martyrdom. From lungs of leather there burst a welcoming response.
Dossonville, facing the fanatic without a change of position, waited
imperturbably the lull. Geneviève was breathing hard, in her excitement
seizing the hand of her protectress.
"Bravo, patriot, you are eloquent!" came at last the calm answer of
Dossonville. "But what can you do? March and be made into beefsteaks?
The people, it is true, are hungry, but not a step will the sections
move without Santerre. Will you march alone? What say you?"
"I say they are traitors who would halt us!" burst forth Javogues,
glancing at the man who dared to jest with him.
"Meaning Santerre?"
"Meaning those who bear false messages. I don't like these manners. Who
are you?"
"My friend," Dossonville said, with cool scorn of the threatening
throng, "you are curious."
"Aristocrat!"
"Am I?"
"I say you are!"
"Indeed!"
"You will not answer?"
"Certainly! Citoyen Dossonville, at present lieutenant of the Section
des Bonnes Nouvelles, in the past soldier, sailor, actor, innkeeper, a
bit of everything except the law and the church. Citoyen Boudgoust,"
he continued, shifting his head just enough to bring into range the
apathetic waiter, "before this fire-eater is at my throat, come, vouch
for me!"
The hang-down head wabbled a moment on the bent shoulders.
"Yes, yes, a good patriot, Citoyen Javogues, and an eater of little
aristocrats."
"As all good patriots should be!" retorted Dossonville, gravely.
"There, citoyen, good patriots should not quarrel when there are so
many tyrants to be digested. There is my hand--touch!"
Javogues stared at the proffered hand a moment stolidly, drunkenly,
then deliberately folded his arms. A murmur of dissent gathered volume.
"Comrade, you are wrong!"
"Give him your hand!"
"Aye, touch together!"
Above the outburst the voice of Dossonville rose acridly.
"Dame! mon ami, you bring strange manners from Marseilles."
"I bring something else."
"And that is--"
"The way to tell a traitor."
"And that is--"
"By the look in his eyes!" Raising his fist, the Marseillais lurched
forward with the angry shout of "Spy!"
A dozen men rushed to separate them, while the Marseillais, echoing
the accusation of their leader, surged furiously forward. Louison
and Nicole, with a common impulse, seized Dossonville, and in the
confusion drew him into the hall and out by a rear entrance into the
cool of the night.
"Thanks, my dears!" he cried, once free of the turmoil, nonchalant and
flippant as ever. "It is always difficult to find the right word on
which to retreat with dignity. You saved me the trouble. What! it is
you, Louison and Nicole? Diable! if it were only one I could offer my
eternal devotion--for a week."
"Citoyen," cried Nicole, reprovingly, "you were wrong to bait him. You
have gained an enemy."
"On the contrary," Louison interposed, and strangely on her cold
face there was a flash of admiration. "Citoyen Dossonville, you were
splendid!"
"No, I was a fool," he said. "It is very stupid that some men must be
at each other's throats from the first glance. Diable! I have a feeling
this fellow will bother me some day. However, it will add a little
interest to these quiet times. Au revoir--I must be off. If I stay I
shall be falling in love with both of you. What good would that do?
Thanks, and good night!"
In the distance his footsteps grew faint, while for a time the gay
chorus of the Carmagnole told of his passage.
Nicole, leaving Louison, sought Geneviève, and, with a desire to
reconnoiter, struck out through the now quiet Faubourg toward the Hôtel
de Ville. There, all was animation with the arrival of the delegates
from the forty-eight sections, assembling to deliberate upon a plan of
action, while from time to time messengers passed like streaks down the
steps and across the crowd, leaving the disturbance of their trail on
the surface.
They passed along the Seine, where the river, as though, too, at the
end of the day it sought its rest, lay still and black, shot across
with faint reflections. They arrived at the Tuileries only to be barred
passage by a patrol. Everywhere as they made the rounds they found
the palace guarded and prepared; while a hundred other scouts passed
ceaselessly to and fro, examining the frowning walls, grim in the
shadow of night.
A dozen rumors were current: the palace was filled with Swiss and
Chevaliers du Poignard; there were cannons masked at every point; the
windows were protected with screens of oak; the court were dancing
inside, drinking to the white cockades, as they had done at Versailles.
Others affirmed that the city was to be set on fire from the four
quarters; that the king had fled; that the National Assembly was to
be arrested. Nicole, her curiosity satisfied and wearying of these
wild rumors, returned home. At the Faubourg St. Antoine they found
everything tranquil, and retired for the night. It was then half-past
ten.
