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

"I suppose I might have a bite and a sup, then?"

"Of course. I forgot to ask if you might not be hungry."

"Because you know I am always hungry," said Pitou, laughing.

"I need not tell you where the larder is."

"No, no, master; do not worry about me. But you are going to come back here?"

"I shall return."

"Or else tell me where we are to meet?"

"It is useless, for I shall be home in an hour."

Pitou went in search of the eatables with an appetite which in him, as in the case of the king, no events could alter, however serious they might be, while Billet proceeded to the water-side to do what we know.

He had hardly arrived on the spot before a pebble fell, followed by another, and some more, teaching him that what Petion apprehended had come to pass, and that he was a prisoner to the Royalists. So he had flown, according to his instructions, to the Assembly, which had claimed the mayor, as we have described.

Petion, liberated, had only to walk through the House to get back to the mayor's office, leaving his carriage in the Tuileries yard to represent him.

For his part, Billet went home, and found Ange finishing his supper.

"Any news?" asked he.

"Nothing, except that day is breaking and the sky is the color of blood."

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE MORNING

The early sunbeams shone on two horsemen riding at a walking pace along the deserted water-side by the Tuileries. They were Colonel Mandat and his aid.

At one A. M. he was summoned to the City Hall, and refused to go; but on the order being renewed more peremptorily at two, Attorney Roederer said to him:

"Mark, colonel, that under the law the commander of the National Guard is to obey the City Government."

He decided to go, ignorant of two things.

In the first place, forty-seven sections of the forty-eight had joined to the town rulers each three commissioners, with orders to work with the officials and "save the country." Mandat expected to see the old board as before, and not at all to behold a hundred and forty-one fresh faces. Again, he had no idea of the order from this same board to clear the New Bridge of cannon and vacate St. John's Arcade, an order so important that Danton and Manuel personally had superintended its execution.

Consequently, on reaching the Pont Neuf, Mandat was stupefied to find it utterly deserted. He stopped and sent his aid to scout. In ten minutes this officer returned with the word that he saw no guns or National Guards, while the neighborhood was as lonesome as the bridge.

Mandat continued his way, though he perhaps ought to have gone back to the palace; but men, like things, must wend whither their destiny impels.

Proportionably to his approach to the City Hall, he seemed to enter into liveliness. In the same way as the blood in some organizations leaves the extremities cold and pale on rushing back to fortify the heart, so all the movement and heat – the Revolution, in short – was around the City Hall, the seat of popular life, the heart of that great body, Paris.

He stopped to send his officer to the Arcade; but the National Guard had been withdrawn from there, too. He wanted to retrace his steps; but the crowd had packed in behind him, and he was carried, like a waif on the wave, up the Hall steps.

"Stay here," he said to his follower, "and if evil befalls me, run and tell them at the palace."

Mandat yielded to the mob, and was floated into the grand hall, where he met strange and stern faces. It was the insurrection complete, demanding an account of the conduct of this man, who had not only tried to crush it in its development, but to strangle it in its birth.

One of the members of the Commune, the dread body which was to stifle the Assembly and struggle with the Convention, advanced and in the general's name asked:

"By whose order did you double the palace guard?"

"The Mayor of Paris'."

"Show that order."

"I left it at the Tuileries, so that it might be carried out during my absence."

"Why did you order out the cannon?"

"Because I set the battalion on the march, and the field-pieces move with the regiment."

"Where is Petion?"

"He was at the palace when I last saw him."

"A prisoner?"

"No; he was strolling about the gardens."

The interrogation was interrupted here by a new member bringing an unsealed letter, of which he asked leave to make communication. Mandat had no need to do more than cast a glance on this note to acknowledge that he was lost; he recognized his own writing. It was his order to the commanding officer at St. John's Arcade, sent at one in the morning, for him to attack in the rear the mob making for the palace, while the battalion on New Bridge attacked it in flank. This order had fallen into the Commune's hands after the dismissal of the soldiers.

The examination was over; for what could be more damning than this letter in any admissions of the accused?

The council decided that Mandat should be imprisoned in the abbey. The tale goes that the chairman of the board, in saying, "Remove the prisoner," made a sweep of the hand, edge downward, like chopping with an ax. As the guillotine was not in use then, it must have been an arranged sign – perhaps by the Invisibles, whose Grand Copt had divined that instrument.

At all events, the result showed that the sign was taken to imply death.

Hardly had Mandat gone down three of the City Hall steps before a pistol-shot shattered his skull, at the very instant when his son ran toward him. Three years before, the same reception had met Flesselles.

Mandat was only wounded, but as he rose, he fell again with a score of pike-wounds. The boy held out his hands and wailed for his father, but none paid any heed to him. Presently, in the bloody ring, where bare arms plunged amid flashing pikes and swords, a head was seen to surge up, detached from the trunk.

The boy swooned.

The aid-de-camp galloped back to the Tuileries to report what he had witnessed.

The murderers went off in two gangs: one took the body to the river, to throw it in, the other carried the head through the streets.

This was going on at four in the morning.

Let us precede the aid to the Tuileries, and see what was happening.

Having confessed, and made easy about matters since his conscience was tranquilized, the king, unable to resist the cravings of nature, went to bed. But we must say that he lay down dressed.