay," observed the sovereign, smiling.

"Sire," went on the count, "I might have dashed on and made better speed
but I wanted to study the road as it is generally used so as to remark
the posting-houses where the work is well or ill done; I wished to jot
the time down by the minute. I have noted everything and am consequently
in a position to answer on any point."

"Bravo, my lord," cried the King. "You are a first-rate servitor; but
let me begin by showing how we stand here; you can give me the news of
the position out there afterwards."

"Things are going badly, if I may guess by what I have heard," observed
Charny.

"To such a degree that I am a prisoner in the place, my dear count. I
was just saying to General Lafayette that I would rather be King at Metz
than over France; but never mind, you have returned. You know my aunts
have taken to flight? it is very plain why. You know the Assembly will
allow no priests to officiate at the altar unless they take oaths to the
country. The poor souls became frightened as Easter came near, thinking
they risked damnation by confessing to a priest who had sworn to the
Constitution, and I must confess, it was on my advice that they went to
Rome. No law opposes their journey and no one can think two poor women
will much strengthen the party of the fugitive nobility. They charged
Narbonne with getting them off; but I do not know how the movement was
guessed. A visit of the same nature as we experienced at Versailles in
October was projected upon them, but they happily got out by one door
while the mob rushed in by another. Just think of the crosses! not a
vehicle was at hand though three had been ordered to be ready. They had
to go to Meudon from Bellevue on foot.

"They found carriages there and made the start. Three hours afterwards,
tremendous uproar in Paris: those who went to stop the flight found the
nest warm but empty. Next day the press fairly howled: Marat said that
they were carrying away millions; Desmoulins that they were taking the
Dauphin. Nothing of the sort: the two poor ladies had a few hundred
thousand francs in their purses, and had enough to take care of without
burdening themselves with a boy who might bring about their recognition.
The proof was that they were recognized, without him, first at a place
where they were let go through, and then at Arnay, where they were
arrested. I had to write to the Assembly to get them passed, and spite
of my letter the Assembly debated all day. However, they were authorized
to continue their journey but on condition that the committee of the
House should present a bill against quitting the kingdom."

"Yes," said Charny, "but I understood, that, in spite of a magnificent
speech from Mirabeau, the Assembly rejected the proposition."

"True, it was thrown out: but beside this slight triumph was great
humiliation for me. When the excitement was noticed over the departure
of the two ladies, a few devoted friends, more than you may believe
being left to me, count--some hundreds of noblemen hastened to the
Tuileries and offered me their lives. The report was immediately spread
that a conspiracy was discovered to spirit me away. Lafayette, who had
been gulled into going to the Bastile under a story that an attempt
to rebuild it was under way, came back here furious at the hoax, and
entered with sword and bayonet!--my poor friends were seized and
disarmed. Pistols were found on some, stilettos on others, each having
snatched up at home any weapon handy. But the day is written down in
history as that of the Knights of the Dagger!"

"Oh, Sire, in what dreadful times do we live," said Charny, shaking his
head.

"Yes, and Mirabeau perhaps dying, maybe dead at present speaking."

"The more reason to hasten out of this cauldron."

"Just what we have decided on. Have you arranged with Bouille? I hope
he is strong enough now. The opportunity was presented and I reinforced
him."

"Yes, Sire: but the War Minister has crossed your orders; the Saxon
Hussars have drawn from him, and the Swiss regiments refused. He had
trouble to keep the Bouillon Foot at Montmedy Fort."

"Does he doubt now?"

"No Sire, but there are so many chances less. What matters? in these
dashes one must reckon on luck, and we still have ninety per cent of
chances. The question is if your Majesty holds to the Chalons Route
although the posting at Varennes is doubtful?"

"Bouille already knows my reasons for the preference."

"That is why I have minutely mapped out the route."

"The route-chart is a marvel of clearness, my dear count. I know the
road as though I had myself travelled it."

"I have the following directions to add----"

"Let me look at them by the map." And he unfolded on the table a map
drawn by hand with every natural feature laid in. It was a work of eight
months. The two stooped over the paper.

"Sire, the real danger begins at St. Menehould and ceases at Stenay. On
those eighteen leagues must be stationed the soldiers."

"Could they not be brought nearer Paris--say, up to Chalons?"

"It is difficult," was the response. "Chalons is too strong a place for
even a hundred men to do anything efficacious to your safety if menaced.
Besides, Bouille does not answer for anything beyond St. Menehould. All
he can do is set his first troops at Sommevelle Bridge. That is the
first post beyond Chalons."

"What time will it take?"

"The King can go from Paris to Montmedy in thirty-six hours."

"What have you decided about the relay of horses at Varennes? where we
must be certain not to want for them; it is most important."

"I have investigated the spot and decided to place the horses on the
other side of the little town. It will be better to dash through, coming
full speed from Clermont, and change horses five hundred paces from the
bridge, guarded and defended if signalled by three or four men."

Charny gave the King a paper.

It was Bouille's arrangement of the stations of the troops along the
road for the royal escape. The cover would be that the soldiers were
waiting to convoy some money sent by the War Minister.

"Everything has been foreseen," said the King delightedly. "But talking
of money, do you know whether Bouille has received the million I sent
him?"

"Yes, but as assignats are below par, he would lose twenty per cent
on the gross amount, only for a faithful subject of your Majesty who
cashed, as if gold, a hundred thousand crowns' worth."

"And the rest?" inquired the King, eyeing the speaker.

"Count Bouille got his banker to take it; so that there will be no lack
of the sinews of war."

"I thank you, my lord count," said the sovereign. "I should like to
know the name of the faithful servitor who perhaps lessened his cash by
giving the sum to Bouille."

"He is rich and consequently there was no merit in what he did. The only
condition he put in doing the act was to have his name kept back."

"Still you know him?"

"Yes, I know who it is."

"Then, Lord Charny," said the monarch with the hearty dignity which he
sometimes showed, as he took a ring off his finger, "here is a jewel
very dear to me. I took it off the finger of my dying father when his
hand was chill in death. Its value is therefore that which I attach to
it; it has no other; but for a soul which understands me, it will be
more precious than the finest diamond. Repeat to the faithful servitor
what I say, my lord, and give him this gem from me."

Charny's bosom heaved as he dropped on one knee to receive the ring from
the royal hand.

At this juncture the door opened. The King turned sharply, for a door to
open thus was worse than infraction of etiquette; it was an insult only
to be excused by great necessity.

It was the Queen, pale and holding a paper. She let it drop with a cry
of astonishment at seeing Count Charny at the feet of her consort. The
noble rose and saluted the lady, who faltered:

"Charny here, in the King's rooms, in the Tuileries!" And she said to
herself: "Without my knowing it!"

There was such sorrow in the tone that Charny guessed the reason and
took two steps towards her.

"I have just arrived and I was going to crave the King's permission for
me to pay my respects to your Majesty," he said.

The blood reappeared on her cheeks; she had not heard that voice for a
long while and the sweet tone charmed her ears. She held out both hands
towards him but brought back one upon her heart from its beating too
violently. Charny noticed all this although in the short space required
for the King to pick up the paper, which the draft from the door had
floated to the side of the room.

The King read without understanding.

"What is the meaning of the word 'Flee' three times written, and the
fragment of a signature?" inquired he.

"Sire, it seems that Mirabeau died ten minutes ago, and that is the
advice he sends you."

"It is good advice," returned the King, "and this time the instant to
put it into execution has come."

The Queen looked at them both, and said to the count:

"Follow me, my lord."




CHAPTER VIII.

THE HUSBAND'S PROMISE.


The Queen sank upon a divan when she had arrived within her own
apartments, making a sign for Charny to close the door.

Scarcely was she seated before her heart overflowed and she burst into
sobs. They were so sincere and forcible that they went down into the
depths of Charny's heart and sought for his former love. Such passions
burning in a man never completely die out unless from one of those
dreadful shocks which turn love to loathing.

He was in that strange dilemma which they will appreciate who have stood
in the same: between old love and the new.

He loved his wife with all the pity in his bosom and he pitied the Queen
with all his soul. He could not help feeling regret and giving words of
consolation.

But he saw that reproach pierced through this sobbing; that
recrimination came to light among the tears, reminding him of the
exactions of this love, the absolute will, the regal despotism mingled
with the expressions of tenderness and proofs of passion; he steeled
himself against the exactions and took up arms against the despotism,
entering into the strife against the will. He compared all this with
Andrea's sweet, unalterable countenance, and preferred the statue,
though he believed it to be of snow, to this glowing bronze, heated from
the furnace, ever ready to dart from its eyes the lightnings of love,
pride and jealousy.

This time the Queen wept without saying anything.

It was more than eight months since she had seen him. Before this, for
two or three years she had believed that they could not separate without
their hearts breaking. Her only consolation had been that he was working
for her sake in doing some deed for the King.

But it was a weak consolation.

She wept for the sake of relief, for her pent-up tears would have choked
her if she had not poured them forth. Was it joy or pain that held her
silent? both, perhaps, for many mighty emotions dissolve in tears.

With more love even than respect, Charny went up to her, took one of her
hands away from her face and said as he applied his lips to it:

"Madam, I am proud and happy to say that not an hour has been without
toil for you since I went hence."

"Oh, Charny," retorted the Queen, "there was a time when you might have
been less busy on my account but you would have thought the more of me."

"I was charged by the King with grave responsibility, which imposed the
more strict silence until the business was accomplished. It is done
at present. I can see and speak with you now, but I might not write a
letter up to this period."

"It is a fine sample of loyalty, and I regret that it should be
performed at the expense of another sentiment, George," she said with
melancholy.

She pressed his hand tenderly, while eyeing him with that gaze for
which once he would have flung away the life still at her service.

She noticed that he was not the courier dusty and bloody from spurring,
but the courtier spic and span according to the rules of the Royal
Household. This complete attire visibly fretted the woman while it must
have satisfied the exacting Queen.

"Where do you come from?" she asked.

"Montmedy, in postchaise."

"Half across the kingdom, and you are spruce, brushed and dandified
like one of Lafayette's aid-de-camps. Were the news you brought so
unimportant as to let you dally at the toilet table?"

"Very important; but I feared that if I stepped out of the mud
be-splattered postchaise in the palace yard, all disordered with travel,
suspicion would be roused; the King had told me that you are closely
guarded, and that made me congratulate myself on walking in, clad in my
naval uniform like an officer coming to present his devoirs after a week
or two on leave."

She squeezed his hand convulsively, having a question to put the harder
to frame as it appeared so far from important.

"I forgot that you had a Paris house. Of course you dropped in at
Coq-Heron Street, where the countess is keeping house?"

Charny was ready to spring away like a high-mettled steed spurred in
the raw; but there was so much hesitation and pain in her words that he
had to pity one so haughty for suffering so much and for showing her
feelings though she was so strong-minded.

"Madam," he replied, with profound sadness not wholly caused by her
pain, "I thought I had stated before my departure that the Countess of
Charny's residence is not mine. I stopped at my brother Isidore's to
change my dress."

The Queen uttered a cry of joy and slid down on her knees, carrying his
hand to her lips, but he caught her up in both arms and exclaimed:

"Oh, what are you doing?"

"I thank you--ask me not for what! do you ask me for what? for the only
moment of thorough delight I have felt since your departure. God knows
this is folly, and foolish jealousy, but it is most worthy of pity. You
were jealous once, though you forget it. Oh, you men are happy when
you are jealous, because you can fight with your rivals and kill or be
slain; but we women can only weep, though we perceive that our tears are
useless if not dangerous. For our tears part us from our beloved rather
than wash us nearer; our grief is the vertigo of love--it hurls us
towards the abyss which we see without avail. I thank you again, George;
you see that I am happy anew and weep no more."

She tried to laugh; but in her repining she had forgotten how to be
merry, and the tone was so sad and doleful that the count shuddered.

"Be blessed, O God!" she said, "for he would not have the power to love
me from the day when he pities me."

Charny felt he was dragged down a steep where in time he would be in the
impossibility of checking himself. He made an effort to stop, like those
skaters who lean back on their heels at the risk of breaking through the
ice.

