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

The queen sprung forward; but even as she set foot on the sill, she uttered a scream of horror and drew back, with her hands covering her eyes. The presence of the blood-spots was explained, for a dead body had been placed in the room.

It was her almost stepping upon this which had caused her to leap back.

"Bless us," said the king, "it is poor Count Charny's body!" in the same tone as he had said to the gory relic on the pike, "This is poor Mandat's head."

Indeed, the deputies had snatched the body from the cutthroats, and ordered it to be taken into the empty room, without the least idea that the royal family would be consigned to this room in the next ten minutes. It was now carried out and the guests installed. They talked of cleaning up, but the queen shook her head in opposition, and was the first to take a place over the blood-stains. No one noticed that she burst her shoe-laces and dabbled her foot in the red, still warm blood.

"Oh, Charny, Charny!" she murmured; "why does not my life-blood ooze out here to the last drop to mingle with yours unto all eternity?"

Three P. M. struck.

The last of her Life Guards was no more, for in and about her palace nearly a thousand nobles and Swiss had fallen.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WIDOW

During the slaying of the last of his adherents, what was the monarch doing? Being hungry, he called for his dinner.

Bread and wine, cold fowl, and meat, and fruit were brought him. He set to eating as if he were at a hunting-party, without noticing how he was stared at.

Among the eyes fixed on him was a pair burning because tears would not come. They were the queen's. It seemed to her that she could stay there forever, with her feet in her beloved's blood, living like a flower on the grave, with no nourishment but such as death affords.

She had suffered much lately, but never so as to see the king eating, for the position of affairs was serious enough to take away a man's appetite.

The Assembly, rather than protect him, had need of protection for itself. It was threatened by a formidable multitude roaring for the dethronement, and they obeyed by a decree. It proposed a National Convention, the head of the executive power being temporarily suspended from his functions. The Civil List was not to be paid. The king and family were to remain with the Assembly until order was restored; then they were to be placed in the Luxembourg Palace. Vergniaud told the deposed sovereign that it was the only way to save his neck.

This decree was proclaimed by torch-light that night.

The lights at the Tuileries fell on the ghastly scenes of the searchers and the mourners among the dead. Three thousand five hundred insurgents – to omit two hundred thieves shot by the rioters – had perished. This supposes as many wounded at the least. As the tumbrels rolled with the corpses to the working quarters, a chorus of curses went up against the king, the queen, their foreign camerilla, the nobles who had counseled them. Some swore revenge, and they had it in the coming massacres; others took up weapons and ran to the palace to vent their spite on the dead Swiss; others again crowded round the Assembly and the abbey where were prisoners, shouting "Vengeance."

The Tuileries presented an awful sight: smoking and bloody, deserted by all except the military posts which watched lest, under pretense of finding their dead, pillagers robbed the poor royal residence with its broken doors and smashed windows.

The post under the great clock, the main stairs, was commanded by a young captain of the National Guard, who was no doubt inspired by deep pity by the disaster, if one might judge by the expression of his countenance as each cart-load of dead was removed.

But the dreadful events did not seem to affect him a whit more than they had the deposed king. For, about eleven at night, he was busy in satisfying a monstrous appetite at the expense of a quartern loaf held under his left arm, while his knife-armed right hand unceasingly sliced off hunks of goodly size, which he inserted into a mouth opening to suit the dimensions of the piece.

Leaning against a vestibule pillar, he was watching the silent procession go by, like shades of mothers, wives and daughters, in the glare of torches set up here and there; they were asking of the extinct crater for the remains of their dear ones.

Suddenly the young officer started at the sight of one veiled phantom.

"It is the Countess of Charny," he muttered.

The shadow passed without seeing or hearing him.

The captain beckoned to his lieutenant.

"Desire," he said to him, on coming up, "yonder goes a poor lady of Doctor Gilbert's acquaintance, who is no doubt looking for her husband among the dead. I think of following her, in case she should need help and advice. I leave the command to you; keep good guard for both of us."

"Hang me if Doctor Gilbert's acquaintance has not a deucedly aristocratic bearing," remarked Lieutenant Desire Maniquet.

"Because she is an aristocrat – she is a countess," replied the officer.

"Go along; I will look out."

The Countess of Charny had already turned the first corner of the stairs, when the captain, detaching himself from his men, began to follow her at the respectful distance of fifteen paces. He was not mistaken. Poor Andrea was looking for her husband, not with the anxious thrill of doubt, but with the dull conviction of despair.

When Charny had been aroused in the midst of his joy and happiness by the echo of deeds in Paris, he had come, pale but resolute, to say to his wife:

"Dear Andrea, the King of France runs the risk of his life, and needs all his defenders. What ought I do?"

"Go where duty calls you, my dear George," she had replied, "and die for the king if you must."

"But how about you?" he asked.

"Do not be uneasy about me," she said. "As I live but in you, God may allow that we shall die together."

That settled all between those great hearts; they did not exchange a word further. When the post-horses came to the door, they set out, and were in town in five hours.

That same evening, we have seen Charny present himself for duty in his naval uniform at the same time that Dr. Gilbert was going to send for him.

Since that hour we know that he never quitted the queen.

Andrea had remained alone, shut in, praying; for a space she entertained the idea of imitating her husband, and claiming her station beside the queen, as he had beside the king; but she had not the courage.

The day of the ninth passed for her in anguish, but without anything positive. At nine in the morning next day she heard the cannon; it is needless to say that each echo of the war-like thunder thrilled her to the inmost fiber of her heart. The firing died out about two o'clock.

Were the people defeated, or the victors? she questioned, and was told that the people had won the day.

What had become of Charny in this terrible fray? She was sure that he had taken a leading part. On making inquiries again, she was told that the Swiss were slain, but most of the noblemen had got away.

But the night passed without his coming. In August, night comes late.

Not till ten o'clock did Andrea lose hope, when she drew a veil over her face and went out.

All along the road she met clusters of women wringing their hands and bands of men howling for revenge. She passed among them, protected by the grief of one and the rage of the other; besides, they were man-hunting that night, and not for women.

The women of both parties were weeping.

Arriving on the Carrousel, Andrea heard the proclamation that the rulers were deposed and safe under the wing of the Assembly, which was all she understood.

Seeing some carts go by, she asked what they carried, and was told the dead from the palace yards. Only the dead were being removed; the turn of the wounded would come later.

She thought that Charny would have fallen at the door of the rooms of the king or the queen, so she entered the palace. It was at the moment when Pitou, commanding the main entrance as the captain, saw, and, recognizing her, followed.

It is not possible to give an idea of the devastation in the Tuileries.

Blood poured out of the rooms and spouted like cascades down the stairs. In some of the chambers the bodies yet lay.