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

The king interrupted to say that Capet was not his name, but that of an ancestor. He stopped the reading on the grounds that he had read it in the papers.

As it was raining, they had a carriage in which to carry him.

On alighting, Santerre laid his hand on his shoulder and led him to the same spot at the bar, by the same chair, where he had taken the oath to the Constitution.

All the members save one had kept their seats as he entered; this one saluted him. The astonished king recognized Gilbert. He wished him good-day.

"Are you acquainted with Doctor Gilbert?" asked Santerre.

"He was my physician once, so I hope no ill feeling will be harbored because he was polite to me."

The examination began. Unfortunately, the glamour of misfortune vanished before duplicity; not only did the king answer the questions put to him, but he did so badly, stammering, hesitating, trying to evade direct issues, chaffering for his life like a pettifogger arguing a party-fence case in a county court.

The king did not appear at his best in broad day.

The examination lasted five hours. Though he refused refreshment offered, he asked a grenadier for a piece of the bread he saw him eating.

On crossing the yard to step into the carriage, the mob sung with marked emphasis the line of the "Marseillaise" about "the impure blood should fertilize our furrows."

This made him lose color.

The return was miserable. In the public hack, swaying on the black, pestiferous, vile pavement, while the mob surged up to the windows to see him, he blinked his eyes at the daylight; his beard was long, and his thin hair of a dirty yellow hue; his thin cheeks fell in folds on his wrinkled neck; clad in a gray suit, with a dark-brown overcoat, he mumbled with the Bourbon's automatic memory: "This is such and such a street."

On remarking that Orleans Street had been changed to Egalite, on account of the duke having dropped his titles, though that did not save him from the guillotine, he fell into silence, and so returned into prison.

He was not allowed to see his family, and had to go to bed without the meal with them.

"Ah, Clery!" he said to his man, as he undressed him, "I little dreamed what questions they were going to put to me."

Indeed, almost all the inquiry was based on the contents of the iron safe, which he did not suspect was discovered, from having no idea that Gamain had betrayed him.

Nevertheless, he soon sunk to sleep with that tranquillity of which he had given so many proofs, and which might be taken for lethargy.

But the other prisoners did not bear the separation and the secrecy so tamely.

In the morning the queen asked to see her husband, but the only arrangement offered was that the king might see his children on condition that they should not see their mother or aunt any more. The king refused this plan.

Consequently, the queen had her son's bed put in her rooms, and she did not quit him till removed for trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal, as her husband was by the Convention.

Clery, however, worked communications with a servant of the princesses named Turgy. They exchanged a few words, and passed notes scratched with pins on scraps of paper, on the ladies' side; the king could write properly, as he had writing materials supplied since his trial commenced.

By means of a string, collected from the pieces around the packets of candles, Clery lowered pens, ink, and paper to Princess Elizabeth, whose window was below that of the valet's room.

Hence the family had news of one another daily.

On the other hand, the king's position was morally much worse since he had appeared before the Convention.

It had been surmised that he would either refuse to answer any interrogation, like Charles I., whose history he knew so well; or else that he would answer proudly and loftily in the name of royalty, not like an accused criminal, but a knight accepting the gage of battle.

Unfortunately, Louis was not regal enough to do either act. He so entangled himself that he had to ask for counsel. The one he named fearing to accept the task, it fell to Malesherbes, who had been in the Turgot Ministry, a commonplace man in whom little did any suspect contempt for death. (On the day of his execution, for he was beheaded, he wound up his watch as usual.) Throughout the trial he styled the king "Sire."

Attacked by a flow of blood to the head, the king asked for Dr. Gilbert to be allowed to attend him, but the application was refused, and he was brutally told that if he drank cold water he would not have such a fullness of blood. As he was not allowed a knife to carve his food, unless a servant did it before the guards, so he was not let shave but in the presence of four municipal officers.

On the evening of the twenty-fifth he wrote his will, in which he said that he did not blame himself for any of the crimes of which he was accused. He did not say that they were false. This evasive response was worthy the pupil of the Duke of Vauguyon.

In any case, the twenty-sixth found him ready for any fate, death included.

His counsel read the defense, which was a purely legal document. It seems to us that if we had been charged with it, we should not have spoken for the law, but let St. Louis and Henry IV. defend their descendants from the crimes of their intermediate successors.

The more unjust the accusation, the more eloquent should have been the rejoinder.

Hence the Convention asked, in astonishment:

"Have you nothing more to say in your defense?"

He had nothing to say, and went back to the temple. When his defender called in the evening, he told him of a number of gentlemen who were pledged to prevent the execution.

"If you do not know them personally," said the king to Lamoignon Malesherbes, "try to come in touch with them and tell them that I will never forgive myself for blood shed on my behalf. I would not have it spilled to save my throne and life, when that was possible; all the more reason for me not allowing it now."

The voting on the 16th of January, 1793, was on three points:

Is Louis guilty? Shall there be an appeal from the Convention to the people? State the penalty.

To the first question was the answer of 683 voices, "Yes."

To the appeal question, 281 ayes and 423 noes.

The third decision of the penalty was subdivided into death, imprisonment, banishment, or death, with the people allowed to reduce it to imprisonment.

All tokens of approval or displeasure were prohibited, but when a member said anything but death, murmurs arose.

Once there were groans and hisses when a member spoke for death – when Philippe Egalite cast his vote for the execution of his kinsman.

The majority for death was seven, and Vergniaud uttered the sentence with deep emotion.

It was three on the morning of the twentieth, Sunday.

The illustrious culprit was up when Malesherbes bore him the news.

"I was sure of it," he said, shaking hands with his defender. "For two days I have been trying to find if I have merited my subjects' reproach for what I have done in the course of my reign. I swear to you in all sincerity, as a man about to appear before his Maker, that I have always wished the happiness of my people, and have not framed a wish contrary to it."

The death-warrant was officially read to him, and he was allowed to choose his own confessor.

The name of one had been already written down by Princess Elizabeth, whose confessor this Abbe Edgeworth was.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PARALLEL TO CHARLES I