"Will you not permit me to offer the fruit of my long absence by
explaining what I have been happy to do for your sake?" he said.

"Oh, Charny, I like better to have things as I said just now; but you
are right: the woman must not too long forget she is a Queen. Speak,
ambassador, the woman has obtained all she had a right to claim--the
Queen listens."

The count related how he had surveyed the way for the flight of the
Royal Family, and how all was ready. She listened with deep attention
and fervent gratitude. It seemed to her that mere devotion could not
go so far; that it must be ardent and unquiet love to foresee such
obstacles and invent the means to cope with and overcome them.

"So you are quite happy to save me?" she asked at the end, regarding him
with supreme affection.

"Oh, can you ask me that? it is the dream of my ambition, and it will be
the glory of my life if I attain it."

"I would rather it were simply the reward of your love," replied Marie
Antoinette with melancholy. "But let that pass! you ardently desire this
great deed of the rescue of the Royal Family to be performed by you?"

"I await but your consent to set aside my life to it."

"I understand it, my dear one," said the sovereign: "your dedication
ought to be free from all alien sentiment, and material affection. It is
impossible that my husband and our children should be saved by a hand
which would not dare to be stretched out towards them if they slipped on
the road we are to travel in company. I place their lives and mine in
your custody, as to a brother: but you will feel some pity for me?"

"Pity?"

"You cannot wish that in one of those crises when one needs all courage,
patience and coolness, a mad idea of mine--for in the night one may see
the specters which would not frighten in the day--you cannot wish that
all should fail because I had not your promise that you loved me?"

"Lady," interrupted Charny, "above all I aim at your Majesty's bliss:
that of France; the glory of achieving the task I have begun; and I
confess that I am sorry the sacrifice I make is so slight; but I swear
not to see the Countess of Charny without your Majesty's permission."

Coldly and respectfully saluting the monarch's consort, he retired
without her trying to detain him, so chilled was she by his tone.

Hardly had he shut the door after him, than she wrung her hands and
ruefully moaned:

"Oh, rather that he made the vow not to see me, but loved me as he loves
her!"




CHAPTER IX.

OFF AND AWAY.


Spite of all precautions, or perhaps because they necessitated changes
in the usual order of things, suspicion was engendered in Paris by the
plot at the palace.

Lafayette went straight to the King, who mocked at his
half-accusations: Bailly sent a denunciatory letter to the Queen, having
become quite courteous, not to say a courtier.

About nine in the night of the 20th of June, two persons were conversing
in the sitting-room of the Countess of Charny, in Coq-Heron Street.

She was apparently calm but was deeply moved, as she spoke with Isidore,
who wore a courier's dress. It was composed of a buff leather riding
jacket, tight breeches of buckskin and top-boots, and he carried a
hunting-sword. His round laced hat was held in his hand.

"But in short, viscount, since your brother has been two months and a
half in town, why has he not come here?" she persisted.

"He has sent me very often for news of your health."

"I know that, and I am grateful to both of you; but it seems to me that
he ought to come to say good-bye if he is going on another journey."

"Of course, my lady, but it is impossible; so he has charged me to do
that."

"Is the journey to be a long one?"

"I am ignorant."

"I said 'yours' because it looks from your equipment that you are going
too."

"I shall probably leave town this midnight."

"Do you accompany your brother or go by another route?"

"I believe we take the same."

"Will you tell him you have seen me?"

"Yes, my lady: for he would not forgive me omitting to perform the
errand of asking after you, judging by the solicitude he put in charging
me, and the reiterated instructions he gave me."

She ran her hands over her eyes, sighed, and said after short
meditation:

"Viscount, as a nobleman, you will comprehend the reach of the question
I am putting; answer as you would were I really your sister; as you
would to heaven. In the journey he undertakes, does my Lord Charny run
any serious danger?"

"Who can tell where no danger is or is not in these times?" evasively
responded young Charny. "On the morning of the day when my brother
Valence was struck down, he would have surely answered No, if he had
been asked if he stood in peril. Yet he was laid low in death by the
morrow. At present, danger leaps up from the ground, and we face death
without knowing whence it came and without calling it."

Andrea turned pale and said,

"There is danger of death, then? You think so if you do not say it."

"I think, lady, that if you have something important to tell my brother,
the enterprise we are committed to is serious enough to make you
charge me by word of mouth or writing with your wish or thought to be
transmitted to him."

"It is well: viscount, I ask five minutes," said the countess, rising.

With the mechanical, slow step habitual to her, she went into her room,
of which she shut the door.

The young gentleman looked at his watch with uneasiness.

"A quarter past nine, and the King expects me at half after," he
muttered: "luckily it is but a step to the palace."

But the countess did not take the time she had stated; in a few seconds
she returned with a sealed letter, and said with solemnity,

"Viscount, I entrust this to your honor."

Isidore stretched out his hand to take it.

"Stay, and clearly understand what I am telling you," said Andrea: "if
your brother count fulfills the undertaking, there is nothing to be said
to him beyond what I stated--sympathy for his loyalty, respect for his
devotion and admiration for his character. If he be wounded"--here her
voice faltered--"badly hurt, you will ask the favor for me to join him,
whereupon you will send a messenger who can conduct me straight to him
for I shall start directly. If he be mortally injured--" here emotion
checked her voice: "Hand him this note; if he cannot read it, read it
to him, for I want him to know this before he dies. Your pledge as a
nobleman to do this, my lord?"

"On my honor," replied Isidore, as much affected as the speaker.

He kissed her hand and went out.

"Oh, if he should die, I must have him know that I love him!"

At the same time as he quitted his sister-in-law's and thrust the letter
in his breast, beside another of which he had read the address by the
light of a street lamp, two men, dressed just like himself, were ushered
into the Queen's boudoir, but by different ways.

These two did not know each other but judging that the same business
thus arrayed them they bowed to one another.

Immediately another door still opened and in walked Viscount Charny, the
third outrider, who was as unknown to the other two, Malden and Valory,
Royal Lifeguardsmen, as they, it happened, to each other. Isidore alone
knew the aim of their being brought together, and the common design. No
doubt he would have replied to the inquiries they were going to put but
the door opened and Louis XVI. appeared.

"Gentlemen," said he to Malden and Valory, "excuse me disposing of you
without your permission but you belonged to my guards and I hold you
to be faithful servitors of the crown; so I suggested your going to a
certain tailor's and trying one courier's costume which you would find
there and be at the palace at half-past nine this evening. Your presence
proves that you accept the errand with which I have to charge you."

The two guardsmen bowed.

"Sire," said Valory, "your Majesty was fully aware that he had no need
to consult his gentlemen about laying down their lives on his behalf."

"Sire, my brother-soldier answers for me in answering for himself, and I
presume for our third companion," said Malden.

"Your third companion, gentlemen, is an acquaintance good to form, being
Viscount Charny, whose brother was slain defending the Queen's door at
Versailles; we are habituated to the devotion of members of his family,
so that we do not thank them for it."

"According to this," went on Valory, "my Lord of Charny would know the
motive of our gathering, while we are ignorant and eager to learn."

"Gentlemen," said the King, "you know that I am a prisoner to the
National Guard, the Assembly, the Mayor of Paris, the mob, to anybody
who is for the time being the master. I rely on you to help me shake off
this humiliation, and recover my liberty. My fate, that of the Queen and
of our children, rests in your hands: all is ready for me to make away
to-night; will you undertake to get me out of this place?"

"Give the orders, my lord," said the three young men.

"You will understand that we cannot go forth together. We are to meet
at the corner of St. Nicaise Street, where Count Charny awaits us with
a hired carriage. You, viscount, will take care of the Queen, and use
the name of Melchior; you, Malden, under the name of Jean, escort Lady
Elizabeth and the Princess Royal; you, Valory, guard Lady Tourzel and
the Dauphin; they will call you François. Do not forget your new names
and await further instructions."

He gave his hand all round to them and went out, leaving three men ready
to die for him.

He went to dress, while the Queen and the others were also attiring
themselves plainly, with large hats to conceal their faces.

Louis put on a plain grey suit with short breeches, grey stockings and
buckled shoes. For the week past his valet Hue had gone in and out in
a similar dress so as to get the sentinels used to the sight. He went
out by the private door of Lord Villequier, who had fled the country six
months before.

In provision of this flight, a room of his quarters had been set aside
on the eleventh of the month. Here were the Queen and the others
assembled. This flat was believed uninhabited; the King had the keys:
and the sentries at about eleven were accustomed to see a number of the
servants, who did not sleep on the premises, quit the palace in a flock.

Isidore Charny, who had been over the road with his brother, would ride
on ahead; he would get the postboys ready so that no delay would be
incurred.

Malden and Valory, on the driver's box, were to pay the postillions, who
were given extra money as the carriage for the journey was a specially
built one and very heavy from having to carry so many persons. Count
Charny was to ride inside, ready for all emergencies; he would be well
armed, like the three outriders; a pair of pistols for each were to be
in the vehicle.

At a fair pace they reckoned to be at Chalons in thirteen hours.

All promised to obey the instructions settled between Charny and the
Count of Choiseul.

Lights were blown out and all groped their way at midnight into
Villequier's rooms. But the door by which they ought to have passed
straightway, was locked. The King had to go to his smithy for keys and a
pick-lock.

When he opened the door, he looked round triumphantly in the light of a
little night-lamp.

"I will not say that a locksmith's art is not good sometimes," said the
Queen; "but it is also well to be the King at others."

They had to regulate the order of the sallying forth.

Lady Elizabeth led, with the Princess Royal. At twenty paces she was
followed by Lady Tourzel and the Dauphin. Malden came on behind to run
to their succor.

The children stepped on tiptoe and trembling, with love before and
behind them, to enter the ring of glare from the lamps with reflector,
lighting the palace doors at the courtyard, but they passed before the
sentinel without his appearing to trouble about them.

At the Carrousel Gate, the sentinel turned his back and they could
easily pass. Had he recognized the illustrious fugitives? They believed
so, and sent him a thousand blessings.

On the farther side of the wicket they perceived Charny's uneasy face.
He was wearing a large blue coat with cape, called a Garrick from the
English actor having made it popular, and his head was covered with a
tarpaulin hat.

"Thank God, you have got through," he said, "what about the King, and
the Queen?"

"They follow us," said Lady Elizabeth.

"Come," said he, leading them to the hack in St. Nicaise Street.

Another was beside theirs, and its driver might be a spy; so Malden
jumped into it and ordered the man to drive him to the Opera-house as if
he were a servant going to join his master there.

Scarcely had he driven off before the others saw a plain sort of fellow
in a gray suit, with his hat cocked over his nose and his hands in
his pocket, saunter out of the same gate as had given passage to Lady
Elizabeth, like a clerk who was strolling home after his work was over.

This was the King, attended by Valory.

Charny went up to meet them; for he had recognized Valory, and not the
King. He was one of those who always wish to see a king kinglike. He
sighed with pain, almost with shame, as he murmured:

"Come, Sire, come. Where is the Queen?" he asked of Valory.

"Coming with your brother."

"Good; take the shortest road and wait for us at St. Martin's Gate; I
will go by the longer way round; we meet at the coach."

Both arrived at the rendezvous and waited half an hour for the Queen.

We shall not try to paint the fugitives' anxiety; Charny, on whom the
whole responsibility fell, was like a maniac. He wanted to go back and
make inquiries, but the King restrained him. The little prince wept and
cried for his mother. His sister and the two ladies could not console
him.

Their terror doubled when they saw Lafayette's carriage dash by,
surrounded by soldiers, some bearing torches.

When at the palace gates, Viscount Charny wanted to turn to the left;
the Queen, on his arm, stopped him and said that the count was waiting
at the waterside gate of the Tuileries. She was so sure of what she
asserted that doubt entered his mind.

"Be very careful, lady, for any error may be deadly to us," he said.

"I heard him say by the waterside," she repeated.

So he let her drag him through three courtyards, separated by thick
walls and with chains at each opening, which should have been guarded
by sentinels. They had to scramble through the gaps and clamber over the
chains. Not one of the watchers had the idea of saying anything to them.
How could they believe that a buxom woman in such dress as a housemaid
would wear and climbing over the chains on the arm of a strapping young
chap in livery, was the Queen of the French?

