The Grand Entries.
The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken
over Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should
look out of window, on the right wing of the Château, to see what
prospect there was in Heaven and in Earth. Rascality male and
female is prowling in view of him. His fasting stomach is, with
good cause, sour; he perhaps cannot forbear a passing malison on
them; least of all can he forbear answering such.
Ill words breed worse: till the worst word came; and then the ill
deed. Did the maledicent Bodyguard, getting (as was too
inevitable) better malediction than he gave, load his musketoon,
and threaten to fire; and actually fire? Were wise who wist! It
stands asserted; to us not credibly. Be this as it may, menaced
Rascality, in whinnying scorn, is shaking at all Grates: the
fastening of one (some write, it was a chain merely) gives way;
Rascality is in the Grand Court, whinnying louder still.
The maledicent Bodyguard, more Bodyguards than he do now give
fire; a man’s arm is shattered. Lecointre will depose[251] that
“the Sieur Cardaine, a National Guard without arms, was stabbed.”
But see, sure enough, poor Jerôme l’Héritier, an unarmed National
Guard he too, “cabinet-maker, a saddler’s son, of Paris,” with
the down of youthhood still on his chin,—he reels death-stricken;
rushes to the pavement, scattering it with his blood and
brains!—Allelew! Wilder than Irish wakes, rises the howl: of
pity; of infinite revenge. In few moments, the Grate of the inner
and inmost Court, which they name Court of Marble, this too is
forced, or surprised, and burst open: the Court of Marble too is
overflowed: up the Grand Staircase, up all stairs and entrances
rushes the living Deluge! Deshuttes and Varigny, the two sentry
Bodyguards, are trodden down, are massacred with a hundred pikes.
Women snatch their cutlasses, or any weapon, and storm-in
Menadic:—other women lift the corpse of shot Jerôme; lay it down
on the Marble steps; there shall the livid face and smashed head,
dumb for ever, _speak_.
Wo now to all Bodyguards, mercy is none for them! Miomandre de
Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the Grand Staircase,
“descending four steps:”—to the roaring tornado. His comrades
snatch him up, by the skirts and belts; literally, from the jaws
of Destruction; and slam-to their Door. This also will stand few
instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading
serves not: fly fast, ye Bodyguards; rabid Insurrection, like the
hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels!
The terrorstruck Bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading; it
follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall: wo, now! towards the
Queen’s Suite of Rooms, in the furtherest room of which the Queen
is now asleep. Five sentinels rush through that long Suite; they
are in the Anteroom knocking loud: ‘Save the Queen!’ Trembling
women fall at their feet with tears; are answered: ‘Yes, we will
die; save ye the Queen!’
Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far
through the outermost door, ‘Save the Queen!’ and the door shut.
It is brave Miomandre’s voice that shouts this second warning. He
has stormed across imminent death to do it; fronts imminent
death, having done it. Brave Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the
same desperate service, was borne down with pikes; his comrades
hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre and Tardivet: let
the names of these two Bodyguards, as the names of brave men
should, live long.
Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse
of Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily wrap the Queen; not in
robes of State. She flies for her life, across the Œil-de-Bœuf;
against the main door of which too Insurrection batters. She is
in the King’s Apartment, in the King’s arms; she clasps her
children amid a faithful few. The Imperial-hearted bursts into
mother’s tears: ‘O my friends, save me and my children, _O mes
amis, sauvez moi et mes enfans!_’ The battering of
Insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the Œil-de-Bœuf. What
an hour!
Yes, Friends: a hideous fearful hour; shameful alike to Governed
and Governor; wherein Governed and Governor ignominiously testify
that their relation is at an end. Rage, which had brewed itself
in twenty thousand hearts, for the last four-and-twenty hours,
has taken fire: Jerome’s brained corpse lies there as live-coal.
It is, as we said, the infinite Element bursting in: wild-surging
through all corridors and conduits.
Meanwhile, the poor Bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the
Œil-de-Bœuf. They may die there, at the King’s threshhold; they
can do little to defend it. They are heaping _tabourets_ (stools
of honour), benches and all moveables, against the door; at which
the axe of Insurrection thunders.—But did brave Miomandre perish,
then, at the Queen’s door? No, he was fractured, slashed,
lacerated, left for dead; he has nevertheless crawled hither; and
shall live, honoured of loyal France. Remark also, in flat
contradiction to much which has been said and sung, that
Insurrection did _not_ burst that door he had defended; but
hurried elsewhither, seeking new bodyguards.[252]
Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes’ Opera-Repast! Well for
them, that Insurrection has only pikes and axes; no right sieging
tools! It shakes and thunders. Must they all perish miserably,
and Royalty with them? Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the
first inbreak, have been beheaded in the Marble Court: a
sacrifice to Jerôme’s _manes:_ Jourdan with the tile-beard did
that duty willingly; and asked, If there were no more? Another
captive they are leading round the corpse, with howl-chauntings:
may not Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves?
