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

The Commune, with Marat as its prophet, set up the guillotine on Carrousel Square, with an apology that it could only send one victim a day, owing to the trouble of obtaining convictions.

On the 28th of August, the Assembly passed the law on domiciliary visits. The rumor spread that the Austrian and Prussian armies had effected their junction, and that Longwy had fallen.

It followed that the enemy, so long prayed for by the king, the nobles, and the priests, was marching upon Paris, and might be here in six stages, if nothing stopped him.

What would happen then to this boiling crater from which the shocks had made the Old World quake the last three years?

The insolent jest of Bouille would be realized, that not one stone would be left upon another.

It was considered a sure thing that a general, terrible, and inexorable doom was to fall on the Parisians after their city was destroyed. A letter found in the Tuileries had said:

"In the rear of the army will travel the courts, informed on the journey by the fugitives of the misdeeds and their authors, so that no time will be lost in trying the Jacobins in the Prussian king's camp, and getting their halters ready."

The stories also came of the Uhlans seizing Republican local worthies and cropping their ears. If they acted thus on the threshold, what would they do when within the gates?

It was no longer a secret.

A great throne would be erected before the heap of ruins which was Paris. All the population would be dragged and beaten into passing before it; the good and the bad would be sifted apart as on the last judgment day. The good – in other words, the religious and the Royalists – would pass to the right, and France would be turned over to them for them to work their pleasure; the bad, the rebels, would be sent to the left, where would be waiting the guillotine, invented by the Revolution, which would perish by it.

But to face the foreign invader, had this poor people any self-support? Those whom they had worshiped, enriched, and paid to defend her, would they stand up for her now? No.

The king conspired with the enemy, and from the temple, where he was confined, continued to correspond with the Prussians and Austrians: the nobility marched against France, and were formed in battle array by her princes; her priests made the peasants revolt. From their prison cells, the Royalist prisoners cheered over the defeats of the French by the Prussians, and the Prussians at Longwy were hailed by the captives in the abbey and the temple.

In consequence, Danton, the man for extremes, rushed into the rostrum.

"When the country is in danger, everything belongs to the country," he said.

All the dwellings were searched, and three thousand persons arrested; two thousand guns were taken.

Terror was needed; they obtained it. The worst mischief from the search was one not foreseen; the mob had entered rich houses, and the sight of luxuries had redoubled their hatred, though not inciting them to pillage. There was so little robbery that Beaumarchais, then in jail, said that the crowd nearly drowned a woman who plucked a rose in his gardens.

On this general search day, the Commune summoned before its bar a Girondist editor, Girey-Dupre, who took refuge at the War Ministry, from not having time to get to the House. Insulted by one of its members, the Girondists summoned the Commune's president, Huguenin, before its bar for having allowed the Ministry to take Girey by force.

Huguenin would not come, and he was ordered to be arrested by main force, while a fresh election for a Commune was decreed.

The present one determined to hold office, and thus was civil war set going. No longer the mob against the king, citizens against aristocrats, the cottage against the castle; but hovels against houses, ward against ward, pike to pike, and mob to mob.

Marat called for the massacre of the Assembly; that was nothing, as people were used to his shrieks for wholesale slaughter. But Robespierre, the prudent, wary, vague, and double-meaning denunciator, came out boldly for all to fly to arms, not merely to defend, but to attack. He must have judged the Commune was very strong to do this.

The physician who might have his fingers on the pulse of France at this period must have felt the circulation run up at every beat.

The Assembly feared the working-men, who had broken in the Tuileries gates and might dash in the Assembly doors. It feared, too, that if it took up arms against the Commune, it would not only be abandoned by the Revolutionists, but be bolstered up by the moderate Royalists. In that case it would be utterly lost.

It was felt that any event, however slight, might lead this disturbance to colossal proportions. The event, related by one of our characters, who has dropped from sight for some time, and who took a share in it, occurred in the Chatelet Prison.

CHAPTER XIX.

CAPTAIN BEAUSIRE APPEARS AGAIN

After the capture of the Tuileries, a special court was instituted to try cases of theft committed at the palace. Two or three hundred thieves, caught red-handed, had been shot off-hand, but there were as many more who had contrived to hide their acts.

Among the number of these sly depredators was "Captain" Beausire, a corporal of the French Guards once on a time, but more conspicuous as a card-sharper and for his hand in the plot of robbers by which the court jewelers were nearly defrauded of the celebrated set of diamonds which we have written about under their historic name of "The Queen's Necklace."

This Beausire had entered the palace, but in the rear of the conquerors. He was too full of sense to be among the first where danger lay in taking the lead.

It was not his political opinions that carried him into the king's home, to weep over the fall of monarchy or to applaud the triumph of the people; bless your innocence, no! Captain Beausire came as a mere sight-seer, soaring above those human weaknesses known as opinions, and having but one aim in view, to wit, to ascertain whether those who lost a throne might not have lost at the same time some article of value rather more portable and easy to put out of sight.

To be in harmony with the situation, Beausire had clapped on an enormous red cap, was armed with the largest-sized saber, and had splashed his shirt-front and hands with blood from the first quite dead man he stumbled upon. Like the wolf skulking round the edge and the vulture hovering over the battle-field, perhaps taken for having helped in the slaughter, some believed he had been one of the vanquishers.

The most did so accept him as they heard him bellow "Death to the aristocrats!" and saw him poke under beds, dash open cupboards, and even bureau drawers, in order to make sure that no aristocrat had hidden there.

However, for the discomfiture of Captain Beausire, at this time, a man was present who did not peep under beds or open drawers, but who, having entered while the firing was hot, though he carried no arms with the conquerors, though he did no conquering, walked about with his hands behind his back, as he might have done in a public park on a holiday. Cold and calm in his threadbare but well-brushed black suit, he was content to raise his voice from time to time to say:

"Do not forget, citizens, that you are not to kill women and not to touch the jewels."

He did not seem to feel any right to censure those who were killing men and throwing the furniture out of the windows.

At the first glance he had distinguished that Captain Beausire was not one of the storming-parties.

The consequence was that, about half past nine, Pitou, who had the post of honor, as we know, guarding the main entrance, saw a sort of woe-begone and slender giant stalk toward him from the interior of the palace, who said to him with politeness, but also with firmness, as if his mission was to modify disorder with order and temper vengeance with justice:

"Captain, you will see a fellow swagger down the stairs presently, wearing a red cap, swinging a saber and making broad gestures. Arrest him and have your men search him, for he has picked up a case of diamonds."

"Yes, Master Maillard," replied Pitou, touching his cap.

"Aha! so you know me, my friend?" said the ex-usher of the Chatelet Prison.

"I rather think I do know you," exclaimed Pitou. "Don't you remember me, Master Maillard? We took the Bastile together."

"That's very likely."

"We also marched to Versailles together in October."

"I did go there at that time."

"Of course you did; and the proof is that you shielded the ladies who went to call on the queen, and you had a duel with a janitor who would not let you go in."

"Then, for old acquaintance' sake, you will do what I say, eh?"

"That, and anything else – all you order. You are a regular patriot, you are."

"I pride myself on it," replied Maillard, "and that is why I can not permit the name we bear to be sullied. Attention! this is our man."

In fact, at this time, Beausire stamped down the grand stairs, waving his large sword and shouting: "The nation forever!"

Pitou made a sign to Maniquet and another, who placed themselves at the door without any parade, and he went to wait for the sham rioter at the foot of the stairs.

With a glance, the suspicious character noticed the movements, and as they no doubt disquieted him, he stopped, and made a turn to go back, as if he had forgotten something.