On arriving at the water's edge they found it deserted.

"He must mean the other side of the river," said the crazed Queen.

Isidore wanted to return but he said as if in a vertigo:

"No, no, there it is!"

She drew him upon the Royal Bridge which they crossed to find the other
shore as blank as the nigher one.

"Let us look up this street," said she.

She forced Isidore to go up the Ferry Street a little. At the end of a
hundred paces she owned she was wrong, but she stopped, panting; her
powers almost fled her.

"Now, take me where you will," she said.

"Courage, my lady," said Isidore.

"It is not courage I lack so much as strength. Oh, heaven, will I never
get my breath again," she gasped.

Isidore paused, for he knew that the second wind she panted was
necessary to her as to the hunted deer.

"Take breath, madam," he said: "we have time, for my brother would wait
till daylight for your sake."

"Then you believe that he loves me?" she exclaimed rashly as quickly
while pressing his arm against her breast.

"I believe that his life is yours as mine is, and that the feeling in
others which is love and respect becomes adoration in him."

"Thanks," she said, "that does me good! I breathe again. On, on!"

With a feverish step, she retraced the path they had gone and they went
out by the small gate of the Carrousel. The large open space was till
midnight covered with stalls and prowling cabs. But it was now deserted
and gloomy.

Suddenly they heard a great din of carriages and horses. They saw a
light: no doubt the flambeaux accompanying the vehicles.

Isidore wanted to keep in the dark but the Queen pressed forward. He
dragged her into the depths of the gateway but the torchlight flooded
this cave with its beams.

In the middle of the escort of cavalry, half reclining in a carriage, in
his costume of General of the National Guards, was Marquis Lafayette.

As it whizzed by, Isidore felt an arm, strong with will if not real
power, elbow him aside. It was the Queen's left arm, while with a cane
in her right hand she struck the carriage wheels.

"A fig for you, Jailer!" she said. "I am out of your prison!"

"What are you doing, and what are you risking?" ejaculated the Viscount.

"I am taking my revenge," said the silly victim of spite, "and one may
risk a good deal for that."

Behind the last torch-bearer she bounded along, radiant as a goddess,
and gleeful as a child.




CHAPTER X.

ON THE HIGHWAY.


The Queen had not taken ten paces beyond the gateway before a man in a
blue garrick and with his face hidden by a tarpaulin hat, caught her
convulsively by the arm and dragged her to a hackney coach stationed at
the St. Nicaise corner: it was Count Charny.

They expected to see the Queen come up, after this half hour of delay,
dying, downcast and prostrated, but they saw her merry and gladsome; the
cut of the cane which she had given a carriage-wheel and fancied was on
the rider, had made her forget her fatigue, her blunder, her obstinacy,
the lost time and the consequences of the delay.

Charny pointed out a saddled horse which a servant was holding at a
little distance to his brother who mounted and dashed ahead to pioneer
the way. He would have to get the horses ready at Bondy.

Seeing him go, the Queen uttered some words of thanks which he did not
hear.

"Let us be off, madam; we have not one second to lose," said Charny,
with that firmness of will mixed with respect which great men take for
grand occasions.

The Queen entered the hackney-coach, where were five already, the King,
Lady Elizabeth, the Princess Royal, her brother and Lady Tourzel. She
had to sit at the back with her son on her lap, with the King beside
her: the two ladies and the girl were on the front seat. Fortunately the
hackney carriages, old family coaches, were roomy in those days.

Charny got upon the box and to avert suspicion, turned the horses round
and had them driven to the gate circuitously.

Their special conveyance was waiting for them there, on the side-road
leading to the ditch. This part was lonesome. The traveling carriage had
the door open, and Malden and Valory were on the steps.

In an instant the six travelers were out on the road. Charny drove the
hack to the ditch and upset it in it, before returning to the party.

They were inside; Malden got up behind; Valory joined Charny on the box.
The four horses went off at a rattling good pace as a quarter past one
sounded from the church clock.

In an hour they were at Bondy, where Isidore had better teams ready. He
saw the royal coach come up.

Charny got down to get inside as had been settled; but Lady Tourzel, who
was to be sent back to town alone, had not been consulted.

With all her profound devotion to the Royal Family, she was unalterable
on points of court etiquette. She stated that her duty was to look after
the royal children, whom she was bound not to quit for a single instant
unless by the King's express order, or the Queen's; but there being no
precedent of a Queen having ordered the royal governess away from her
charges, she would not go.

The Queen quivered with impatience, for she doubly wished Charny in the
vehicle, as a lover who would make it pleasanter and as a Queen, as he
would guard her.

Louis did not dare pronounce on the grave question. He tried to get out
of the dilemma by a side-issue. Lady Tourzel stood ready to yield to the
King's command but he dared not command her, so strong are the minutest
regulations in the courtly-bred.

"Arrange anyway you like, count," said the fretful Queen, "only you must
be with us."

"I will follow close to the carriage, like a simple servant," he
replied: "I will return to town to get a horse by the one my brother
came therefrom, and changing my dress I will join you at full speed."

"Is there no other means?" said Marie Antoinette in despair.

"I see none," remarked the King.

Lady Tourzel took her seat triumphantly and the stage-coach started off.

The importance of this discussion had made them forget to serve out the
firearms which went back to Paris in the hack.

By daybreak, which was three o'clock, they changed horses at Meaux where
the King was hungry. They brought their own provisions in the boot of
the coach, cold veal and bread and wine, which Charny had seen to. But
there were no knives and forks and the King had to carve with "Jean,"
that is, Malden's hunting-knife.

During this, the Queen leaned out to see if Charny were returning.

"What are you thinking of, madam?" inquired the King, who had found the
two guards would not take refreshment.

"That Lafayette is in a way at this hour," replied the lady.

But nothing showed that their departure had been seen.

Valory said that all would go well.

"Cheer up!" he said, as he got upon the box with Malden and off they
rolled again.

At eight o'clock they reached the foot of a long slope where the King
had all get out to walk up. Scattered over the road, the pretty children
romping and playing, the sister resting on her brother's arm and
smiling: the pensive women looking backward, and all lit up by the June
sun while the forest flung a transparent shade upon the highway--they
seemed a family going home to an old manor to resume a regular and
peaceful life and not a King and Queen of France fleeing from the throne
which would be converted into their scaffold.

An accident was soon to stir up the dormant passions in the bosoms of
the party.

The Queen suddenly stopped as though her feet had struck root.

A horseman appeared a quarter-league away, wrapped in the cloud of dust
which his horse's hoofs threw up.

Marie Antoinette dared not say: "It is Count Charny!" but she did
exclaim, "News from Paris!"

Everybody turned round except the Dauphin who was chasing a
butterfly--compared with its capture the news from the capital little
mattered.

Being shortsighted, the King drew a small spy-glass from his pocket.

"I believe it is only Lord Charny," he said.

"Yes, it is he," said the Queen.

"Go on," said the other: "he will catch up to us and we have no time to
lose."

The Queen dared not suggest that the news might be of value.

It was only a few seconds at stake anyhow, for the rider galloped up as
fast as his horse could go.

He stared as he came up for he could not understand why the party should
be scattered all over the road.

He arrived as the huge vehicle stopped at the top of the ridge to take
up the passengers.

It was indeed Charny as the Queen's heart and the King's eyes had
told them. He was now wearing a green riding coat with flap collar, a
broad brimmed hat with steel buckle, white waistcoat, tight buckskin
breeches, and high boots reaching above the knee. His usually dead white
complexion was animated by the ride and sparks of the same flame which
reddened his cheeks shot from his eyes.

He looked like a conqueror as he rushed along; the Queen thought she had
never seen him look handsomer. She heaved a deep sigh as the horseman
leaped off his horse and saluted the King.

Turning, he bowed to the Queen. All grouped themselves round him, except
two guardsmen who stood aloof in respect.

"Come near, gentlemen," said the King: "what news Count Charny brings
concerns us all."

"To begin with, all goes well," said Charny: "At two in the morning none
suspected our flight."

They breathed easier: the questions were multiplied. He related that
he had entered the town and been stopped by a patrol of volunteers who
however became convinced that the King was still in the palace. He
entered his own room and changed his dress: the aid of Lafayette who
first had a doubt, had become calm and dismissed extra guards.

He had returned on the same horse from the difficulty of getting a fresh
one so early. It almost foundered, poor beast, but he reached Bondy
upon it. There he took a fresh one and continued his ride with nothing
alarming along the road.

The Queen found that such good news deserved the favor of her extending
her hand to the bearer; he kissed it respectfully, and she turned pale.
Was it from joy that he had returned, or with sorrow that he did not
press it?

When the vehicle started off, Charny rode by the side.

At the next relay house all was ready except a saddle horse for the
count which Isidore had not foreseen the want of. There would be delay
for one to be found. The vehicle went off without him, but he overtook
it in five minutes. It was settled that he should follow and not escort
it. Still he kept close enough for the Queen to see him if she put
her head out of the window and thus he exchanged a few words with the
illustrious couple when the pace allowed it.

Charny changed horses at Montmirail and was dashing on thinking it had a
good start of him when he almost ran into it. It had been pulled up from
a trace breaking. He dismounted and found a new leather in the boot,
filled with repairing stuff. The two guardsmen profited by the halt to
ask for their weapons, but the King opposed their having them. On the
objection that the vehicle might be stopped he replied that he would
not have blood spilt on his account.

They lost half an hour by this mishap, when seconds were priceless.

They arrived at Chalons by two o'clock.

"All will go well if we reach Chalons without being stopped," the King
had said.

Here the King showed himself for a moment. In the crowd around the huge
conveyance two men watched him with sustained attention. One of them
suddenly went away while the other came up.

"Sire, you will wreck all if you show yourself thus," he said. "Make
haste, you lazybones," he cried to the postboys: "this is a pretty way
to serve those who pay you handsomely."

He set to work, aiding the hostlers.

It was the postmaster.

At last the horses were hooked on and the postboys in their saddles and
boots. The first tried to start his pair when they went clean off their
feet. They got them up and all clear again, when the second span went
off their feet! This time the postboy was caught under them.

Charny, who was looking on in silence, seized hold of the man and
dragged him out of his heavy boots, remaining under the horse.

"What kind of horses have you given us?" demanded he of the postinghouse
master.

"The best I had in," replied the man.

The horses were so entangled with the traces that the more they pulled
at them the worse the snarl became.

Charny flew down to the spot.

"Unbuckle and take off everything," he said, "and harness up afresh. We
shall get on quicker so."

The postmaster lent a hand in the work, cursing with desperation.

Meanwhile the other man, who had been looking on had run to the mayor,
whom he told that the Royal Family were in a coach passing through the
town. Luckily the official was far from being a republican and did
not care to take any responsibility on himself. Instead of making the
assertion sure, he shilly-shallied so that time was lost and finally
arrived as the coach disappeared round the corner.

But more than twenty minutes had been frittered away.

Alarm was in the royal party; the Queen thought that the downfall of the
two pair of horses were akin to the four candles going out one after
another which she had taken to portend the death of herself, her husband
and their two children.

Still, on getting out of the town, she and the King and his sister had
all exclaimed:

"We are saved!"

But, a hundred paces beyond, a man shouted in at the window:

"Your measures are badly taken--you will be arrested!"

The Queen screamed but the man jumped into the hedge and was lost to
sight.

Happily they were but four leagues from Sommevelle Bridge, where
Choiseul and forty hussars were to be posted. But it was three in the
afternoon and they were nearly four hours late.




CHAPTER XI.

THE QUEEN'S HAIRDRESSER.


On the morning of the twenty-first of June, the Count of Choiseul, who
had notified the King that he could wait no longer but must pick up his
detachments along the road and fall back towards Bouille, who was also
at the end of his patience, was told that a messenger from the Queen was
at last at his house in Paris.

It was Leonard the Queen's hairdresser. He was a favorite who enjoyed
immense credit at the court, but the duke could wish for a more weighty
confidant. But how could the Queen go into exile without the artist who
alone could build up her hair into one of those towers which caused her
to be the envy of her sex and the stupefaction of the sterner one?

