Easter at Saint-Cloud.
The French Monarchy may now therefore be considered as, in all
human probability, lost; as struggling henceforth in blindness as
well as weakness, the last light of reasonable guidance having
gone out. What remains of resources their poor Majesties will
waste still further, in uncertain loitering and wavering.
Mirabeau himself had to complain that they only gave him half
confidence, and always had some plan within his plan. Had they
fled frankly with him, to Rouen or anywhither, long ago! They may
fly now with chance immeasurably lessened; which will go on
lessening towards absolute zero. Decide, O Queen; poor Louis can
decide nothing: execute this Flight-project, or at least abandon
it. Correspondence with Bouillé there has been enough; what
profits consulting, and hypothesis, while all around is in fierce
activity of practice? The Rustic sits waiting till the river run
dry: alas with you it is not a common river, but a Nile
Inundation; snow melting in the unseen mountains; till all, and
you where you sit, be submerged.
Many things invite to flight. The voice Journals invites;
Royalist Journals proudly hinting it as a threat, Patriot
Journals rabidly denouncing it as a terror. Mother Society,
waxing more and more emphatic, invites;—so emphatic that, as was
prophesied, Lafayette and your limited Patriots have ere long to
branch off from her, and form themselves into Feuillans; with
infinite public controversy; the victory in which, doubtful
though it look, will remain with the _un_limited Mother.
Moreover, ever since the Day of Poniards, we have seen unlimited
Patriotism openly equipping itself with arms. Citizens denied
“activity,” which is facetiously made to signify a certain weight
of purse, cannot buy blue uniforms, and be Guardsmen; but man is
greater than blue cloth; man can fight, if need be, in multiform
cloth, or even almost without cloth—as Sansculotte. So Pikes
continued to be hammered, whether those Dirks of improved
structure with barbs be “meant for the West-India market,” or not
meant. Men beat, the wrong way, their ploughshares into swords.
Is there not what we may call an “Austrian Committee,” _Comité
Autrichein_, sitting daily and nightly in the Tuileries?
Patriotism, by vision and suspicion, knows it too well! If the
King fly, will there not be Aristocrat-Austrian Invasion;
butchery, replacement of Feudalism; wars more than civil? The
hearts of men are saddened and maddened.
Dissident Priests likewise give trouble enough. Expelled from
their Parish Churches, where Constitutional Priests, elected by
the Public, have replaced them, these unhappy persons resort to
Convents of Nuns, or other such receptacles; and there, on
Sabbath, collecting assemblages of Anti-Constitutional
individuals, who have grown devout all on a sudden,[365] they
worship or pretend to worship in their strait-laced contumacious
manner; to the scandal of Patriotism. Dissident Priests, passing
along with their sacred wafer for the dying, seem wishful to be
massacred in the streets; wherein Patriotism will not gratify
them. Slighter palm of martyrdom, however, shall not be denied:
martyrdom not of massacre, yet of fustigation. At the refractory
places of worship, Patriot men appear; Patriot women with strong
hazel wands, which they apply. Shut thy eyes, O Reader; see not
this misery, peculiar to these later times,—of martyrdom without
sincerity, with only cant and contumacy! A dead Catholic Church
is not allowed to lie dead; no, it is _galvanised_ into the
detestablest death-life; whereat Humanity, we say, shuts its
eyes. For the Patriot women take their hazel wands, and
fustigate, amid laughter of bystanders, with alacrity: broad
bottom of Priests; alas, Nuns too reversed, and _cotillons
retroussés!_ The National Guard does what it can: Municipality
“invokes the Principles of Toleration;” grants Dissident
worshippers the Church of the _Théatins;_ promising protection.
But it is to no purpose: at the door of that _Théatins;_ Church,
appears a Placard, and suspended atop, like Plebeian Consular
_fasces_,—a Bundle of Rods! The Principles of Toleration must do
the best they may: but no Dissident man shall worship
contumaciously; there is a _Plebiscitum_ to that effect; which,
though unspoken, is like the laws of the Medes and Persians.