In their room Geneviève hazarded the question for which Nicole had
waited with amused patience.
"Tell me, Nicole, what did you think of him?"
"Of whom?"
"Of the Citoyen Javogues. Was I not right?"
"He frightens me," Nicole said frankly. "He had the air of a butcher--a
madman. Well, how shall I express it? He made me tremble, almost with a
premonition of danger."
"Ah, you cannot understand him," Geneviève protested. "To me he is
heroic!"
"What a little Jacobin!" Nicole said, with a smile. Without attaching
further importance to what she considered the whim of a child, she
added: "Well, mon enfant, here is your room. The half of it is yours
for as long as you want it."
She passed to the window, casting a longing glance at the dark window
opposite. Surprised at Geneviève's silence, she turned, a little
provoked. The child was crying.
"Dear Geneviève!" she cried, springing to her side and taking her in
her arms. "Don't try to thank me; I understand."
But the girl, through her sobs, murmured again and again, "Thank you,
ah, thank you!"
"But it is I who am thankful," Nicole protested. "You bring me
something to love and to care for. I was getting used to solitude,
which is dangerous."
Checking her thanks, she snuffed the candle, stretching out upon the
bed beside the girl.
"Yes, it is bad for one to be always alone," she said.
Geneviève timidly covered her hands with kisses.
"No, no, kiss me on the cheek," Nicole said. "And now, if you are going
to obey, go right to sleep."
The child nestled closer, drawing Nicole's arm about her. The embrace
seemed strange to Nicole, and, without quite understanding why, she
sought to draw her arm away.
V
THE TAKING OF THE TUILERIES
Boom! Boom!
All at once Nicole and Geneviève found themselves on their feet in the
middle of the dark room. Through the open window there fell upon their
ears a wild metal shriek, hoarse, furious, angry, that spoke of fire
and of the dungeon--the boom of the tocsin.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Nicole bounded to the window. Below she beheld startled heads in white
night-caps scattered down the length of the walls. As one dog wakes the
pack, another and another bell took up the call, till from every point
of the horizon broke forth the jangle and clang of the iron throats of
Paris.
Below, a few tiny cries rose through the murmur. Across the roofs came
the thin shrieks of a woman. Lights began to appear, forms clad in
night-dress. Suddenly across the court tore into the night Barabant's
frenzied voice.
"To arms! to arms!"
As though awaiting the signal, there burst upon the ear the rumbling
of drums, the scattered popping of firearms, calls and answering calls
flung from roof to roof.
"To arms, citoyens, to arms!"
A frenzy passed over Nicole. She leaned far out, and gathering her
voice, echoed:
"To arms!"
She bounded back into the room, knocking over the chair, snatched up
her cloak, bounded to the window to cry "To arms!" crashed down the
stairs, dragging Geneviève, flung out of the blind passage, bumping and
bruising her shoulders, down and out into the streets.
From every doorway figures shot forth and passed, running toward the
north. The two girls, at top speed, joined the crowd. They passed a
woman with a torch, whose hair stood out in long streams against the
racing; la Mère Corniche hobbling along as fast as her old legs would
take her; families of five and six running in packs, panting and
silent, while beneath, above, about, from disgorging cellars, from
loud-flung open windows, from every bell the city writhed in nightmare.
Distancing their companions, they arrived among the first before the
brasserie of Santerre, where the Quinze-Vingts were assembling,
forming quickly into ranks. From one window Jambony, the crier, in
an enormous red cap, was feeding pikes to a hundred outstretched
hands. The arrival of fresh torches caused the walls to loom up like
lurid cliffs, sparkling in spots where a window-pane blazed back the
reflection. From the windows flattened faces with black-encircled eyes
looked down,--children too young, men and women too old, to survive in
the press below: unhuman faces of unhuman beings, like a multitude of
rats driven to shelter by the influx of a torrent.
Below, the black mass surged in, spattered, under the glow of the
torches, with the red of the liberty-caps, while two banners hung like
huge blurs above the tossing surface of pikes and weapons. The noise
was deafening, the confusion beyond control. Men rushed in and out,
their arms flung wide and high, bellowing:
"Death to the tyrants!"
"Death to the fat Louis!"