He was wearing a round hat pulled down to his eyes and an enormous
"wraprascal," which he explained were property of his brother. The
Queen, in confiding to him her jewels, had ordered him to disguise
himself, and placed himself under the command of Choiseul. Not only
verbal was this direction but in a note which the duke read and burned.

He ordered a cab to be made ready. When the servant reported it at the
door, he said to the hairdresser:

"Come, my dear Leonard."

"But where?"

"A little way out of town where your art is required."

"But the diamonds?"

"Bring them along."

"But my brother will come home and see I have taken his best hat and
overcoat--he will wonder what has become of me."

"Let him wonder! Did not the Queen bid you obey me as herself?"

"True, but Lady Ange will be expecting me to do up her hair. Nobody can
make anything of her scanty wisp but me, and----"

"Lady Ange must wait till her hair grows again."

Without paying farther heed to his lamentations, the lord forced him
into his cab and the horse started off at a fast gait. When they stopped
to renew the horse, he believed they were going to the world's end,
though the duke confessed that their destination was the frontier.

At Montmirail they were to pass the balance of the night, and indeed
at the inn beds were ready. Leonard began to feel better, in pride at
having been chosen for such an important errand.

At eleven they reached Sommevelle Bridge, where Choiseul got out to put
on his uniform. His hussars had not yet arrived.

Leonard watched his preparations, particularly his freshening the pistol
primings, with sharp disquiet and heaved sighs which touched the hearer.

"It is time to let you into the truth, Leonard; you are true to your
masters so you may as well know that they will be here in a couple of
hours. The King, the Queen, Lady Elizabeth, and the royal children. You
know what dangers they were running, and dangers they are running still,
but in two hours they will be saved. I am awaiting a hussar detachment
to be brought by Lieut. Goguelat. We will have dinner and take our time
over it."

But they heard the bugle and the hussars arrived. Goguelat brought six
blank royal warrants and the order from Bouille for Choiseul to be
obeyed like himself by all military officers, whatever their ranking
seniority.

The horses were hobbled, wine and eatables served out to the troopers
and Choiseuil sat at table.

Not that the lieutenant's news was good. He had found ferment everywhere
along the road. For more than a year rumors of the King's flight had
circulated as well in the country as in town, and the stationing of the
soldiers had aroused talk. In one township the village church bells had
sounded the alarm.

This was calculated to dull even a Choiseuil's appetite. So he got up
from the board in an hour, as the clock struck half after twelve, and
leaving Lieut. Boudet to rule the troop of horse, he went out on a hill
by the town entrance which commanded a good view. Every five minutes
he pulled out his watch, and, each time, Leonard groaned: "Oh, my poor
masters, they will not come. Something bad has happened them."

His despair added to the duke's disquiet.

Three o'clock came without any tidings. It will be remembered that this
was the hour when the King left Chalons.

While Choiseul was fretting, Fatality, unless Cagliostro had a hand in
it, was preparing an event which had much to do with influencing the
drama in course of performance.

A few days before, some peasants on the Duchess of Elboeuf's estate,
near Sommevelle Bridge, had refused payment of some unredeemable taxes.
They were threatened with the sheriff calling in the military; but
the Federation business had done its work and the inhabitants of the
neighborhood vowed to make common cause with their brothers of the plow
and came armed to resist the process-servers.

On seeing the hussars ride in, the clowns thought that they were here
for this purpose. So they sent runners to the surrounding villages and
at three o'clock the alarm-bells were booming all over the country.

Choiseul went back on hearing this and found Lieut. Boudet uneasy.

Threats were heard against the hussars who were the best hated corps in
the army. The crowd bantered them and sang a song at them which was made
for the occasion:

    "Than the hussars there is no worse,
    But we don't care for them a curse!"

Other persons, better informed or keener, began to whisper that the
cavalry were here not to execute a writ on the Elboeuf tillers but to
wait for the King and Queen coming through.

Meanwhile four o'clock struck without any courier with intelligence.

The count put Leonard in his cab with the diamonds, and sent him on
to Varennes, with order to say all he could to the commanders of each
military troop on the road.

To calm the agitation he informed the mob that he and his company were
there not to assist the sheriff, but to guard a treasure which the
War Minister was sending along. This word "treasure," with its double
meaning, confirmed suspicions on one side while allaying irritability on
the other. In a short time he saw that his men were so outnumbered and
as hedged in that they could do nothing in such a mass, and would have
been powerless to protect the Royal Family if they came then.

His orders were to "act so that the King's carriage should pass without
hindrance," while his presence was becoming an obstacle instead of
protection.

Even had the King came up he had better be out of the way. Indeed his
departure would remove the block from the highway. But he needed an
excuse for the going.

The postmaster was there among half-a-dozen leading citizens whom a word
would turn into active foes. He was close to Choiseul who inquired:

"My friend, did you hear anything about this military money-chest coming
through?"

"This very morning," replied the man, "the stage-coach came along for
Metz with a hundred thousand crowns; two gendarmes rode with it."

"You don't say so?" cried the nobleman, amazed at luck so befriending
him.

"It is so true that I was one of the escort," struck in a gendarme.

"Then the Minister preferred that way of transmitting the cash," said
Choiseul, turning to his lieutenant, quietly, "and we were sent only as
a blind to highwaymen. As we are no longer needed, I think we can be
off. Boot and saddle, my men!"

The troop marched out with trumpets sounding and the count at the head
as the clock struck half-past five.

He branched off the road to avoid St. Menehould, where great hubbub was
reported to prevail.

At this very instant, Isidore Charny, spurring and whipping a horse
which had taken two hours to cover four leagues, dashed up to the
posthouse to get another; asking about a squad of hussars he was told
that it had marched slowly out of the place a quarter of an hour before;
leaving orders about the horses for the carriage, he rode off at full
speed of the fresh steed, hoping to overtake the count.

Choiseul had taken the side road precisely as Isidore arrived at the
post, so that the viscount never met him.




CHAPTER XII.

MISCHANCE.


Ten minutes after young Charny rode out, the King's coach rumbled in.

As the duke had foreseen, the crowd had dissolved almost completely.

Knowing that a detachment of soldiery was to be at Sommevelle, Charny
had thought he need not linger and had galloped beside the door, urging
on the postillions and keeping them up to the hand-gallop.

On arriving and seeing neither Choiseul nor the escort, the King stuck
his head out of the window.

"For mercy's sake, do not show yourself," said Charny; "let me inquire."

In five minutes he returned from the postinghouse where he had learnt
all, and he repeated it to the monarch. They understood that the count
had withdrawn to leave the road open. No doubt he had fallen back on St.
Menehould where they ought to hasten to find him with the hussars and
dragoons.

"What am I to do?" asked Charny as they were about to proceed again;
"does the Queen order me to go ahead or ride in the rear?"

"Do not leave me," said the Queen.

He bowed, and rode by the carriage side.

During this time Isidore rode on, gaining on the vehicle, and fearing
that the people of St. Menehould would also take umbrage at having the
soldiers in their town. He was not wrong.

The first thing he perceived there was a goodly number of National
Guards scattered about the streets; they were the first seen since he
left the capital.

The whole town seemed in a stir and on the opposite side, drums were
beating.

He dashed through the streets without appearing to notice the tumult:
crossing the square he stopped at the postinghouse.

On a bench in the square he noticed a dozen dragoons not in their
helmets but fatigue caps, sitting at ease. Up at a ground floor window
lounged Marquis Dandoins in undress, also, with a riding whip in his
hand.

Isidore passed without seeming to look, presuming that the captain would
recognize the royal courier by his uniform and not need any other hint.

At the posthouse was a young man whose hair was cut short in the Emperor
Titus fashion which the Patriots adopted in the period: he wore his
beard all round the lower face from ear to ear. He was in a dressing
gown.

"What do you want?" challenged the black-whiskered man, seeing that the
new-comer was looking round.

"To speak to the postmaster."

"He is out just now, but I am his son, Jean Baptiste Drouet. If I can
replace him, speak."

He had emphasized his name as though he fore-felt that it would take a
place on the historic page.

"I want six horses for two carriages coming after me."

Drouet nodded to show that he would fulfill the order and walked into
the stable yard, calling out:

"Turn out there! six horses for carriages and a nag for the courier."

At this nick Marquis Dandoins hurriedly came up to Isidore.

"You are preceding the King's coach, I suppose?" he questioned.

"Yes, my lord, and I am surprised to see that you and your men are not
in the battle array."

"We have not been notified; besides, very ugly manifestations have been
made around us; attempts to make my men mutiny. What am I to do?"

"Why, as the King passes, guard the vehicle, act as circumstances
dictate, and start off half an hour after the Royal Family to guard the
rear." But he interrupted himself saying: "Hush, we are spied. Perhaps
we have been overheard. Get away to your squadron and do all you can to
keep your men steadfast."

Indeed, Drouet was at the kitchen door where this dialogue was held.
Dandoins walked away.

At this period, cracking of whips was heard: the royal coach rolled up
across the square and stopped at the posthouse.

At the noise it made, the population mustered around the spot with
curiosity.

Captain Dandoins, whose heart was sore about the oversight, and wanting
to explain why his men were standing at ease instead of being ready
for action, darted up to the carriage window, taking off his cap and
bowing, with all kind of respect to excuse himself to the sovereign and
the Royal Family. To answer him the King put his head out of the window
several times.

Isidore, with his foot in the stirrup, was near Drouet who watched
the conveyance with profound attention: he had been up to town to
the Federation Festival and he had seen the King whom he believed he
recognized. That morning he had received a number of the new issue of
_assignats_ the paper money of the State which bore the monarch's head:
he pulled one out and compared it with the original. This seemed to cry
out to him: "You have the man before you."

Isidore went round the carriage to the other side where his brother was
masking the Queen by leaning his elbow on the window.

"The King is recognized," he said; "hurry off the carriage and take
a good look at that tall dark fellow--the postmaster's son, who has
recognized the King. His name is Jean Baptiste Drouet."

"Right," responded George, "I will look to him. You, be off!"

Isidore galloped on to Clermont to have the fresh horses ready there.

Scarcely was he through the town before the vehicle started off, by
Malden and Valory pressing and the promise of extra money.

Charny had lost sight of Drouet who did not budge, but was talking with
the groom. The count went up to him.

"Was there no horse ordered for me, sir?" he demanded.

"One was ordered, but we are out of them."

"What do you mean--when here is a saddled horse in the yard."

"That is mine."

"But you can let me have it. I do not mind what I pay."

"Impossible. I have a journey to make, and it cannot be postponed."

To insist was to cause suspicions; to take by force was to ruin all.
He thought of a means to smoothe over the difficulty. He went over to
Captain Dandoins who was watching the royal carriage going round the
corner. He turned on a hand being laid on his shoulder.

"Hush, I am Count Charny," said the Lifeguard. "I cannot get a horse
here. Let me have one of your dragoons' as I must follow the King and
the Queen. I alone know where the relays set by the Count of Choiseul
are, and if I am not at hand the King will be brought to a standstill at
Varennes."

"Count, you must take my charger, not one of my men's."

"I accept. The welfare of the Royal Family depends on the least
accident. The better the steed the better the chances."

The two went through the town to the marquis' lodgings. Before departing
Charny charged a quarter-master to watch young Drouet.

Unfortunately the nobleman's rooms were five hundred paces away. When
the horses were saddled a quarter of an hour had gone by; for the
marquis had another got ready as he was to take up the rear guard duty
over the King.

Suddenly it seemed to Charny that he heard great clamor and could
distinguish shouts of "The Queen, the Queen!"

He sprang from the house, begging Dandoins to have the horse brought to
the square.

The town was in an uproar. Scarcely had Charny and his brother noble
gone, as if Drouet had waited for it, he shouted out:

"That carriage which went by is the King's! in it are the King, the
Queen, and the Royals!"

He jumped on his horse; some friends sought to detain him.

"Where are you off to? what do you intend? what is your project?"

"The colonel and the troop are here. We could not stop the King without
a riot which might turn out ill for us. What cannot be done here can be
done at Clermont. Keep back the dragoons, that is all I ask."

