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

On the alarm-bells ringing more loudly, and the roll of the drums beating the reveille, he was roused.

Colonel Chesnaye, to whom Mandat had left his powers, awoke the monarch to have him address the National Guards, and by his presence and some timely words revive their enthusiasm.

The king rose, but half awake, dull and staggering. He was wearing a powdered wig, and he had flattened all the side he had lain upon. The hair-dresser could not be found, so he had to go out with the wig out of trim.

Notified that the king was going to show himself to the defenders, the queen ran out from the council hall where she was.

In contrast with the poor sovereign, whose dim sight sought no one's glance, whose mouth-muscles were flabby and palpitating with involuntary twitches, while his violet coat suggested he was wearing mourning for majesty, the queen was burning with fever, although pale. Her eyes were red, though dry.

She kept close to this phantom of monarchy, who came out in the day instead of midnight, with owlish, blinking eyes. She hoped to inspire him with her overflow of life, strength, and courage.

All went well enough while this exhibition was in the rooms, though the National Guards, mixed in with the noblemen, seeing their ruler close to this poor, flaccid, heavy man, who had so badly failed on a similar occasion at Varennes, wondered if this really was the monarch whose poetical legend the women and the priests were already beginning to weave.

This was not the one they had expected to see.

The aged Duke of Mailly – with one of those good intentions destined to be another paving-stone for down below – drew his rapier, and sinking down at the foot of the king, vowed in a quavering voice to die, he and the old nobility which he represented, for the grandson of Henry IV. Here were two blunders: the National Guards had no great sympathy for the old nobility, and they were not here to defend the descendant of Henry IV., but the constitutional king.

So, in reply to a few shouts of "Hail to the king!" cheers for the nation burst forth on all sides.

Something to make up for this coolness was sought. The king was urged to go down into the royal yard. Alas! the poor potentate had no will of his own. Disturbed at his meals, and cheated, with only one hour's sleep instead of seven, he was but an automaton, receiving impetus from outside its material nature.

Who gave this impetus? The queen, a woman of nerve, who had neither slept nor eaten.

Some unhappy characters fail in all they undertake, when circumstances are beyond their level. Instead of attracting dissenters, Louis XVI., in going up to them, seemed expressly made to show how little glamour majesty can lend a man who has no genius or strength of mind.

Here, as in the rooms, when the Royalists managed to get up a shout of "Long live the king!" an immense hurrah for the nation replied to them.

The Royalists being dull enough to persist, the patriots overwhelmed them with "No, no, no; no other ruler than the nation!"

And the king, almost supplicating, added: "Yes, my sons, the nation and the monarch make but one henceforward."

"Bring the prince," whispered Marie Antoinette to Princess Elizabeth; "perhaps the sight of a child may touch them."

While they were looking for the dauphin, the king continued the sad review. The bad idea struck him to appeal to the artillerists, who were mainly Republicans. If the king had the gift of speech-making, he might have forced the men to listen to him, though their belief led them astray, for it would have been a daring step, and it might have helped him to face the cannon; but there was nothing exhilarating in his words or gesture; he stammered.

The Royalists tried to cover his stammerings with the luckless hail of "Long live the king!" already twice a failure, and it nearly brought about a collision.

Some cannoniers left their places and rushed over to the king, threatening him with their fists, and saying:

"Do you think that we will shoot down our brothers to defend a traitor like you?"

The queen drew the king back.

"Here comes the dauphin!" called out voices. "Long live the hope of the realm!"

Nobody took up the cry. The poor boy had come in at the wrong time; as theatrical language says, he had missed his cue.

The king went back into the palace, a downright retreat – almost a flight. When he got to his private rooms he dropped, puffing and blowing, into an easy-chair.

Stopping by the door, the queen looked around for some support. She spied Charny standing up by the door of her own rooms, and she went over to him.

"Ah, all is lost!" she moaned.

"I am afraid so, my lady," replied the Life Guardsman.

"Can we not still flee?"

"It is too late."

"What is left for us to do, then?"

"We can but die," responded Charny, bowing.

The queen heaved a sigh, and went into her own rooms.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FIRST MASSACRE

Mandat had hardly been slain, before the Commune nominated Santerre as commanding general in his stead, and he ordered the drums to beat in all the town and the bells to be rung harder than ever in all the steeples. He sent out patrols to scour the ways, and particularly to scout around the Assembly.

Some twenty prowlers were made prisoners, of whom half escaped before morning, leaving eleven in the Feuillants' guard-house. In their midst was a dandified young gentleman in the National Guard uniform, the newness of which, the superiority of his weapons, and the elegance of his style, made them suspect he was an aristocrat. He was quite calm. He said that he went to the palace on an order, which he showed the examining committee of the Feuillants' ward. It ran:

"The National Guard, bearer of this paper, will go to the palace to learn what the state of affairs is, and return to report to the Attorney-and-Syndic-General of the Department.

    (Signed) "Boirie,
    "Leroulx,
    "Municipal Officers."

The order was plain enough, but it was thought that the signatures were forged, and it was sent to the City Hall by a messenger to have them verified.

This last arrest had brought a large crowd around the place, and some such voices as are always to be heard at popular gatherings yelled for the prisoner's death.

An official saw that this desire must not spread, and was making a speech, to which the mob was yielding, when the messenger came back from the Hall to say the order was genuine, and they ought to set at liberty the prisoner named Suleau.

At this name, a woman in the mob raised her head and uttered a scream of rage.

"Suleau?" she cried. "Suleau, the editor of the 'Acts of the Apostles' newspaper, one of the slayers of Liege independence? Let me at this Suleau! I call for the death of Suleau!"

The crowd parted to let this little, wiry woman go through. She wore a riding-habit of the national colors, and was carrying a sword in a cross-belt. She went up to the city official and forced him to give her the place on the stand. Her head was barely above the concourse, before they all roared:

"Bravo, Theroigne!"

Indeed, Theroigne was a most popular woman, so that Suleau had made a hit when he said she was the bride of Citizen Populus, as well as referring to her free-and-easy morals.

Besides, he had published at Brussels the "Alarm for Kings," and thus helped the Belgian outbreak, and to replace under the Austrian cane and the priestly miter a noble people wishing to be free and join France.

At this very epoch Theroigne was writing her memoirs, and had read the part about her arrest there to the Jacobin Club.