A slip of a girl, clinging on a window-sill, harangued the mob; a
fishwife, astride her husband, comic and furious, beat the air and
screamed to the crowd to dye the Seine red. Hags with threatening fists
shrieked themselves into a frenzy:
"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!"
Some, foaming, overcome with their passions, collapsed on the ground.
The anger of the mob against the queen gathered at times in bursts and
shouts:
"Death to Mme. Veto!"
"Death to the Austrian!"
Unthinkable obscenities were coupled with her name and tossed from eddy
to eddy. The Marseillais, gathering in a body, dominated the tumult
with the swelling chords of their battle hymn that on their voices
became a chant of carnage and a thing of terror.
It was more than a mob: it was the populace in eruption. All the
human passions and emotions were there, the basest and the noblest.
There were the scum--the lepers, the beggars, and the criminals
diffused among the zealots, the fanatics, and the idealists. There
were the frankly curious and the adventurous, and those with hatred
and vengeance in their hearts. There was youth, warm-blooded and
chivalrous, stirred by visions, and old age impatient to see the
dawn--all hoarse and all clamorous to march.
The order did not come. For an hour they waited, trembling for the
word. The uproar subsided a little. The torches began to drop out:
there were moments of darkness when one could hardly distinguish the
faces about. The cries to advance changed to inquiries. Boudgoust
brought back the report that Pétion, the mayor, was a captive, held as
a hostage in the Tuileries.
Santerre, the Goliath, passed among them, distributing hand-shakes,
reassuring them, counseling patience. The Assembly would meet and
summon Pétion to its bar and the court would not dare detain him. Some
listened, half satisfied; others, the Marseillais specially, cried
out for action. They waited still another hour and a half. The first
outburst had seemingly exhausted the populace: they remained quietly,
awed at the immensity of their daring. Many, tiring of the long vigil
on foot, imitated Nicole and Geneviève and stretched out upon the
pavements, forming little shallows throughout the length of the street.
A few melted away to seek sleep or food. No more torches were lighted.
The few that spluttered on became pale and effaced before the drab of
the morning. An ashen glow stole over the street. Then the army that
had huddled through the night roused itself, shook itself, gathered
spirit and anger and again clamored to advance.
Santerre, besieged by the eager, hesitated. He sent off a band of
pikemen and then the Marseillais, but the rest he held irresolutely.
Suddenly a cry started up from the outskirts of the crowd. A tall man
was seen running toward them with outstretched hands, trying to pierce
the crowd that closed around him. A great shout went up:
"The news! The news!"
On the outskirts a hundred hands were flung up, then a thousand. The
sound of a mighty cry could be heard indistinguishable, rumbling,
gathering volume, sweeping over the crowd.
"Pétion is free!"
"Pétion is at the Hôtel de Ville!"
Santerre hesitated no longer. He descended from his brasserie and gave
the signal. The enormous mass started, moving swiftly, consuming its
way like a glacier. A scullion, with the sudden converging impulse
toward comradeship that now permeated the throng, sought anxiously for
a familiar face.
A pikeman from a group, seeing his trouble, called out:
"Hé, comrade, you seek friends. We are your brothers. March with us."
In measure, as they swarmed toward the Tuileries, fresh reports came
back. Mandat had been summoned. The artillery at the Pont Neuf had been
withdrawn. Mandat was at the Hôtel de Ville. Mandat had fallen before
the vengeance of the crowd.
They hastened forward and rolled into the Place de la Grève. It was
then seven o'clock in the morning. There, where they expected the order
to attack, they were compelled again to wait. When they clamored they
were told that they were delaying for the Faubourg St. Marceau, which
was to join them at the Pont Neuf. Then these hordes, who had passed
the night in suspense, in the midst of rumors and counterrumors, sent
up a great shout of anger:
"Treachery!"
The populace that could dare anything could not stand suspense. A panic
was imminent; but firmer spirits began to exhort them. On all sides
knots of men flung one of their number into the air, where, from the
shoulders of a comrade, witty, brilliant, and magnetic, he calmed the
crowd with laughter.
Nicole and Geneviève, circulating from group to group, were halted by a
familiar voice, and beheld, aloft the giant shoulders of Javogues, the
ardent figure of Barabant addressing the throng.
"Peace, good, kind, gentle, loyal citizens," he was saying mockingly,
"you will disturb the royal slumbers. Why such impatience? The Austrian
cannot see you at such an hour. You are forgetting etiquette!" A roar
of laughter showed him his ground. "I assure you, aristocrats will
not fight before breakfast, before they are shaved and powdered and
dressed. Patience, my Sans-Culottes; we do not want to stab them in
their beds; give them time to sleep and breakfast, that we may show
them how Sans-Culottes can fight. They are not Sans-Culottes; only
Sans-Culottes can fight with empty stomachs!