And away galloped he on the track of the King.

Hence the shouting that the King and the Queen had gone through, as
Charny heard. Those shouts set the mayor and councilmen afoot; the mayor
ordered the soldiers into the barracks as eight o'clock was striking
and it was the hour when soldiers had no business to be about in arms.

"Horses!" cried Charny as Dandoins joined him.

"They are coming."

"Have you pistols in the holsters?"

"I loaded them myself."

"Good! Now, all hangs on the goodness of your horse. I must catch up
with a man who has a quarter-hour's start, and kill him."

"You must kill him----"

"Or, all is lost!"

"Do not wait for the horses, then."

"Never mind me; you, get your men out before they are coaxed over; look
at the mayor speechifying to them! you have no time to lose either; make
haste!"

At this instant up came the orderly with the two chargers. Charny took
the nearest at hazard, snatched the reins from the man's hands, leaped
astride, drove in both spurs and burst away on the track of Drouet,
without clearly comprehending what the marquis yelled after him. Yet
these words were important.

"You have taken my horse and not yours, and the pistols are not loaded!"




CHAPTER XIII.

STOP, KING!


With Isidore riding before it, the royal conveyance flew over the road
between St. Menehould and Clermont.

Night was falling; the coach entered Argonne Forest crossing the
highway.

The Queen had noticed the absence of Charny, but she could not slacken
the pace or question the postboys. She did lean out a dozen times but
she discovered nothing.

At half-past nine they reached Clermont, four leagues covered. Count
Damas was waiting outside the place as he had been warned by Leonard and
he stopped Isidore on recognizing his livery.

"You are Charles de Damas? well; I am preceding the King. Get your
dragoons in hand and escort the carriage."

"My lord," replied the count, "such a breath of discontent is blowing
that I am alarmed, and must confess that my men cannot be answered for,
if they recognize the King. All I can promise is that I will fall in
behind when he gets by, and bar the road."

"Do your best--here they come!"

He pointed to the carriage rushing through the darkness and visible by
the sparks from the horses' shoes.

Isidore's duty was to ride ahead and get the relays ready. In five
minutes, he stopped at the posthouse door.

Almost at the same time, Damas rode up with half-a-dozen dragoons, and
the King's coach came next. It had followed Isidore so closely that he
had not had time to remount. Without being showy it was so large and
well built that a great crowd gathered to see it.

Damas stood by the door to prevent the passengers being studied. But
neither the King nor the Queen could master their desire to learn what
was going on.

"Is that you, Count Damas?" asked the King. "Why are not your dragoons
under arms?"

"Sire, your Majesty is five hours behind time. My troop has been in the
saddle since four P. M. I have kept as quiet as possible but the town
is getting fretful; and my men want to know what is the matter. If the
excitement comes to a head before your Majesty is off again, the alarm
bell will be rung and the road will be blocked. So I have kept only
a dozen men ready and sent the others into quarters; but I have the
trumpeters in my rooms so as to sound the Boot-and-Saddle at the first
call. Your Majesty sees that all was for the best for the road is free."

"Very well; you have acted like a prudent man, my lord," said the King;
"when I am gone, get your men together and follow me closely."

"Sire, will you kindly hear what Viscount Charny has to say?" asked the
Queen.

"What has he to say?" said the King, fretfully.

"That you were recognised by the St. Menehould postmaster's son, who
compared your face with the likeness on the new paper money; his brother
the count stayed behind to watch this fellow, and no doubt something
serious is happening as he has not rejoined us."

"If we were recognized, the more reason to hurry. Viscount, urge on the
postboys and ride on before."

Isidore's horse was ready. He dashed on, shouting to the postillions:
"The Varennes Road!" and led the vehicle, which rattled off with
lightning speed.

Damas thought of following with his handful but he had positive orders
and as the town was in commotion--lights appearing at windows and
persons running from door to door--he thought only of one thing: to stop
the alarm bell. He ran to the church tower and set a guard on the door.

But all seemed to calm down. A messenger arrived from Dandoins, to say
that he and his dragoons were detained at St. Menehould by the people;
besides--as Damas already knew--Drouet had ridden off to pursue the
carriage which he had probably failed to catch up with, as they had not
seen him at Clermont.

Then came a hussar orderly, from Commandant Rohrig, at Varennes with
Count Bouille and another. He was a young officer of twenty who was not
in the knowledge of the plot but was told a treasure was in question.
Uneasy at time going by they wanted to know what news Damas could give.

All was quiet with them and on the road the hussar had passed the royal
carriage.

"All's well," thought Count Damas, going home to bid his bugler sound
"Boot and Saddle!"

All was therefore going for the best, except for the St. Menehould
incident, by which Dandoins' thirty dragoons were locked up.

But Damas could dispense with them from having a hundred and forty.

Returning to the King's carriage, it was on the road to Varennes.

This place is composed of an upper and a lower town; the relay of horses
was to be ready beyond the town, on the farther side of the bridge and
a vaulted passage, where a stoppage would be bad.

Count Jules Bouille and Raigecourt were to guard these horses and Charny
was to guide the party through the daedalus of streets. He had spent a
fortnight in Varennes and had studied and jotted down every point; not a
lane but was familiar, not a boundary post but he knew it.

Unfortunately Charny was not to the fore.

Hence the Queen's anxiety doubled. Something grave must have befallen
him to keep him remote when he knew how much he was wanted.

The King grew more distressed, too, as he had so reckoned on Charny that
he had not brought away the plan of the town.

Besides the night was densely dark--not a star scintillated.

It was easy to go wrong in a known place, still more a strange one.

Isidore's orders from his brother was to stop before the town.

Here his brother was to change horses and take the lead.

He was as troubled as the Queen herself at this absence. His hope was
that Bouille and Raigecourt in their eagerness would come out to meet
the Royal party: they must have learnt the site during three days and
would do as guides.

Consequently on reaching the base of the hill, seeing a few lights
sparkling over the town, Isidore pulled up irresolutely, and cast a
glance around to try and pierce the murkiness. He saw nothing.

He ventured to call in a low voice, but louder and louder, for the
officers; but no reply came.

He heard the rumbling of the stage coming along at a quarter of a league
off, like a thunder peal.

Perhaps the officers were hiding in the woods which he explored along
the skirts without meeting a soul.

He had no alternative but to wait.

In five minutes the carriage came up, and the heads of the royal couple
were thrust out of the windows.

"Have you seen Count Charny?" both asked simultaneously.

"I have not, Sire," was the response: "and I judge that some hurt has
met him in the chase of that confounded Drouet."

The Queen groaned.

"What can be done?" inquired the King who found that nobody knew the
place.

"Sire," said the viscount, "all is silent and appears quiet. Please your
Majesty, wait ten minutes. I will go into the town, and try to get news
of Count Bouille or at least of the Choiseul horses."

He darted towards the houses.

The nearest had opened at the approach of the vehicles, and light was
perceptible through the chink of the door.

The Queen got out, leant on Malden's arm and walked up to this dwelling:
but the door closed at their drawing near. Malden had time to dash up
and give it a shove which overpowered the resistance. The man who had
attempted to shut it was in his fiftieth year; he wore a night gown and
slippers.

It was not without astonishment that he was pushed into his own house by
a gentleman who had a lady on his arm. He started when he cast a rapid
glance at the latter.

"What do you want?" he challenged Malden.

"We are strangers to Varennes, and we beg you to point out the Stenay
road."

"But if I give you the information, and it is known, I will be a ruined
man."

"Whatever the risk, sir," said the Lifeguardsman, "it will be kindness
to a lady who is in a dangerous position----"

"Yes, but this is a great lady--it is the Queen," he whispered to the
sham courier.

The Queen pulled Malden back.

"Before going farther, let the King know that I am recognized," she
said.

Malden took but a second to run this errand and he brought word that the
King wanted to see this careful man.

He kicked off his slippers with a sigh, and went on tiptoe out to the
vehicle.

"Your name, sir?" demanded the King.

"I am Major Prefontaine of the cavalry, and Knight of the St. Louis
Order."

"In both capacities you have sworn fealty to me: it is doubly your duty
therefore to help me in this quandary."

"Certainly: but will your Majesty please be quick about it lest I am
seen," faltered the major.

"All the better if you are seen," interposed Malden; "you will never
have a finer chance to do your duty."

Not appearing to be of this opinion, the major gave a groan. The Queen
shook her shoulders with scorn and stamped with impatience.

The King waved his hand to appease her and said to the lukewarm
royalist:

"Sir, did you hear by chance of soldiers waiting for a carriage to come
through, and have you seen any hussars lately about?"

"They are on the other side of the town, Sire; the horses are at the
Great Monarch inn and the soldiers probably in the barracks."

"I thank you, sir; nobody has seen you and you will probably have
nothing happen you."

He gave his hand to the Queen to help her into the vehicle, and issued
orders for the start to be made again.

But as the couriers shouted "To the Monarch Inn!" a shadowy horseman
loomed up in the woods and darted crosswise on the road, shouting:

"Postboys, not a step farther! You are driving the fleeing King. In the
name of the Nation, I bid ye stand!"

"The King," muttered the postillions, who had gathered up the reins.

Louis XVI. saw that it was a vital instant.

"Who are you, sir, to give orders here?" he demanded.

"A plain citizen, but I represent the law and I speak in the name of the
Nation. Postillions, I order you a second time not to stir. You know me
well: I am Jean Baptiste Drouet, son of the postmaster at St.
Menehould."

"The scoundrel, it is he," shouted the two Lifeguardsmen, drawing their
hunting-swords.

But before they could alight, the other had dashed away into the Lower
Town streets.

"Oh, what has become of Charny?" murmured the Queen.

Fatality had ridden at the count's knee.

Dandoins' horse was a good racer but Drouet had twenty minute's start.
Charny dug in the spurs, and the bounding horse blew steam from his
nostrils as it darted off. Without knowing that he was pursued,
Drouet tore along, but he rode an ordinary nag while the other was a
thoroughbred.

The result was that at a league's end the pursuer gained a third.
Thereupon the postmaster's son saw that he was chased and redoubled
his efforts to keep beyond the hunter. At the end of the second league
Charny saw that he had gained in the same proportion, while the other
turned to watch him with more and more uneasiness.

Drouet had gone off in such haste that he had forgotten to arm himself.
The young patriot did not dread death, but he feared being stopped
in his mission of arresting the King, whereupon he would lose the
opportunity of making his name famous.

He had still two leagues to go before reaching Clermont, but it was
evident that he would be overtaken at the end of the first league, that
is, the third, from his leaving St. Menehould.

As if to stimulate his ardor, he was sure that the royal carriage was in
front of him.

He laid on the lash and drove in the spurs more cruelly.

It was half after nine and night fell.

He was but three quarters of a league from Clermont but Charny was only
two hundred paces away.

Drouet knew Varennes was not a posting station and he surmised that the
King would have to go through Verdun. He began to despair; before he
caught up with the King he would be seized. He would have to give up the
pursuit or turn to fight his pursuer and he was unarmed.

Suddenly, when Charny was not fifty paces from him, he met postillions
returning with the unharnessed horses. Drouet recognized them as those
who had ridden the royal horses.

"They took the Verdun Road, eh?" he called out as he forged past them.

"No, the Varennes Road," they shouted.

He roared with delight. He was saved and the King lost!

Instead of the long way he had a short cut to make. He knew all about
Argonne Woods into which he flung himself: by cutting through, he would
gain a quarter of an hour over the King, besides being shielded by the
darkness under the trees.

Charny, who knew the ground almost as well as the young man, understood
that he would escape him and he howled with rage.

"Stop, stop!" he shouted out to Drouet, as he at the same time urged his
horse also on the short level separating the road from the woods.

But Drouet took good care not to reply: he bent down on his horse's
neck, inciting him with whip and spur and voice. All he wanted was to
reach the thicket--he would be safe there.

He could do it, but he had to run the gauntlet of Charny at ten paces.
He seized one of the horse-pistols and levelled it.

"Stop!" he called out again, "or you are a dead man."

