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

"He fell in love with the queen. I became the confidante in this amour. As I believe you have loved without return, Doctor Gilbert, you can understand what I suffered. Yet this was not enough. It happened on a day that the queen came to me to say: 'Andrea, save my life; more than life – my honor!' It was necessary that I should become the bride of the man I had loved three years without becoming his wife. I agreed. Five years I dwelt beside that man, flame within, but ice without; a statue with a burning heart. Doctor, as a doctor, can you understand what my heart went through?

"One day – day of unspeakable bliss – my self-sacrifice, silence, and devotion touched that man. For six years I loved him without letting him suspect it by a look, when he came all of a quiver to throw himself at my feet and cry: 'I know all, and I love you!'

"Willing to recompense me, God, in giving me my husband, restored me my child. A year flew by like a day – nay, an hour, a minute. This year is all I call my life.

"Four days ago the lightning fell at my feet. The count's honor bid him go to Paris, to die there. I did not make any remark, did not shed a tear; I went with him. Hardly had we arrived before he parted from me. Last night I found him, slain. There he rests, in the next room.

"Do you think I am too ambitious to crave to lie in the same grave? Do you believe you can refuse the request I make to you?

"Doctor Gilbert, you are a learned physician and a skillful chemist. You have been guilty of great wrongs to me, and you have much to expiate as regards me. Well, give me a swift sure poison, and I shall not merely forgive you all, but die with a heart full of gratitude to you."

"Madame," replied Gilbert, "as you say, your life has been one long, dolorous trial, and for it all glory be yours, since you have borne it nobly and saintly, like a martyr."

She gave an impatient toss of the head, as if she wanted a direct answer.

"Now you say to your torturer: 'You made my life a misery; give me a sweet death.' You have the right to do this, and there is reason in your adding: 'You must do it, for you have no right to refuse me anything,' Do you still want the poison?"

"I entreat you to be friend enough to give it me."

"Is life so heavy to you that it is impossible for you to support it?"

"Death is the sweetest boon man can give me; the greatest blessing God may grant me."

"In ten minutes you shall have your wish, madame," responded Gilbert, bowing and taking a step toward the door.

"Ah!" said the lady, holding out her hand to him, "you do me more kindness in an instant than you did harm in all your life. God bless you, Gilbert!"

He hurried out. At the door he found Pitou and Sebastian, waiting in a hack.

"Sebastian," he said to the youth, drawing a small vial attached to a gold chain from inside his clothes at his breast, "take this flask of liquor to the Countess of Charny."

"How long am I to stay with her?"

"As long as you like."

"Where am I to find you?"

"I shall be waiting here."

Taking the small bottle, the young man went in-doors. In a quarter of an hour he came forth. Gilbert cast on him a rapid glance. He brought back the tiny flask untouched.

"What did she say?" asked Gilbert.

"'Not from your hand, my child!'"

"What did she do then?"

"She fell a-weeping."

"She is saved," said Gilbert. "Come, my boy," and he embraced him more tenderly than ever before. In clasping him to his heart, he heard the crackling of paper.

"What is that?" he asked, with a nervous laugh of joy. "Do you by chance carry your compositions in your breast-pocket?"

"There, I had forgotten," said the youth, taking a parchment from his pocket. "The countess gave it me, and says it is to be deposited in the proper registry."

The doctor examined the paper. It was a document which empowered, in default of heirs male, to the titles of Philip de Taverney, Knight of Redcastle, Sebastian Emile Gilbert, son of Andrea Taverney, Countess of Charny, to wear that title honorarily until the king should make it good to him by favor of his mother's service to the Crown, and perhaps award him the estates to maintain the dignity.

"Keep it," said Gilbert, with a melancholy smile; "as well date it from the Greek kalends! The king, I fear, will nevermore dispose of more than six-feet-by-three of landed property in his once kingdom of France."

Gilbert could jest, for he believed Andrea saved.

He had reckoned without Marat. A week after, he learned that the scoundrel had denounced the favorite of the queen, and that the widowed Countess of Charny had been arrested and lodged in the old Abbey Prison.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ASSEMBLY AND THE COMMUNE

It was the Commune which had caused the attack on the palace, which the king must have seen, for he took refuge in the House, and not in the City Hall. The Commune wanted to smother the wolf – the she-wolf and the whelps – between two blankets in their den.

This shelter to the royals converted the Assembly into Royalists. It was asserted that the Luxembourg Palace, assigned to the king as a residence, had a secret communication with those catacombs which burrow under Paris, so that he might get away at any hour.

The Assembly did not want to quarrel with the Commune over such a trifle, and allowed it to choose the royal house of detention.

The city pitched on the temple. It was not a palace, but a prison, under the town's hand; an old, lonely tower, strong, heavy, lugubrious. In it Philip the Fair broke up the Middle Ages revolting against him, and was royalty to be broken down in it now?

All the houses in the neighborhood were illuminated as the royal captives were taken hither to the part called "the palace," from Count Artois making it his city residence. They were happy to hold in bondage the king no more, but the friend of the foreign foe, the great enemy of the Revolution, and the ally of the nobles and the clergy.

The royal servants looked at the lodgings with stupefaction. In their tearful eyes were still the splendors of the kingly dwellings, while this was not even a prison into which was flung their master, but a kennel! Misfortune was not to have any majesty.

But, through strength of mind or dullness, the king remained unaffected, and slept on the poverty-stricken bed as tranquilly as in his palace, perhaps more so.

At this time, the king would have been the happiest man in the world had he been given a country cottage with ten acres, a forge, a chapel and a chaplain, and a library of travel-books, with his wife and children. But it was altogether different with the queen.

The proud lioness did not rage at the sight of her cage, but that was because so sharp a sorrow ached in her heart that she was blind and insensible to all around her.

The men who had done the fighting in the capture of the Royalist stronghold were willing that the prisoners, Swiss and gentlemen, should be tried by court-martial. But Marat shrieked for massacre, as making shorter work than even a drum-head court.

Danton yielded to him. Before the snake the lion was cowed, and slunk away, trying to act the fox.

The city wards pressed the Assembly to create an extraordinary tribunal. It was established on the twentieth, and condemned a Royalist to death. The execution took place by torch-light, with such horrible effect, that the executioner, in the act of holding up the lopped-off head to the mob, yelled and fell dead off upon the pavement.

The Revolution of 1789, with Necker, Bailly, and Sieyes, ended in 1790; that of Barnave, Lafayette, and Mirabeau in 1792, while the Red Revolution, the bloody one of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, was commencing.

Lafayette, repulsed instinctively by the army, which he had called upon in an address to march on Paris and restore the king, had fled abroad.

Meanwhile, the Austrians, whom the queen had prayed to see in the moonlight from her palace windows, had captured Longwy. The other extremity of France, La Vendee, had risen on the eve of this surrender.

To meet this condition of affairs, the Assembly assigned Dumouriez to the command of the Army of the East; ordered the arrest of Lafayette; decreed the razing of Longwy when it should be retaken; banished all priests who would not take the oath of allegiance; authorized house-to-house visits for aristocrats and weapons, and sold all the property of fugitives.