"For shame, citizens; one does not grumble in the face of danger. Look
about you. The moment is sublime. You who have felled the Bastille, you
who brought Capet back from Versailles--you are now to strike the great
blow for freedom, and you grumble. What matters it if we have waited
twenty hours or twenty days, if we may see such an event? Who would not
rather die at such a moment than live in any age or in any condition
the world has ever known? Citizens, the moment is sublime; be ye also
sublime!"
He slid to the ground, amid uproarious approval, satisfied and elate.
Javogues, the Atlas, bellowed out, "That's the way to talk; he is
right! Vive la Nation!"
"Vive le Citoyen Barabant!"
Barabant, recognizing the voice of Nicole, turned, while the crowd,
eagerly catching up his name, saluted it with cheers.
"Bravo the Parisian!"
The second voice was Louison's. The two girls, each armed with a
cutlass, sent him their applause over the crowd. But, while the frank
enthusiasm of Nicole inspired him, there was something in the tolerant
smile of Louison that seemed to mock his elation. Before he could reach
them, the crowd, abandoning the cries of treachery, exploded in anger
at the Faubourg St. Marceau.
"Fine patriots!"
"What the devil are they doing?"
"We do not need them; to the Tuileries without them!"
"Give us news of them!"
"Citoyens, I'll bring you news," Barabant retorted. "A little patience
and you shall know of the Faubourg St. Marceau."
He returned through the chafing multitude, and departed down the
Rue St. Honoré as fast as his legs could carry him. At the Place
du Carrousel the mob was besieging the entrance to the Tuileries,
clamoring for admittance. As he hesitated, the gate was flung open and
the mass, with the quickness of gunpowder seeking an outlet, crashed
in. Barabant, all else forgotten, hurled himself forward in a blind
endeavor to reach the court. He tripped and fell, and before he could
gain his feet the mob had passed him.
There had been not a moment of hesitation. They rushed into the trap,
heeding neither the windows, bristling with muskets, that confronted
them nor the walls that hemmed them in. Leaping and shouting, they ran
to the vestibule at the end. There they saw a mass of red that colored
it from top to bottom--a mass perfectly ordered. It was the Swiss,
drawn up line by line on every step, their muskets at aim, awaiting the
word.
The first assailants stopped irresolutely, but the impetus of those
behind swept them on, until the vestibule was consumed and the first
ranks looked into the threatening barrels. Still no sound. The two
forces, the machine and the monster, looked into each other's eyes,
noting little details. The populace, gaining confidence, began to jest,
saluting the soldiers with friendly greetings, inviting them to join
them.
Some one in the mob, extending a long crook, hooked a Swiss and drew
him into the vortex, amid shouts of laughter. They clapped their hands,
laughing like children, and set to work at this new game. A second, a
third, five Swiss, were thus fished out of the ranks without resisting.
All at once, from the balcony above, a voice cried:
"Fire!"
As the sea with an immense impulse recoils from an earthquake, there
was a vast recoil in the mob, an exact explosion from the machine. The
smoke, rushing down the vestibule, swirled into the air and lifted.
The officer leaned curiously over the balcony and gave the order to
advance. The red ranks moved down and over the inanimate mound; of all
those who a moment before had laughed incredulously not one survived.
Outside, the mob broke and fled up the Place du Carrousel, recoiling
from the horrid vestibule, where suddenly there formed a bubble of red,
that grew larger and trickled over the garden, widening and assuming
mass and shape. At times across the red, like a diamond meeting the
sun, there ran a brilliant flash. At every flash men stumbled in their
flight and pitched forward. Pell-mell into the Rue St. Honoré they ran,
routed, but full of anger and enthusiasm.
At this moment the sections of the Marais swept in, gathered them up,
and, burning with vengeance at the sight of their wounds, rushed on to
the attack. Barabant, who had received a flesh-wound in the hand, had
barely time to bind it up before he was swept again into the Carrousel.
Then a vast hurrah burst from them, a shout of relief and of battle.