Drouet only leaned over the more and pressed on. The royalist pulled the
trigger but the flint on the hammer only shot sparks from the pan: he
furiously flung the weapon at the flyer, took out the other of the pair
and plunging into the woods after him, shot again at the dark-form--but
once more the hammer fell uselessly; neither pistol was loaded.

It was then he remembered that Dandoins had called out something to him
which he had heard imperfectly.

"I made a mistake in the horse," he said, "and no doubt what he shouted
was that the pistols were not charged. Never mind, I will catch this
villain, and strangle him with my own hands if needs must."

He took up the pursuit of the shadow which he just descried in the
obscurity. But he had hardly gone a hundred paces in the forest before
his horse broke down in the ditch: he was thrown over its head; rising
he pulled it up and got into the seat again but Drouet was out of sight.

Thus it was that he escaped Charny, and swept like a phantom over the
road to bid the King's conductors to make not another step.

They obeyed, for he had conjured them in the name of the Nation,
beginning to be more mighty than the King's.

Scarcely had he dived into the Lower Town and the sound of his horse
lessened before they heard that of another coming nearer.

Isidore appeared by the same street as Drouet had taken.

His information agreed with that furnished by Major Prefontaine. The
horses were beyond the town at the Monarch Hotel.

Lieutenant Rohrig had the hussars at the barracks.

But instead of filling them with joy by his news he found the party
plunged into the deepest stupor. Prefontaine was wailing and the two
Lifeguardsmen threatening someone unseen.

"Did not a rider go by you at a gallop?"

"Yes, Sire."

"The man was Drouet," said the King.

"Then my brother is dead," ejaculated Isidore with a deep pang at the
heart.

The Queen uttered a shriek and buried her face in her hands.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE CAPTURE.


Inexpressible prostration overpowered the fugitives, checked on the
highway by a danger they could not measure.

"Sire," said Isidore, the first to shake it off; "dead or living, let us
not think of our brother, but of your Majesty. There is not an instant
to lose. These fellows must know the Monarch Hotel; so, gallop to the
Grand Monarch!"

But the postillions did not stir.

"Did you not hear?" queried the young noble.

"Yes, sir, we heard----"

"Well, why do we not start?"

"Because Master Drouet forbade us."

"What? Drouet forbade you? when the King commands and Drouet forbids, do
you obey a Drouet?"

"We obey the Nation."

"Then, gentlemen," went on Isidore, "there are moments when a human life
is of no account. Pick out your man; I will settle this one. We will
drive ourselves."

He grasped the nearest postillion by the collar and set the point of his
short sword to his breast.

On seeing the three knives flash, the Queen screamed and cried:

"Mercy, gentlemen!"

She turned to the postboys:

"Friends, fifty gold pieces to share among you, and a pension of five
hundred a-year if you save the King!"

Whether they were frightened by the young nobles' demonstration or
snapped at the offer, the three shook up their horses and resumed the
road.

Prefontaine sneaked into his house all of a tremble and barred himself
in.

Isidore rode on in front to clear the way through the town and over the
bridge to the Monarch House.

The vehicle rolled at full speed down the slope.

On arriving at a vaulted way leading to the bridge and passing under the
Revenue Tower, one of the doors was seen closed. They got it open but
two or three wagons were in the way.

"Lend me a hand, gentlemen," cried Isidore, dismounting.

Just then they heard the bells boom and a drum beat. Drouet was hard at
work!

"The scamp! if ever I lay hold of him--" growled Isidore, grinding his
teeth. By an incredible effort he dragged one of the carts aside while
Malden and Valory drew off the other. They tugged at the last as the
coach thundered under the vault.

Suddenly through the uprights of the tilt, they saw several musket
barrels thrust upon the cart.

"Not a step or you are dead men!" shouted a voice.

"Gentlemen," interposed the King, looking out of the window, "do not try
to force your way through--I order you."

The two officers and Isidore fell back a step.

"What do they mean to do?" asked the King.

At the same time a shriek of fright sounded from within the coach.
Besides the men who barred the way, two or three had slipped up to the
conveyance and shoved their gun barrels under the windows. One was
pointed at the Queen's breast: Isidore saw this; he darted up, and
pushed the gun aside by grasping the barrel.

"Fire, fire," roared several voices.

One of the men obeyed but luckily his gun missed fire.

Isidore raised his arm to stab him but the Queen stopped his hand.

"Oh, in heaven's name, let me charge this rabble," said Isidore,
enraged.

"No, sheathe your sword, do you hear me?"

He did not obey her by half; instead of sheathing his sword he let it
fall on the ground.

"If I only get hold of Drouet," he snarled.

"I leave you him to wreck your vengeance on," said the Queen, in an
undertone and squeezing his arm with strange force.

"In short, gentlemen," said the King, "what do you want?"

"We want to see your passports," returned several voices.

"So you may," he replied. "Get the town authorities and we will show
them."

"You are making too much fuss over it," said the fellow who had missed
fire with his gun and now levelled it at the King.

But the two Guardsmen leaped upon him, and dragged him down; in the
scuffle the gun went off and the bullet did no harm in the crowd.

"Who fired?" demanded a voice.

"Help," called out the one whom the officers were beating.

Five or six armed men rushed to his rescue. The two Lifeguardsmen
whipped out their short swords and prepared to use them. The King and
the Queen made useless efforts to stop both parties: the contest was
beginning fierce, terrible and deadly.

But two men plunged into the struggle, distinguishable by a tricolored
scarf and military uniform; one was Sausse the County Attorney and the
other National Guard Commandant Hannonet.

They brought twenty muskets, which gleamed in the torchlight.

The King comprehended that these officials were a guarantee if not
assistance.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am ready to entrust myself and party to you,
but put a stop to these rough fellow's brutality."

"Ground your arms," cried Hannonet.

The men obeyed but growlingly.

"Excuse me, sir," said the attorney, "but the story is about that the
King is in flight and it is our duty to make sure if it is a fact."

"Make sure?" retorted Isidore. "If this carriage really conveyed his
Majesty you ought to be at his feet: if it is but a private individual
by what right do you stay him?"

"Sir, I am addressing you," went on Sausse, to the King. "Will you be
good enough to answer me?"

"Sire, gain time," whispered Isidore: "Damas and his dragoons are
somewhere near and will doubtless ride up in a trice."

The King thought this right and replied to Sausse:

"I suppose you will let us go on if our passes are correct?"

"Of course," was the reply.

"Then, Baroness," said the Monarch to Lady Tourzel, "be good enough to
find the passports and give them to the gentleman."

The old lady understood what the speaker meant by saying "find!" so she
went to seeking in the pockets where it was not likely to be.

"Nonsense," said one of the crowd, "don't you see that they have not got
any passport."

The voice was fretful and full of menace too.

"Excuse me, sir," said the Queen, "my lady the baroness has the paper
but not knowing that it would be called for, she does not know where she
put it."

The bystanders began to hoot, showing that they were not dupes of the
trick.

"There is a plainer way," said Sausse: "postillions, drive on to my
store, where the ladies and gentlemen can go in while the matter is
cleared up. Go ahead, boys! Soldiers of the National Guard, escort the
carriage."

This invitation was too much like an order to be dallied with.

Besides resistance would probably not have succeeded for the bells
continued to ring and the drum to beat so that the crowd was
considerably augmented, as the carriage moved on.

"Oh, Colonel Damas," muttered the King, "if you will only strike in
before we are put within this accursed house!"

The Queen said nothing for she had to stifle her sobs as she thought of
Charny, and restrained her tears.

Damas? he had managed to break out of Clermont with three officers and
twice as many troopers but the rest had fraternized with the people.

Sausse was a grocer as well as attorney, and his grocery had a parlor
behind the store where he meant to lodge the visitors.

His wife, half-dressed, came from upstairs as the Queen crossed the
sill, with the King next, Lady Elizabeth and Lady Tourzel following.

More than a hundred persons guarded the coach, and stopped before the
store which was in a little square.

"If the lady has found the pass yet," observed Sausse, who had shown the
way in, "I will take it to the Town Council and see if it is correct."

As the passport which Charny had got from Baron Zannone, and given to
the Queen, was in order, the King made a sign that Lady Tourzel was to
hand it over. She drew the precious paper from her pocket and let Sausse
have it. He charged his wife to do the honor of his house while he went
to the town-house.

It was a lively meeting, for Drouet was there to fan the flames. The
silence of curiosity fell as the attorney entered with the document. All
knew that he harbored the party. The mayor pronounced the pass perfectly
good.

"It must be good for there is the royal signature," he said.

A dozen hands were held out for it but Drouet snatched it up.

"But has it got the signature of the Assembly?" he demanded.

It was signed by a member of the Committee though not for the president.

"This is not the question," said the young patriot, "these travelers
are not Baroness von Korff, a Russian lady, with her steward, her
governess and her children, but the King and the Queen, the Prince
and the Princess Royal and Lady Elizabeth, a court lady, and their
guardsmen--the Royal Family in short. Will you or will you not let the
Royal Family go out of the kingdom?"

This question was properly put, but it was too heavy for the town
governors of a third-rate town to handle.

As their deliberation promised to take up some time, Sausse went home to
see how his guests were faring.

They had refused to lay aside their wraps or sit down as this concession
seemed to delay their approaching departure, which they took for
granted.

All their faculties were concentrated on the master of the house who
might be expected to bring the council's decision. When he arrived the
King went to meet him.

"Well, what about the passport?" he asked, with anxiety he vainly strove
to conceal.

"It causes a grave debate in the council," replied Sausse.

"Why? is its validity doubted by any chance?" proceeded the King.

"No; but it is doubted that it is really in the hands of Lady Korff, and
the rumor spreads that it covers the Royal Family."

Louis hesitated an instant, but then, making up his mind, he said:

"Well, yes; I am the King. You see the Queen and the children; I entreat
you to deal with them with the respect the French have always shown
their sovereigns."

The street door had remained open to the staring multitude; the words
were heard without. Unhappily, though they were uttered with a kind of
dignity, the speaker did not carry out the idea in his bob wig, grey
coat, and plain stockings and shoes.

How could anybody see the ruler of the realm in this travesty?

The Queen felt the flush come to her eyes at the poor impression made on
the mob.

"Let us accept Madam Sausse's hospitality," she hastened to say, "and go
upstairs."

Meanwhile the news was carried to the town house and the tumult
redoubled over the town.

How was it this did not attract the soldiers in waiting?

At about nine in the evening, Count Jules Bouille--not his brother Louis
whom we have seen in locksmith's dress--and Lieut. Raigecourt, with
their hussars, were at the Monarch inn door, when they heard a carriage
coming. But it was the cab containing the Queen's hairdresser. He was
very frightened.

He revealed his personality.

"The King got out of Paris last evening," he said: "but it does not
look as if he could keep on; I have warned Colonel Damas who has called
in his outposts; the dragoon regiment mutinied; at Clermont there was
a riot--I have had great trouble to get through. I have the Queen's
diamonds and my brother's hat and coat, and you must give me a horse to
help me on the road."

"Master Leonard," said Bouille, who wanted to set the hairdresser down a
peg, "the horses here are for the King's service and nobody else can use
them."

"But as I tell you that there is little likelihood of the King coming
along----"

"But still he may, and he would hold me to task for letting you have
them."

"What, do you imagine that the King would blame you for giving me his
horses when it is to help me out of a fix?"

The young noble could not help smiling. Leonard was comic in the big
hat and misfit coat, and he was glad to get rid of him by begging the
landlord to find a horse for the cab.

Bouille and his brother-officer went through the town and saw nothing
on the farther side; they began to believe that the King, eight or ten
hours belated, would never come. It was eleven when they returned to
the inn. They had sent out an orderly before this, who had reported to
Damas, as we have seen.

They threw themselves, dressed, on the bed to wait till midnight.

At half past twelve they were aroused by the tocsin, the drum and the
shouting. Thrusting their heads out of the window, they saw the town in
confusion racing towards the town hall. Many armed men ran in the same
direction with all sorts of weapons.

The officers went to the stables to get the horses out so that they
would be ready for the carriage if it crossed the town. They had their
own chargers ready and kept by the King's relay, on which sat the
postboys.