And louder and louder rages Insurrection within, plundering if it
cannot kill; louder and louder it thunders at the Œil-de-Bœuf:
what can now hinder its bursting in?—On a sudden it ceases; the
battering has ceased! Wild rushing: the cries grow fainter: there
is silence, or the tramp of regular steps; then a friendly
knocking: ‘We are the Centre Grenadiers, old Gardes Françaises:
Open to us, Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps; we have not
forgotten how you saved us at Fontenoy!’[253] The door is opened;
enter Captain Gondran and the Centre Grenadiers: there are
military embracings; there is sudden deliverance from death into
life.
Strange Sons of Adam! It was to “exterminate” these
Gardes-du-Corps that the Centre Grenadiers left home: and now
they have rushed to save them from extermination. The memory of
common peril, of old help, melts the rough heart; bosom is
clasped to bosom, not in war. The King shews himself, one moment,
through the door of his Apartment, with: ‘Do not hurt my
Guards!’—‘_Soyons frères_, Let us be brothers!’ cries Captain
Gondran; and again dashes off, with levelled bayonets, to sweep
the Palace clear.
Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (for his eyes
had not yet closed), arrives; with passionate popular eloquence,
with prompt military word of command. National Guards, suddenly
roused, by sound of trumpet and alarm-drum, are all arriving. The
death-melly ceases: the first sky-lambent blaze of Insurrection
is got damped down; it burns now, if unextinguished, yet
flameless, as charred coals do, and not inextinguishable. The
King’s Apartments are safe. Ministers, Officials, and even some
loyal National deputies are assembling round their Majesties. The
consternation will, with sobs and confusion, settle down
gradually, into plan and counsel, better or worse.
But glance now, for a moment, from the royal windows! A roaring
sea of human heads, inundating both Courts; billowing against all
passages: Menadic women; infuriated men, mad with revenge, with
love of mischief, love of plunder! Rascality has slipped its
muzzle; and now bays, three-throated, like the Dog of Erebus.
Fourteen Bodyguards are wounded; two massacred, and as we saw,
beheaded; Jourdan asking, ‘Was it worth while to come so far for
two?’ Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny! Their fate surely was sad.
Whirled down so suddenly to the abyss; as men are, suddenly, by
the wide thunder of the Mountain Avalanche, awakened not by
_them_, awakened far off by others! When the Château Clock last
struck, they two were pacing languid, with poised musketoon;
anxious mainly that the next hour would strike. It has struck; to
them inaudible. Their trunks lie mangled: their heads parade, “on
pikes twelve feet long,” through the streets of Versailles; and
shall, about noon reach the Barriers of Paris,—a too ghastly
contradiction to the large comfortable Placards that have been
posted there!
The other captive Bodyguard is still circling the corpse of
Jerome, amid Indian war-whooping; bloody Tilebeard, with tucked
sleeves, brandishing his bloody axe; when Gondran and the
Grenadiers come in sight. ‘Comrades, will you see a man massacred
in cold blood?’—‘Off, butchers!’ answer they; and the poor
Bodyguard is free. Busy runs Gondran, busy run Guards and
Captains; scouring at all corridors; dispersing Rascality and
Robbery; sweeping the Palace clear. The mangled carnage is
removed; Jerome’s body to the Townhall, for inquest: the fire of
Insurrection gets damped, more and more, into measurable,
manageable heat.
Transcendent things of all sorts, as in the general outburst of
multitudinous Passion, are huddled together; the ludicrous, nay
the ridiculous, with the horrible. Far over the billowy sea of
heads, may be seen Rascality, caprioling on horses from the Royal
Stud. The Spoilers these; for Patriotism is always infected so,
with a proportion of mere thieves and scoundrels. Gondran
snatched their prey from them in the Château; whereupon they
hurried to the Stables, and took horse there. But the generous
Diomedes’ steeds, according to Weber, disdained such
scoundrel-burden; and, flinging up their royal heels, did soon
project most of it, in parabolic curves, to a distance, amid
peals of laughter: and were caught. Mounted National Guards
secured the rest.
Now too is witnessed the touching last-flicker of Etiquette;
which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a
sign, as the house-cricket might still chirp in the pealing of a
Trump of Doom. ‘Monsieur,’ said some Master of Ceremonies (one
hopes it might be de Brézé), as Lafayette, in these fearful
moments, was rushing towards the inner Royal Apartments,
‘_Monsieur, le Roi vous accorde les grandes entrées_, Monsieur,
the King grants you the Grand Entries,’—not finding it convenient
to refuse them![254]