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

"Why, this first execution is to be mine!" he said.

"Of course, and it would have been a rich streak of luck for you."

"But you say that it will not matter who gives the cue, for the plot will burst out?"

"Yes. But who will do this, when I am caged, and can not communicate with the lads outside?"

"I," replied Beausire in lofty, tragic tones. "Will I not be on the spot, since it is I whom they are to put in the pillory? So I am the man who will cry out the arranged shouts; it is not so very hard a task, methinks."

"I always said you were a genius," remarked the captain's friend, after being wonder-struck.

Beausire bowed.

"If you do this," continued the Royalist plotter, "you will not only be delivered and pardoned, but still further, when I proclaim that the success of the outbreak is due to you, you can shake hands with yourself beforehand on the great reward you will earn."

"I am not going to do the deed for anything like lucre," said the adventurer, with the most disinterested of manners.

"We all know that," rejoined the friend; "but when the reward comes along, I advise you not to refuse it."

"Oh, if you think I ought to take it – " faltered the gambler.

"I press you to, and if I had any power over you, I should order you," resumed the companion, majestically.

"I give in," said Beausire.

"Well, to-morrow we will breakfast together, for the governor of the jail will not refuse this favor to two old 'pals,' and we will crack a jolly good bottle of the rosy to the success of this plot."

Though Beausire may have had his doubts on the kindness of prison governors, the request was granted, to his great satisfaction. It was not one bottle they drained, but several. At the fourth, Beausire was a red-hot Royalist. Luckily, the warders came to take him to the Strand before he emptied the fifth. He stepped into the cart as into a triumphal chariot, disdainfully surveying the throng for whom he was storing up such a startling surprise.

On Notre Dame Bridge, a woman and a little boy were waiting for him to come along. He recognized poor Oliva, in tears, and young Toussaint, who, on beholding his father among the soldiers, said:

"Serves him right; what did he beat me for?"

The proud father smiled protectingly, and would have waved a blessing but his hands were tied behind his back.

The City Hall Square was crammed with people. They knew that this felon had robbed in the palace, and they had no pity for him. Hence, the Guards had their work cut out to keep them back when the cart stopped at the pillory foot.

Beausire looked on at the uproar and scuffling, as much as to say: "You shall see some fun in awhile; this is nothing to the joker I have up my sleeve!"

When he appeared on the pillory platform, there was general hooting; but at the supreme moment, when the executioner opened the culprit's shirt and pulled down the sleeve to bare the shoulder, and then stooped down to take the red-hot brand, that happened which always does – all was silent before the majesty of the law.

Beausire snatched at this lull, and gathering all his powers, he shouted in a full, ringing and sonorous voice:

"Long live the king! Hurrah for the Prussians! Down with the nation!"

However great a tumult the prisoner may have expected, the one this raised much exceeded it; the protest was not in shouts, but howls. The whole gathering uttered an immense roar and rushed on the pillory.

This time the guards were insufficient to protect their man. Their ranks were broken, the scaffold swarmed upon, the executioner thrown over, and the condemned one torn from the stand and flung into the surging mob.

He would have been flayed, dismembered, and torn to pieces but for one man, arrayed in his scarf as a town officer, who luckily saw it all from the City Hall steps.

It was the Commune attorney, Manuel. He had strongly humane feelings, which he often had to keep hidden, but they moved him at such times.

With great difficulty he fought his way to Beausire, and laying hold of him, said in a loud voice:

"In the name of the law, I claim this man!"

There was hesitation; he unloosed his scarf, floating it like a flag, and called for all good citizens to assist him.

A score clustered round him and drew Beausire, half dead, from the crowd. Manuel had him carried into the Hall, which was seriously threatened, so deep was the exasperation. Manuel came out on the balcony.

"This man is guilty," he said, "but of a crime for which he has not been tried. Let us select a jury from among us to assemble in a room of the City Hall. Whatever the sentence, it shall be executed; but let us have a legal sentence."

Is it not curious that such language should be used on the eve of the massacre of the prisoners, by one of the men accused of having organized it, at the peril of his life?

This pledge appeased the mob. Beausire was dragged before the improvised jury. He tried to defend himself, but his second crime was as patent as the first; only in the popular eye it was much graver.

Was it not a dreadful crime and deserving of condign punishment to cheer the king who was put in prison as a traitor, to hurrah for the Prussians who had captured a French town, and to wish death to the nation, in agony on a bed of pain?

So the jury decided not only that the culprit deserved the capital penalty, but that to mark the shame which the law had sought to define by substituting the guillotine for the gallows, that he should be hanged, and on the spot where he committed the offense.

Consequently the headsman of Paris had his orders to erect a gibbet on the pillory stand.

The view of this work and the certainty that the prisoner could not escape them, pacified the multitude.

This was the matter which the Assembly was busied with. It saw that everything tended to a massacre – a means of spreading terror and perpetuating the Commune. The end was that they voted that the Commune had acted to merit the gratitude of the country, and Robespierre, after praising it, asserted that the House had lost the public confidence, and that the only way for the people to save themselves was to retake their powers.

So the masses were to be without check, but with a heart full of vengeance, and charged to continue the August massacre of those who had fought for the palace on the tenth, by following them into the prisons.

It was the first of September, and a storm seemed to oppress everybody with its suspended lightning.

CHAPTER XXII.

SET UPON DYING

Thus stood matters, when Dr. Gilbert's "officiator" – the word servant was abolished as non-republican – announced at nine in the evening that his carriage was at the door.

He donned his hat, buttoned up his outer coat, and was going out, when he saw the door-way blocked by a man in a cloak and a slouch hat. Gilbert recoiled a step, for all was hostile that came in the dark at such a period.

"It is I, Gilbert," said a kindly voice.

"Cagliostro!" exclaimed the doctor.

"Good; there you are forgetting again that I am no longer under that name, but bear that of Baron Zannone. At the same time, Gilbert, for you I am changed in neither name nor heart, and am ever your Joseph Balsamo, I hope."

"Yes; and the proof is that I was going to find you."

"I suspected as much, and that is what has brought me," said the magician. "For you can imagine that in such times I do not go into the country, as Robespierre is doing."