Soon they learnt, amid the shouts and menaces that the royal party had
been stopped.

They argued that they had better ride over to Stenay where the little
army corps commanded by Bouille was waiting. They could arrive in two
hours.

Abandoning the relay, they galloped off, so that one of the main forces
foiled the King at the critical moment!

During this time, Choiseul had been pushing on but he lost three
quarters of an hour by threading a wood, the guide going wrong by
accident or design. This was the very time while the King was compelled
to alight and go into Sausse's.

At half after twelve, while the two young officers were riding off by
the other road, Choiseul presented himself at the gate, coming by the
cross-road.

"Who goes there?" was challenged at the bridge where National guards
were posted.

"France--Lauzun Hussars," was the count's reply.

"You cannot pass!" returned the sentry, who called up the guard to arms.

At the instant the darkness was streaked with torchlight, and the
cavalry could see masses of armed men and the musket-barrels shine.

Not knowing what had happened, Choiseul parleyed and said that he wanted
to be put in communication with the officers of the garrison.

But while he was talking he noticed that trees were felled to make a
breastwork and that two field pieces were trained on his forty men. As
the gunner finished his aiming, the hussar's provost-marshal's squad
arrived, unhorsed; they had been surprised and disarmed in the barracks
and only knew that the King had been arrested. They were ignorant what
had become of their comrades.

As they were concluding these thin explanations, Choiseul saw a troop of
horse advance in the gloom and heard the bridge guards challenge:

"Who goes there?"

"The Provence Dragoons!"

A national Guard fired off his gun:

"It is Damas with his cavalry," whispered the count to an officer.

Without waiting for more, he shook off the two soldiers who were
clinging to his skirts and suggesting that his duty was to obey the town
authorities and know nothing beyond. He commanded his men to go at the
trot, and took the defenders so well by surprise that he cut through,
and rushed the streets, swarming with people.

On approaching Sausse's store, he saw the royal carriage, without the
horses, and a numerous guard before the mean-looking house in the petty
square.

Not to have a collision with the townsfolk, the count went straight to
the military barracks, which he knew.

As he came out, two men stopped him and bade him appear before the town
council; still having his troopers within call, he sent them off, saying
that he would pay the council a visit when he found time, and he ordered
the sentry to allow no one entrance.

Inquiring of the stablemen, he learnt that the hussars, not knowing what
had become of their leaders, had scattered about the streets where the
inhabitants had sympathized with them and treated them to drink. He went
back into barracks to count what he might rely upon, say, forty men, as
tired as their horses which had travelled more than twenty leagues that
day.

But the situation was not one to trifle with.

He had the pistols inspected to make sure they were loaded; as the
hussars were Germans and did not understand French, he harangued them
in their tongue to the effect that they were in Varennes where the
Royal Family had been waylaid and were detained and that they must be
rescued or the rescuers should die. Short but sharp, the speech made a
fine impression; the men repeated in German: "The King! the Queen!" with
amazement.

Leaving them no time to cool down, he arranged them in fours and led
them with sabres drawn to the house where he suspected the King was held
in durance.

In the midst of the volunteer guards' invectives, he placed two videttes
at the door, and alighted to walk in.

As he was crossing the threshold, he was touched on the shoulder by
Colonel Damas on whose assistance he had no little depended.

"Are you in force?" he inquired.

"I am all but alone. My regiment refused to follow me and I have but
half-a-dozen men."

"What a misfortune! but never mind--I have forty fellows and we must see
what we can do with them."

The King was receiving a deputation from the town, whose spokesman said:

"Since there is no longer any doubt that Varennes has the honor to
receive King Louis, we come to have his orders."

"My orders are to have the horses put to my carriage and let me depart,"
replied the monarch.

The answer to this precise request will never be known as at this point
they heard Choiseul's horsemen gallop up and saw them form a line on the
square with flashing swords.

The Queen started with a beam of joy in her eyes.

"We are saved," she whispered to her sister-in-law.

"Heaven grant it," replied the holy woman, who looked to heaven for
everything.

The King waited eagerly and the town's delegation with disquiet.

Great riot broke out in the outer room guarded by countrymen with
scythes; words and blows were exchanged and Choiseul, without his hat
and sword in hand, appeared on the sill.

Above his shoulder was seen the colonel's pale but resolute face.

In the look of both was such a threatening expression that the deputies
stood aside so as to give a clear space to the Royal Family.

"Welcome, Lord Choiseul," cried the Queen going over to the officer.

"Alas, my lady, I arrive very late."

"No matter, since you come in good company."

"Nay, we are almost alone, on the contrary. Dandoins has been held with
his cavalry at St. Menehould and Damas has been abandoned by his troop."

The Queen sadly shook her head.

"But where is Chevalier Bouille, and Lieut. Raigecourt?" he looked
inquiringly around.

"I have not so much as seen those officers," said the King, joining in.

"I give you my word, Sire, that I thought they had died under your
carriage-wheels, or even you had come to this," observed Count Damas.

"What is to be done?" asked the King.

"We must save you," replied Damas. "Give your orders."

"My orders?"

"Sire, I have forty hussars at the door, who are fagged but we can get
as far as Dun."

"But how can we manage?" inquired the King.

"I will dismount seven of my men, on whose horses you should get, the
Dauphin in your arms. We will lay the swords about us and cut our way
through as the only chance. But the decision must be instant for in a
quarter of an hour perhaps my men will be bought over."

The Queen approved of the project but the King seemed to elude her gaze
and the influence she had over him.

"It is a way," he responded to the proposer, "and I daresay the only
one; but can you answer for it that in the unequal struggle of thirty
men with seven or eight hundred, no shot will kill my boy or my
daughter, the Queen or my sister?"

"Sire, if such a misfortune befell through my suggestion, I should be
killed under your Majesty's eyes."

"Then, instead of yielding to such mad propositions," returned the
other, "let us reason calmly."

The Queen sighed and retired a few paces. In this regretful movement,
she met Isidore who was going over to the window whither a noise in the
street attracted him; he hoped it was his brother coming.

"The townsfolk do not refuse to let me pass," said the King, without
appearing to notice the two in conversation, "but ask me to wait till
daybreak. We have no news of the Count of Charny, who is so deeply
devoted to us. I am assured that Bouille and Raigecourt left the town
ten minutes before we drove in, to notify Marquis Bouille and bring up
his troops, which are surely ready. Were I alone I should follow your
advice and break through; but it is impossible to risk the Queen, my
children, my sister and the others with so small a guard as you offer,
especially as part must be dismounted--for I certainly would not leave
my Lifeguards here."

He looked at his watch.

"It will soon be three o'clock; young Bouille left at half after twelve
so that, as his father must have ranged his troops in detachments along
the road, he will warn them and they will successively arrive. About
five or six, Marquis Bouille ought to be here with the main body, the
first companies outstripping him. Thereupon, without any danger to my
family, and no violence, we can quit Varennes and continue our road."

Choiseul acknowledged the logic in this argument but he felt that logic
must not be listened to on certain occasions.

He turned to the Queen to beg other orders from her, or to have her get
the King to revoke his, but she shook her head and said:

"I do not want to take anything upon myself; it is the King's place to
command and my duty to obey. Besides, I am of his opinion--Bouille will
soon be coming."

Choiseul bowed and drew Damas aside while beckoning the two Lifeguards
to join in the council he held.




CHAPTER XV.

POOR CATHERINE.


The scene was slightly changed in aspect.

The little princess could not resist the weariness and she was put abed
beside her brother, where both slumbered.

Lady Elizabeth stood by, leaning her head against the wall.

Shivering with anger the Queen stood near the fireplace, looking
alternatively at the King, seated on a bale of goods, and on the four
officers deliberating near the door.

An old woman knelt by the children and prayed; it was the attorney's
grandmother who was struck by the beauty of the children and the Queen's
imposing air.

Sausse and his colleagues had gone out, promising that the horses should
be harnessed to the carriage.

But the Queen's bearing showed that she attached little faith to the
pledge, which caused Choiseul to say to his party:

"Gentlemen, do not trust to the feigned tranquility of our masters;
the position is not hopeless and we must look it in the face. The
probability is that at present, Marquis Bouille has been informed, and
will be arriving here about six, as he ought to be at hand with some of
the royal Germans. His vanguard may be only half an hour before him; for
in such a scrape all that is possible ought to be performed. But we must
not deceive ourselves about the four or five thousand men surrounding
us, and that the moment they see the troops, there will be dreadful
excitement and imminent danger.

"They will try to drag the King back from Varennes, put him on a
horse and carry him to Clermont, threaten and have a try at his life
perhaps--but this will only be a temporary danger," added Choiseul, "and
as soon as the barricades are stormed and our cavalry inside the town,
the route will be complete. Therefore we ten men must hold out as many
minutes; as the land lays we may hope to lose but a man a minute, so
that we have time enough."

The audience nodded; this devotion to the death's point, thus plainly
set down, was accepted with the same simplicity.

"This is what we must do," continued the count, "at the first shot we
hear and shout without, we rush into the outer room, where we kill
everybody in it, and take possession of the outlets: three windows,
where three of us defend. The seven others stand on the stairs which
the winding will facilitate our defending as one may face a score. The
bodies of the slain will serve as rampart; it is a hundred to one that
the troops will be masters of the town, before we are killed to the last
man, and though that happens, we will fill a glorious page in history,
as recompense for our sacrifice."

The chosen ones shook hands on this pledge like Spartans, and selected
their stations during the action: the two Lifeguards, and Isidore, whose
place was kept though he was absent, at the three casements on the
street; Choiseul at the staircase foot; next him, Damas, and the rest of
the soldiers.

As they settled their arrangements, bustle was heard in the street.

In came a second deputation headed by Sausse, the National Guards
commander Hannonet, and three or four town officers. Thinking they
came to say the horses were put to the coach, the King ordered their
admittance.

The officers who were trying to read every token, believed that Sausse
betrayed hesitation but that Hannonet had a settled will which was of
evil omen.

At the same time, Isidore ran up and whispered a few words to the Queen
before he went out again. She went to the children, pale, and leaned on
the bed.

As the deputation bowed without speaking, the King pretended to infer
what they came upon, and said:

"Gentlemen, the French have merely gone astray, and their attachment
to their monarch is genuine. Weary of the excesses daily felt in my
capital, I have decided to go down into the country where the sacred
flame of devotion ever burns; I am assured of finding the ancient
devotion of the people here, I am ready to give my loyal subjects the
proof of my trust. So, I will form an escort, part troops of the line
and part National Guards, to accompany me to Montmedy where I have
determined to retire. Consequently, commander, I ask you to select the
men to escort me from your own force, and to have my carriage ready."

During the silence, Sausse and Hannonet looked at each other for one to
speak. At last the latter bowed and said,

"Sire, I should feel great pleasure in obeying your Majesty, but an
article of the Constitution forbids the King leaving the kingdom and
good Frenchmen from aiding a flight."

This made the hearer start.

"Consequently," proceeded the volunteer soldier, lifting his hand to
hush the King, "the Varennes Council decide that a courier must take the
word to Paris and return with the advice of the Assembly before allowing
the departure."

The King felt the perspiration damp his brow, while the Queen bit her
pale lips fretfully, and Lady Elizabeth raised her eyes and hands to
heaven.

"Soho, gentlemen," exclaimed the sovereign with the dignity returning
to him when driven to the wall. "Am I no longer the master to go my own
way? In that case I am more of a slave than the meanest of my subjects."

"Sire," replied the National Guardsman, "you are always the ruler;
but all men, King or citizens, are bound by their oath; you swore to
obey the law, and ought to set the example--it is also a noble duty to
fulfill."

Meanwhile Choiseul had consulted with the Queen by glances and on her
mute assent he had gone downstairs.

The King was aware that he was lost if he yielded without resistance to
this rebellion of the villages, for it was rebellion from his point of
view.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this is violence; but I am not so lonely as you
imagine. At the door are forty determined men and ten thousand soldiers
are around Varennes. I order you to have my horses harnessed to the
coach--do you hear, I order!"

"Well said, Sire," whispered the Queen, stepping up; "let us risk life
but not injure our honor and dignity."

