There were still some thirty paces to go in the thick crowd.
It was evident that the lives of the pair were aimed at, and chiefly the queen's.
The struggle began at the staircase foot.
"If you do not sheathe your sword," said Roederer, "I will answer for nothing."
Without uttering a word, Charny put up his sword.
The party was lifted by the press as a skiff is tossed in a gale by the waves, and drawn toward the Assembly. The king was obliged to push away a ruffian who stuck his fist in his face. The little dauphin, almost smothered, screamed and held out his hands for help.
A man dashed forward and snatched him out of his mother's arms.
"My Lord Charny, my son!" she shrieked; "in Heaven's name, save my boy!"
Charny took a couple of steps in chase of the fellow with the prince, but as soon as he unmasked the queen, two or three hands dragged her toward them, and one clutched the neckerchief on her bosom. She sent up a scream.
Charny forgot Roederer's advice, and his sword disappeared its full length in the body of the wretch who had dared to lay hands on the queen.
The gang howled with rage on seeing one of their number slain, and rushed all the more fiercely on the group.
Highest of all the women yelled: "Why don't you kill the Austrian?" – "Give her to us to have her throat slit!" – "Death to her – death!"
Twenty naked arms were stretched out to seize her. Maddened by grief, thinking nothing of her own danger, she never ceased to cry:
"My son – save my son!"
They touched the portals of the Assembly, but the mob doubled their efforts for fear their prey would escape.
Charny was so closely pressed that he could only ply the handle of his sword. Among the clinched and menacing fists, he saw one holding a pistol and trying to get a shot at the queen. He dropped his sword, grasped the pistol by both hands, wrenched it from the holder, and discharged it into the body of the nearest assailant. The man fell as though blasted by lightning.
Charny stooped in the gap to regain his rapier.
At this moment, the queen entered the Assembly vestibule in the retinue of the king.
Charny's sword was already in a hand that had struck at her.
He flew at the murderer, but at this the doors were slammed, and on the step he dropped, at the same time felled by an iron bar on his head and a spear right through his heart.
"As fell my brothers," he muttered. "My poor Andrea!"
The fate of the Charnys was accomplished with the last one, as in the case of Valence and Isidore. That of the queen, for whom their lives were laid down, was yet to be fulfilled.
At this time, a dreadful discharge of great guns announced that the besiegers and the garrison were hard at work.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BLOOD-STAINS
For a space, the Swiss might believe that they had dealt with an army and wiped it off the earth. They had slain nearly four hundred men in the royal yard, and almost two hundred in the Carrousel; seven guns were the spoils.
As far as they could see, no foes were in sight.
One small isolated battery, planted on the terrace of a house facing the Swiss guard-house, continued its fire without their being able to silence it. As they believed they had suppressed the insurrection, they were taking measures to finish with this battery at any cost, when they heard on the water-side the rolling of drums and the much more awful rolling of artillery over the stones.
This was the army which the king was watching through his spy-glass from the Louvre gallery.
At the same time the rumor spread that the king had quitted the palace and had taken refuge in the House of Representatives.
It is hard to tell the effect produced by this news, even on the most firm adherents.
The monarch, who had promised to die at his royal post, deserting it and passing over to the enemy, or at least surrendering without striking a blow!
Thereupon the National Guards regarded themselves as released from their oath, and almost all withdrew.
Several noblemen followed them, thinking it foolish to die for a cause which acknowledged itself lost.
Alone the Swiss remained, somber and silent, the slaves of discipline.
From the top of the Flora terrace and the Louvre gallery windows, could be seen coming those heroic working-men whom no army had ever resisted, and who had in one day brought low the Bastile, though it had been taking root during four centuries.
These assailants had their plan; believing the king in his castle, they sought to encompass him so as to take him in it.
The column on the left bank had orders to get in by the river gates; that coming down St. Honore Street to break in the Feuillants' gates, while the column on the right bank were to attack in front, led by Westerman, with Santerre and Billet under his orders.
The last suddenly poured in by all the small entrances on the Carrousel, singing the "It shall go on."
The Marseilles men were in the lead, dragging in their midst two four-pounders loaded with grape-shot.
About two hundred Swiss were ranged in order of battle on Carrousel Square.
Straight to them marched the insurgents, and as the Swiss leveled their muskets, they opened their ranks and fired the pieces.
The soldiers discharged their guns, but they immediately fell back to the palace, leaving some thirty dead and wounded on the pavement.
Thereupon, the rebels, headed by the Breton and Marseilles Federals, rushed on the Tuileries, capturing the two yards – the royal, in the center, where there were so many dead, and the princes', near the river and the Flora restaurant.
Billet had wished to fight where Pitou fell, with a hope that he might be only wounded, so that he might do him the good turn he owed for picking him up on the parade-ground.
So he was one of the first to enter the center court. Such was the reek of blood that one might believe one was in the shambles; it rose from the heap of corpses, visible as a smoke in some places.
This sight and stench exasperated the attackers, who hurled themselves on the palace.
Besides, they could not have hung back had they wished, for they were shoved ahead by the masses incessantly spouted forth by the narrow doors of the Carrousel.
But we hasten to say that, though the front of the pile resembled a frame of fire-works in a display, none had the idea of flight.
Nevertheless, once inside the central yard, the insurgents, like those in whose gore they slipped, were caught between two fires: that from the clock entrance and from the double row of barracks.