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

"I have my full reason," she said; "and if you want to pardon any one, let it be one who craves it and merits it, but not I, who deserve it not and reject it."

Maillard turned to Gilbert and saw that he was wringing his clasped hands.

"This woman is plainly mad," he said; "put her out."

He waved his hand to a member of the court, who shoved the countess toward the door of safety.

"Innocent," he called out; "let her go out."

They who had the weapons ready parted before Andrea, lowered them unto this image of mourning. But, after having gone ten paces, and while Gilbert, clinging to the window bars, saw her going forth, she stopped.

"God save the king!" she cried. "Long live the queen, and shame on the tenth of August!"

Gilbert uttered a shriek and darted out into the yard. For he had seen a sword glitter, and swift as a lightning flash, the blade disappeared in Andrea's bosom. He arrived in time to catch her in his arms, and as she turned on him her dying gaze she recognized him.

"I told you that I would die in spite of you," she muttered. "Love Sebastian for both of us," she added, in a barely intelligible voice, and still more faintly continued: "You will have me laid to rest by him – next my George, my husband, for time everlasting?"

And she expired.

Gilbert raised her up in his arms, while fifty blood-smeared hands menaced him all at once.

But Maillard appeared behind him and said, as he spread his hands over his head:

"Make way for the true citizen Gilbert, carrying out the body of a poor crazed woman slain by mistake."

They stepped aside, and carrying the corpse of Andrea, the man who had first loved her, even to committing crime to triumph over her, passed amid the murderers without one thinking of barring the way, so sovereign was Maillard's words over the multitude.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ROYAL MARTYR

Let us return to the somber edifice confining a king become mere man, a queen still a queen, a maid who would be a martyr, and two poor children innocent, from age if not by birth.

The king was in the temple, not the temple tower, but the palace of the Knights Templars, which had been used by Artois as a pleasure resort.

The Assembly had not haggled about his keep, but awarded a handsome sum for the table of one who was a hearty eater, like all the Bourbons. Not only did the judges reprimand him for his untimely gluttony during his trial, but they had a note made of the fact to be on record to our times.

In the temple he had three servants and thirteen attendants connected with the table. Each day's dinner was composed of four entrées– six varieties of roast meat, four fancy dishes, three kinds of stews, three dishes of fruit, and Bordeaux, Madeira, and Malvoisie wine.

He and his son alone drank wine, as the queen and the princesses used water.

On the material side, he had nothing to complain of; but he lacked air, exercise, sunshine, and shady trees.

Habituated by hunting in the royal forests to glade and covert, he had to content himself with a green yard, where a few withered trees scattered prematurely blighted leaves on four parterres of yellowed grass.

Every day at four, the royal family were "walked out" here, as if they were so many head of stall-fed cattle.

This was mean, unkind, ferocious in its cruelty; but less cruel and ferocious than the cells of the pope's dungeons where they had tried to drive Cagliostro to death, or the leads of Venice, or the Spielberg dungeons.

We are not excusing the Commune, and not excusing kings; we are bound to say that the temple was a retaliation, terrible and fatal, but clumsy, for it was making a prosecution a persecution and a criminal a martyr.

What did they look like now – those whom we have seen in their glory?

The king, with his weak eyes, flabby cheeks, hanging lips, and heavy, carefully poised step, seemed a good farmer upset by a great disaster; his melancholy was that of an agriculturist whose barn had been burned by lightning or his fields swept by a cyclone. The queen's attitude was as usual, stiff, proud, and dreadfully irritating. Marie Antoinette had inspired love of grandeur in her time; in her decline, she inspired devotion, but never pity; that springs from sympathy, and she was never one for fellow-feeling.

The guardian angel of the family was Princess Elizabeth, in her white dress, symbol of her purity of body and soul; her fair hair was the handsomer from the disuse of powder. The princess royal, notwithstanding the charm of youth, little interested any one; a thorough Austrian like her mother, her look had already the scorn and arrogance of vultures and royal races. The little dauphin was more winning from his sickly white complexion and golden hair; but his eye was a hard raw blue, with an expression at times older than his age. He understood things too well, caught the idea from a glance of his mother's eye, and showed politic cunning which sometimes wrung tears from those who tormented him.