"What will result if we refuse your Majesty?" asked the National Guards
officer.

"I shall appeal to force, and you will be responsible for the blood
spilt, which will be shed by you."

"Have it so then," replied Hannonet, "call in your hussars--I will let
my men loose on them!"

He left the room.

The King and the Queen looked at one another, daunted; they would
perhaps have given way had it not been for an incident.

Pushing aside her grandmother, who continued to pray by the bedside,
Madam Sausse walked up to the Queen and said with the bluntness and
plain speech of the common people:

"So, so, you are the Queen, it appears?"

Marie Antoinette turned, stung at being accosted thus.

"At least I thought so an hour ago," she replied.

"Well, if you are the Queen, and get twenty odd millions to keep your
place, why do you not hold to it, being so well paid?"

The Queen uttered an outcry of pain and said to the King:

"Oh, anything, everything but such insults!"

She took up the sleeping prince off the couch in her arms, and running
to open the window, she cried:

"My lord, let us show ourselves to the people, and learn whether they
are entirely corrupted. In that case, appeal to the soldiers, and
encourage them with voice and gesture. It is little enough for those who
are going to die for us!"

The King mechanically followed her and appeared on the balcony. The
whole square on which fell their gaze presented a scene of lively
agitation.

Half Choiseul's hussars were on horseback; the others, separated from
their chargers, were carried away by the mob, having been won over; the
mounted men seemed submissive yet to Choiseul, who was talking to them
in German but they seemed to point to their lost comrades.

Isidore Charny, with his knife in hand, seemed to be waylaying for some
prey like a hunter.

"The King!" was the shout from five hundred voices.

Had the Sixteenth Louis been regally arrayed, or even militarily,
with sword or sceptre in his hand, and spoken in the strong, imposing
voice seeming still to the masses that of God, he might have swayed the
concourse.

But in the grey dawn, that wan light which spoils beauty itself, he was
not the personage his friends--or even his enemies, expected to behold.
He was clad like a waiting-gentleman, in plain attire, with a powderless
curly wig; he was pale and flabby and his beard had bristled out; his
thick lip and dull eye expressed no idea of tyranny or the family man;
he stammered over and over again: "Gentlemen, my children!"

However, the Count of Choiseul cried "Long live the King!" Isidore
Charny imitated him, and such was the magic of royalty that spite of his
not looking to be head of the great realm, a few voices uttered a feeble
"God save the King!"

But one cheer responded, set up by the National Guards commander, and
most generally repeated, with a mighty echo--it was:

"The Nation forever!" It was rebellion at such a time, and the King and
the Queen could see that part of their German hussars had joined in with
it.

She uttered a scream of rage, and hugging her son to her, ignorant
of the grandeur of passing events, she hung over the rail, muttering
between her teeth and finally hurling at the multitude these words:

"You beasts!"

Some heard this and replied by similar language, the whole place being
in immense uproar.

Choiseul, in despair, was only wishful to get killed.

"Hussars," he shouted, "in the name of honor, save the King!"

But at the head of twenty men, well armed, a fresh actor came on the
stage. It was Drouet, come from the council which he had constrained to
stay the King from going.

"Ha," he cried, stepping up to the count, "you want to take away the
King, do ye? I tell you it will not be unless dead."

Choiseul started towards him with his sword up.

"Stand, or I will have you shot," interrupted the National Guards
commander.

Just then a man leaped out of the crowd, who could not stop him. It was
Isidore Charny who was watching for Drouet.

"Back, back," he yelled to the bystanders, crushing them away from
before the breast of his horse, "this wretch belongs to me."

But as he was striking at Drouet with his short sword, two shots went
off together: a pistol and a gun--the bullet of the first flattened on
his collarbone, the other went through his chest. They were fired so
close to him that the unfortunate young noble was literally wrapt in
flame and smoke.

Through the fiery cloud he was seen to throw up his arms as he gasped:

"Poor Catherine!"

Letting his weapon drop, he bent back in the saddle, and slipped from
the crupper to the ground.

The Queen uttered a terrible shriek. She nearly let the prince fall, and
in her own falling back she did not see a horseman riding at the top of
his pace from Dun, and plunging into the wake Isidore had furrowed in
the crowd.

The King closed the window behind the Queen.

It was no longer almost but all voices that roared "The Nation forever!"
The twenty hussars who had been the last reliance of royalty in
distress, added their voices to the cheer.

The Queen sank upon an armchair, hiding her face in her hands, for she
still saw Isidore falling in her defense as his brother had been slain
at her door at Versailles.

Suddenly there was loud disturbance at the door which forced her to lift
her eyes. We renounce describing what passed in an instant in her heart
of Queen and loving woman--it was George Charny, pale and bloody from
the last embrace of his brother, who stood on the threshold!

The King seemed confounded.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE.


The room was crammed with strangers and National Guards whom curiosity
had drawn into it.

The Queen was therefore checked in her first impulse which was to rush
to the new arrival, sponge away the blood with her handkerchief and
address him some of the comforting words which spring from the heart,
and therefore go to them.

But she could not help rising a little on her seat, extend her arms
towards him and mutter his Christian name.

Calm and gloomy, he waved his hand to the strangers and in a soft but
firm voice, said:

"You will excuse me, but I have business with their Majesties."

The National Guard began to remonstrate that they were there to prevent
anybody talking with the prisoners, but Charny pressed his bloodless
lips, frowned, opened his riding coat to show that he carried pistols,
and repeated in a voice as gentle as before but twice as menacing:

"Gentlemen, I have already had the honor to tell you that I have private
business with the King and the Queen."

At the same time he waved them to go out. On this voice, and the mastery
Charny exercised over others, Damas and the two bodyguards resumed their
energy, temporarily impaired, and cleared the room by driving the gapers
and volunteer soldiers before them.

The Queen now comprehended what use this man would have been in the
royal carriage instead of Lady Tourzel, whom she had let etiquette
impose on them.

Charny glanced round to make sure that only the faithful were at hand,
and said as he went nearer Marie Antoinette:

"I am here, my lady. I have some seventy hussars at the town gate. I
believe I can depend on them. What do you order me to do?"

"Tell us first what has happened you, my poor Charny?" she said in
German.

He made a sign towards Malden whom he knew to understand the speaker's
language.

"Alas, not seeing you, we thought you were dead," she went on in French.

"Unhappily, it is not I but my brother who is slain--poor Isidore! but
my turn is coming."

"Charny, I ask you what happened and how you came to keep so long out of
the way?" continued the Queen. "You were a defaulter, George, especially
to me," she added in German and in a lower voice.

"I thought my brother would account for my temporary absence," he said,
bowing.

"Yes, I know: to pursue that wretch of a man, Drouet, and we feared for
awhile that you had come to disaster, in that chase."

"A great misfortune did befall me, for despite all my efforts, I could
not catch up with him. A postboy returning let him know that your
carriage had taken the Varennes Road when he was thinking it had gone
to Verdun: he turned into the woods where I pulled my pistols on him
but they were not loaded--I had taken Dandoins' horse and not the one
prepared for me. It was fatality, and who could help it? I pursued him
none the less through the forest but I only knew the roads, so that I
was thrown by my horse falling into a ditch! In the darkness I was but
hunting a shadow, and he knew it in every hollow. Thus I was left alone
in the night, cursing with rage."

She offered her hand to him and he touched it with his tremulous lips.

"Nobody replied to my calls. All night long I wandered and only at
daybreak came out at a village on the road from Varennes to Dun. As
it was possible that you had escaped Drouet as he escaped me, it was
then useless for me to go to Varennes; yet but as he might have had you
stopped there, and I was but one man and my devotion was useless, I
determined to go on to Dun.

"Before I arrived I met Captain Deslon with a hundred hussars. He was
fretting in the absence of news: he had seen Bouille and Raigecourt
racing by towards Stenay, but they had said nothing to him, probably
from some distrust. But I know Deslon to be a loyal gentleman; I guessed
that your Majesty had been detained at Varennes, and that Bouille and
his companion had taken flight to get help. I told Deslon all, adjured
him to follow me with his cavalry, which he did, but leaving thirty to
guard the Meuse Bridge.

"An hour after we were at Varennes, four leagues in an hour, where I
wanted to charge and upset everything between us and your Majesty: but
we found breastworks inside of works; and to try to ride over them
was folly. So I tried parleying: a post of the National Guards being
there, I asked leave to join my hussars with those inside but it was
refused me: I asked to be allowed to get the King's orders direct and
as that was about to be refused likewise. I spurred my steed, jumped
two barricades and guided by the tumult, galloped up to this spot just
when my bro--your Majesty fell back from the balcony. Now, I await your
orders," he concluded.

The Queen pressed his hand in both hers.

"Sire," she said to the King, still plunged in torpor; "have you heard
what this faithful servitor is saying?"

The King gave no answer and she went over to him.

"Sire, there is no time to lose, and indeed too much has been lost.
Here is Lord Charny with seventy men, sure, he says, and he wants your
orders."

He shook his head, though Charny implored him with a glance and the
Queen by her voice.

"Orders? I have none to give, being a prisoner. Do whatever you like."

"Good, that is all we want," said the Queen: "you have a blank warrant,
you see," she added to her follower whom she took aside: "Do as the
King says, whatever you see fit." In a lower voice she appended: "Do it
swiftly, and with vigor, or else we are lost!"

"Very well," returned the Lifeguards officer, "let me confer a
moment with these gentlemen and we will carry out what we determine
immediately."

Choiseul entered, carrying some letters wrapped in a bloodstained
handkerchief. He offered this to Charny without a word. The count
understood that it came from his brother and putting out his hand to
receive the tragic inheritance, he kissed the wrapper. The Queen could
not hold back a sigh.

But Charny did not turn round to her, but said as he thrust the packet
into his breast:

"Gentlemen, can you aid me in the last effort I intend?"

"We are ready for anything."

"Do you believe we are a dozen men staunch and able?"

"We are eight or nine, any way."

"Well, I will return to my hussars. While I attack the barriers in
front, you storm them in the rear. By favor of your diversion, I will
force through, and with our united forces we will reach this spot where
we will extricate the King."

They held out their hands to him by way of answer.

"In an hour," said Charny to the King and Queen, "you shall be free, or
I dead."

"Oh, count, do not say that word," said she, "it causes me too much
pain."

George bowed in confirmation of his vow, and stepped towards the door
without being appalled by the fresh uproar in the street.

But as he laid his hand on the knob, it flew open and gave admission to
a new character who mingled directly in the already complicated plot of
the drama.

This was a man in his fortieth year; his countenance was dark and
forbidding; his collar open at the throat, his unbuttoned coat, the dust
on his clothes, and his eyes red with fatigue, all indicated that he had
ridden far and fast under the goad of fierce feeling.

He carried a brace of pistols in his sash girdle and a sabre hung by his
side.

Almost breathless as he opened the door, he appeared relieved only when
he saw the Royal Family. A smile of vengeance flittered over his face
and without troubling about the other persons around the room and by the
doorway itself, which he almost blocked up with his massive form, he
thundered as he stretched out his hand:

"In the name of the National Assembly, you are all my prisoners!"

As swift as thought Choiseul sprang forward with a pistol in hand and
offered to blow out the brains of this intruder, who seemed to surpass
in insolence and resolution all they had met before. But the Queen
stopped the menacing hand with a still swifter action and said in an
undertone to the count:

"Do not hasten our ruin! prudence, my lord! let us gain time for Bouille
to arrive."

"You are right," said Choiseul, putting up the firearm.

The Queen glanced at Charny whom she had thought would have been the
first to intervene: but, astonishing thing! Charny seemed not to
want the new-comer to notice him, and shrank into the darkest corner
apparently in that end.

But she did not doubt him or that he would step out of the mystery and
shadow at the proper time.

The threatening move of the nobleman against the representative of the
National Assembly had passed over without the latter appearing to remark
his escape from death.

Besides, another emotion than fear seemed to monopolize his heart: there
was no mistaking his face's expression; so looks the hunter who has
tracked to the den of the lion, the lioness and their cubs, with their
jackals,--amongst whom was devoured his only child!

But the King had winced at the word "Prisoners," which had m

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