The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

"Who is that man dressed in mourning?"

"The death's-man," replied a voice which made her shudder.

"And what has he under the veil?" continued she.

"The ax which chopped off the head of King Charles I."

The queen turned round, losing color, for she thought she recognized the voice. She was not mistaken; the speaker was the magician who had shown her the awful future in a glass at Taverney, and warned her at Sèvres and on her return from Varennes – Cagliostro, in fact.

She screamed, and fell fainting into Princess Elizabeth's arms.

One week subsequently, on the twenty-second, at six in the morning, all Paris was aroused by the first of a series of minute guns. The terrible booming went on all through the day.

At day-break the six legions of the National Guards were collected at the City Hall. Two processions were formed throughout the town and suburbs to spread the proclamation that the country was in danger.

Danton had the idea of this dreadful show, and he had intrusted the details to Sergent, the engraver, an immense stage-manager.

Each party left the Hall at six o'clock.

First marched a cavalry squadron, with the mounted band playing a funeral march, specially composed. Next, six field-pieces, abreast where the road-way was wide enough, or in pairs. Then four heralds on horseback, bearing ensigns labeled "Liberty" – "Equality" – "Constitution" – "Our Country." Then came twelve city officials, with swords by the sides and their scarfs on. Then, all alone, isolated like France herself, a National Guardsman, in the saddle of a black horse, holding a large tri-color flag, on which was lettered:

"CITIZENS, THE COUNTRY IS IN DANGER!"

In the same order as the preceding, rolled six guns with weighty jolting and heavy rumbling, National Guards and cavalry at the rear.

On every bridge, crossing, and square, the party halted, and silence was commanded by the ruffling of the drums. The banners were waved, and when no sound was heard and the crowd held their peace, the grave voice of the municipal crier arose, reading the proclamation, and adding:

"The country is in danger!"

This last line was dreadful, and rang in all hearts. It was the shriek of the nation, of the motherland, of France. It was the parent calling on her offspring to help her.

And ever and anon the guns kept thundering.

On all the large open places platforms were run up for the voluntary enlistments. With the intoxication of patriotism, the men rushed to put their names down. Some were too old, but lied to be inscribed; some too young, but stood on tiptoe and swore they were full sixteen.

Those who were accepted leaped to the ground, waving their enrollment papers, and cheering or singing the "Let it go on," and kissing the cannon's mouth.

It was the betrothal of the French to war – this war of twenty odd years, which will result in the freedom of Europe, although it may not altogether be in our time.

The excitement was so great that the Assembly was appalled by its own work; it sent men through the town to cry out: "Brothers, for the sake of the country, no rioting! The court wishes disorder as an excuse for taking the king out of the city, so give it no pretext. The king should stay among us."

These dread sowers of words added in a deep voice:

"He must be punished."

They mentioned nobody by name, but all knew who was meant.

Every cannon-report had an echo in the heart of the palace. Those were the king's rooms where the queen and the rest of the family were gathered. They kept together all day, from feeling that their fate was decided this time, so grand and solemn. They did not separate until midnight, when the last cannon was fired.

On the following night Mme. Campan was aroused; she had slept in the queen's bedroom since a fellow had been caught there with a knife, who might have been a murderer.

"Is your majesty ill?" she asked, hearing a moan.

"I am always in pain, Campan, but I trust to have it over soon now. Yes," and she held out her pale hand in the moonbeam, making it seem all the whiter, "in a month this same moonlight will see us free and disengaged from our chains."

"Oh, you have accepted Lafayette's offers," said the lady, "and you will flee?"

"Lafayette's help? Thank God, no," said the queen, with repugnance there was no mistaking; "no, but in a month, my nephew, Francis, will be in Paris."

"Is your majesty quite sure?" asked the royal governess, alarmed.

"Yes, all is settled," returned the sovereign; "alliance is made between Austria and Prussia, two powers who will march upon Paris in combination. We have the route of the French princes and their allied armies, and we can surely say that on such and such a day they will be here or there."

"But do you not fear – "

"Murder?" The queen finished the phrase. "I know that might befall; but they may hold us as hostages for their necks when vengeance impends. However, nothing venture, nothing win."

"And when do the allied sovereigns expect to be in Paris?" inquired Mme. Campan.

"Between the fifteenth and twentieth of August," was the reply.

"God grant it!" said the lady.

But the prayer was not granted; or, if heard, Heaven sent France the succor she had not dreamed of – the Marseillaise Hymn of Liberty.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MEN FROM MARSEILLES

We have said that Barbaroux had written to a friend in the south to send him five hundred men willing to die.

Who was the man who could write such lines? and what influence had he over his friends?

Charles Barbaroux was a very handsome young man of barely twenty-five, who was reproached for his beauty, and considered by Mme. Roland as frivolous and too generally amorous. On the contrary, he loved his country alone, or must have loved her best, for he died for her.

Son of a hardy sea-faring man, he was a poet and orator when quite young – at the breaking out of trouble in his native town during the election of Mirabeau. He was then appointed secretary to the Marseilles town board. Riots at Arles drew him into them; but the seething caldron of Paris claimed him; the immense furnace which needed perfume, the huge crucible hissing for purest metal.

He was Roland's correspondent at the south, and Mme. Roland had pictured from his regular, precise, and wise letters, a man of forty, with his head bald from much thinking, and his forehead wrinkled with vigils. The reality of her dream was a young man, gay, merry, light, fond of her sex, the type of the rich and brilliant generation flourishing in '92, to be cut down in '93.

It was in this head, esteemed too frivolous by Mme. Roland, that the first thought of the tenth of August was conceived, perhaps.

The storm was in the air, but the clouds were tossing about in all directions for Barbaroux to give them a direction and pile them up over the Tuileries.

When nobody had a settled plan, he wrote for five hundred determined men.

The true ruler of France was the man who could write for such men and be sure of their coming.

Rebecqui chose them himself out of the revolutionists who had fought in the last two years' popular affrays, in Avignon and the other fiery towns; they were used to blood; they did not know what fatigue was by name.