The Commune were cruel and imprudent; they changed the watchers daily, and sent spies, under the guise of town officers. These went in sworn enemies to the king and came out enemies to the death of Marie Antoinette, but almost all pitying the king, sorrowing for the children, and glorifying the Lady Elizabeth. Indeed, what did they see at the prison? Instead of the wolf, the she-wolf and the whelps – an ordinary middle-class family, with the mother rather the gray mare and spitfire, who would not let any one touch the hem of her dress, but of a brood of tyrants not a trace.

The king had taken up Latin again in order to educate his son, while the queen occupied herself with her daughter. The link of communication between the couple was the valet, Clery, attached to the prince royal, but from the king's own servant, Hue, being dismissed, he waited on both. While hair-dressing for the ladies, he repeated what the king wanted to transmit, quickly and in undertones.

The queen would often interrupt her reading to her daughter by plunging into deep and gloomy musing; the princess would steal away on tiptoe to let her enjoy a new sorrow, which at least had the benefit of tears, and make a hushing sign to her brother. When the tear fell on her ivory hand, beginning to yellow, the poor prisoner would start back from her dream, her momentary freedom in the immense domain of thought and memories, and look round her prison with a lowered head and broken heart.

Weather permitting, the family had a walk in the garden at one o'clock, with a corporal and his squad of the National Guard to watch them. Then the king went up to his rooms on the third story to dine. It was then that Santerre came for his rigorous inspection. The king sometimes spoke with him; the queen never; she had forgotten what she owed to this man on the twentieth of June.

As we have stated, bodily needs were tyrannical in the king, who always indulged in an after-dinner nap; during this, the others remained silent around his easy-chair. Only when he woke was the chat resumed.

When the newsboys called out the news items in the evening, Clery listened, and repeated what he caught to the king.

After supper, the king went into the queen's room to bid her good-night, as well as his sister, by a wave of the hand, and going into his library, read till midnight. He waited before going off to sleep to see the guards changed, to know whether he had a strange face for the night-watcher.

This unchanging life lasted till the king left the small tower – that is, up to September 30th.

It was a dull situation, and the more worthy of pity as it was dignifiedly supported. The most hostile were softened by the sight. They came to watch over the abominable tyrant who had ruined France, massacred Frenchmen, and called the foreigners in; over the queen who had united the lubricities of Messalina to the license of Catherine II.; but they found a plain old fellow whom they could not tell from his valet, who ate and drank heartily and slept soundly, playing piquet or backgammon, teaching Latin and geography to his boy, and putting puzzles to his children out of old newspapers; and a wife, proud and haughty, one must admit, but calm, dignified, resigned, still handsome, teaching her daughter tapestry-work and her son his prayers, speaking gently to the servants and calling them "friends."

The result was that the more the Commune abased the prisoner, and the more he showed that he was like any other man, the more other men took pity on their fellow-man.

Still, all who came into contact with the royal family did not feel the same respect and pity. Hatred and revenge were so deeply rooted in these, that the sight of the regal misery supported with domestic virtues, only brought out rudeness, insults, and actual indignities.

On the king saying that he thought a sentry was tired, the soldier pressed his hat on the more firmly, and said, in the teeth of the monarch:

"My place here is to keep an eye on you and not for you to criticise me. Nobody has the right to meddle with my business, and you least of all."

Once the queen ventured to ask a town officer where he came from.

"I belong to the country," he loftily replied, "at least, as much of it as your foreign friends have not taken possession of."

One day a municipal officer said to Clery, loud enough for the king to overhear: "I would guillotine the lot of them if the regular executioner backed out."

The sentinels decked the walls, where the royals came along to go into the garden, with lines in this style: "The guillotine is a standing institution and is waiting for the tyrant Louis." – "Madame Veto will soon dance on nothing." – "The fat hog must be put on short rations." – "Pull off the red ribbon he wears – it will do to strangle his cubs with."

One drawing represented a man hanging, and was labeled: "Louis taking an air-bath."

The worst tormentors were two lodgers in the temple, Rocher, the sapper, and Simon, the notorious cobbler. The latter, whose harsh treatment of the royal child has made him noted, was insult personified. Every time he saw the prisoners, it was to inflict a fresh outrage.

Rocher was the man whom we saw take up the dauphin when Charny fell, and carry him into the House; yet he, placed by Manuel to prevent harm befalling the captives, resembled those boys who are given a bird to keep – they kill time by plucking out the feathers one by one.

But, however unhappy the prisoners were, they had yet the comfort that they were under the same roof.