From the quais the guerrilla band of the Marseillais were rolling
forward, formidable, grim, and unleashed. Suddenly their ranks parted
and two tongues of fire lashed out; in the solid bank of the Swiss two
gaps appeared. A frenzy possessed the assaulting mass. It flung itself
forward, without method, attacking only with its anger. The Swiss
reëntered the vestibule, issuing forth from time to time to deliver a
volley.
Barabant, in the midst of the swirl, lost consciousness of his acts,
swayed by sudden, unreasoning passion. He fired fast and faster, caught
by the infection of his comrades, cursing, exhorting wildly, laughing;
but his bullets, without objective, flattened themselves against the
death-dealing walls. At times he saw, through the thick smoke, Javogues
and his comrades dragging a cannon forward toward the barracks. At
another moment there suddenly emerged out of the mêlée the figure of
the two bouquetières.
Amid the swirl of smoke, Nicole appeared to Barabant's excited senses
as a goddess exhorting them to battle. Her hair had tumbled, rioting,
her dress was torn open at the throat, her bare arms were stained with
powder and red with the contact of the wounded; and yet, as she loaded
a musket, or presented it to a volunteer, or showed him the flashing
walls, she laughed one of those laughs sublime with the indifference to
danger and the joy of heroism that inflame the souls of those who hear
it, and transform the wavering with the frenzy of sacrifice.
On the contrary, Louison, among all the confusion and the tumult, moved
quietly, gathering the bullets from the fallen and returning them to
her friend. Her face was calm, cold; her eyes sought everything and
showed nothing; and though she moved incessantly on her quests, she was
apart from all--a spectator.
Barabant, unable to join them, was carried step by step toward the
barracks. Once he slipped in a pool of blood and went down, his
companion falling across him. He called to him to rise, but the man was
dead. A woman of the halles freed him.
A series of explosions almost hurled him back; the next moment
the barracks, rent in gaps, were swept with a sheet of flame. The
assailants, with a cry of triumph, hurled themselves into the palace,
while the Swiss, forced up the staircase, broke and fled, pursued and
shot down by the victors.
Through the apartments, shattering doors, overturning furniture,
howling along the empty corridors, the mob crashed in, as the first
victorious blast of a tempest, shrieking:
"À la mort! À la mort!"
One by one the flying Swiss were overtaken. Packs of the invaders
leaped upon them, burying them from view, until, stabbed with a dozen
useless thrusts, their bodies were flung with exulting cries from the
windows; while as the foremost stopped to enjoy their prey, the herd
swept to the front with hungry arms and the ever-rising shout:
"Death to all! Death to all!"
Barabant, racing ahead to save the women, soon found himself in front,
running beside a Marseillais, who cried to him with the voice of
Javogues:
"Keep with me, citoyen, keep with me! Leave the curs to the others!"
A Swiss, hearing them at his back, fell on his knees, shrieking for
mercy.
"Leave him. Don't stop!" Javogues panted. Seizing Barabant's arm, he
bore him down a side gallery, shouting:
"There he is! There he is!"
At the end of the corridor Barabant beheld a tall form disappearing at
the head of a narrow stairway.
Up this they rushed, into the single outlet, a guard-room, only to
find it empty. Javogues threw himself furiously against the walls.
"I saw him, I saw him; he is here somewhere!"
"Who?"
"Dossonville! He was among the Swiss. I saw him." He ran around the
room, assailing it with his huge fists. All at once he gave a cry, and
lifting the hatchet he bore, he sent a secret door crashing in.
"He is here!"
He hacked his way through and disappeared, thundering down the passage.
Barabant, only half comprehending what had happened, remained a moment
in perplexity. But the sound of women's cries startled him again to
activity. He darted back into the current of the mob and gained the
women's apartments. At the foot of the staircase an officer of the
National Guard was crying:
"We don't kill women!"
"Spare the women!" Barabant echoed.
A dozen others took up the cry.
"The Republic does not make war on women!"
The mob, balked of half its vengeance by the firmness of a dozen
officers, turned to desecration and pillage. Troops of women, like
furies, swarmed through the royal apartments, tearing the beds to
pieces, exulting, foul and crazed.
Barabant, sickening at the sight of unnamable excesses, retraced his
way down the strewn galleries, heaped with overturned furniture,
and tapestries pulled from the wall, spattered with blood and dirt.
Heedless of the shouts above him, he passed down the vestibule and
over the mountain of slain, suffocated by the stench and the horror of
wide-mouthed corpses. Now that the crisis was over, his inflammable
nature recoiled before the ugliness of the triumph.
* * * * *