Dissident contumacious Priests ought not to be harboured, even in
private, by any man: the Club of the Cordeliers openly denounces
Majesty himself as doing it.[366]
Many things invite to flight: but probably this thing above all
others, that it has become impossible! On the 15th of April,
notice is given that his Majesty, who has suffered much from
catarrh lately, will enjoy the Spring weather, for a few days, at
Saint-Cloud. Out at Saint-Cloud? Wishing to celebrate his Easter,
his _Pâques_, or Pasch, there; with refractory
Anti-Constitutional Dissidents?—Wishing rather to make off for
Compiègne, and thence to the Frontiers? As were, in good sooth,
perhaps feasible, or would once have been; nothing but some two
_chasseurs_ attending you; chasseurs easily corrupted! It is a
pleasant possibility, execute it or not. Men say there are thirty
thousand Chevaliers of the Poniard lurking in the woods there:
lurking in the woods, and thirty thousand,—for the human
Imagination is not fettered. But now, how easily might these,
dashing out on Lafayette, snatch off the Hereditary
Representative; and roll away with him, after the manner of a
whirlblast, whither they listed!—Enough, it were well the King
did not go. Lafayette is forewarned and forearmed: but, indeed,
is the risk his only; or his and all France’s?
Monday the eighteenth of April is come; the Easter Journey to
Saint-Cloud shall take effect. National Guard has got its orders;
a First Division, as Advanced Guard, has even marched, and
probably arrived. His Majesty’s _Maison-bouche_, they say, is all
busy stewing and frying at Saint-Cloud; the King’s Dinner not far
from ready there. About one o’clock, the Royal Carriage, with its
eight royal blacks, shoots stately into the Place du Carrousel;
draws up to receive its royal burden. But hark! From the
neighbouring Church of Saint-Roch, the tocsin begins
ding-donging. Is the King stolen then; he is going; gone?
Multitudes of persons crowd the Carrousel: the Royal Carriage
still stands there;—and, by Heaven’s strength, shall stand!
Lafayette comes up, with aide-de-camps and oratory; pervading the
groups: ‘_Taisez vous_,’ answer the groups, ‘the King shall not
go.’ Monsieur appears, at an upper window: ten thousand voices
bray and shriek, ‘_Nous ne voulons pas que le Roi parte_.’ Their
Majesties have mounted. Crack go the whips; but twenty Patriot
arms have seized each of the eight bridles: there is rearing,
rocking, vociferation; not the smallest headway. In vain does
Lafayette fret, indignant; and perorate and strive: Patriots in
the passion of terror, bellow round the Royal Carriage; it is one
bellowing sea of Patriot terror run frantic. Will Royalty fly off
towards Austria; like a lit rocket, towards endless Conflagration
of Civil War? Stop it, ye Patriots, in the name of Heaven! Rude
voices passionately apostrophise Royalty itself. Usher Campan,
and other the like official persons, pressing forward with help
or advice, are clutched by the sashes, and hurled and whirled, in
a confused perilous manner; so that her Majesty has to plead
passionately from the carriage-window.
Order cannot be heard, cannot be followed; National Guards know
not how to act. Centre Grenadiers, of the Observatoire Battalion,
are there; not on duty; alas, in quasi-mutiny; speaking rude
disobedient words; threatening the mounted Guards with sharp shot
if they hurt the people. Lafayette mounts and dismounts; runs
haranguing, panting; on the verge of despair. For an hour and
three-quarters; “seven quarters of an hour,” by the Tuileries
Clock! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were it by the
cannon’s mouth, if his Majesty will order. Their Majesties,
counselled to it by Royalist friends, by Patriot foes, dismount;
and retire in, with heavy indignant heart; giving up the
enterprise. _Maison-bouche_ may eat that cooked dinner
themselves; his Majesty shall not see Saint-Cloud this day,—or
any day.[367]
The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one’s own Palace has become
a sad fact, then? Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality
deliberates, proposes to petition or address; Sections respond
with sullen brevity of negation. Lafayette flings down his
Commission; appears in civic pepper-and-salt frock; and cannot be
flattered back again;—not in less than three days; and by
unheard-of entreaty; National Guards kneeling to him, and
declaring that it is not sycophancy, that they are free men
kneeling here to the _Statue of Liberty_. For the rest, those
Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,—yet indeed
are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new
quarters. The King must keep his Easter in Paris: meditating much
on this singular posture of things: but as good as determined now
to fly from it, desire being whetted by difficulty.