his wife. Before he even went to seek his children, and to recall the
servants, he ascertained that Pierre had disappeared, and hurried out to
learn his fate, bending his steps to the Place de Grêve, where he feared
he was most likely to find his faithful servant, dead or alive. He found
two bodies hanging, and cries of murderous exultation, which made his
blood run cold, still echoing through the place; but Pierre was nowhere
to be seen, and the bodies were those of soldiers. He saw more victims
brought to the foot of the lamp-posts; but they came from the direction
of the Bastille, and were evidently members of the invalid garrison.
Through some unseen influence exerted in the crowd, these men were
spared, which gave Charles the hope that Pierre, if yet living, would
escape. In fact, he was safe enough, being at this moment employed in
drawing the people to the attack upon that gloomy fortress, which was
regarded with more detestation by Frenchmen than if it had been a
pest-house. When Pierre had by his energy sufficiently attested his good
citizenship to be allowed to depart whither he would, he ran homewards,
met his master in search of him, embraced the children, kissed
Marguerite’s hand, and hastened back again to assist the siege, as if
nothing had happened to himself that morning. Charles did the same,
having persuaded his wife that he should be safer before the Bastille
than at home, and left her in the protection of Steele, who had returned
from his fruitless errand to the magistrates; fruitless, because they
could listen to no petitions for private succour while the grand work of
the demolition of the state-fortress was going on under their sanction,
and the control of their forces.
Steele had no more idea of remaining with the women and children on such
an occasion, than his friend Charles. As soon as he had persuaded
Marguerite to lie down, and had seen grandpapa and the children at play
together again, and called in two stout porters of the establishment to
keep watch below, he also disappeared. Often and vehemently did he
protest in after years that he would not for any consideration have been
absent from that siege; and of all his possessions, none were so valued
by him as a link of the chain from which one of the captives had been
released by Steele’s own hands; which link the Englishman carried about
him to the day of his death.
While Marguerite slept, through pure exhaustion, occasionally starting
at the sound of cannon, or scared with visions of the horrible faces she
had seen in the court so lately, her husband was actively disproving, to
as many as might observe him, his being a royalist. He lent a helping
hand to one work after another; now assisting in letting down the
drawbridges successively; now in hauling forward the cannon; now in
demolishing the guard-houses; now in forcing an entrance into the gloomy
place itself; and finally, shouting for the release of the prisoners.
Everything was forgotten but the work before his eyes: hours flew like
minutes, amidst the intenseness of the occupation; and yet, if his
thoughts reverted for a moment to the events of the morning, they seemed
of ancient date,—as if he had lived a lifetime in this one day.
The spectacles of a lifetime were indeed to be beheld within the compass
of this one scene. The most vivid emotions to which all ranks and all
ages are subject were here in full play: all the various grouping which
life affords was here presented; the entire elements of the scenery of
human character were here congregated in infinite and magnificent
combinations. The appeals to eye and ear alone were of unprecedented
force; those addressed to the spirit equalled in stimulus the devotion
of Leonidas in his defile, and excelled in pathos the meditation of
Marius among more extensive ruins than those which were now tumbling
around. From the heights of the fortress might be seen a heaving ocean
of upturned faces, when the breeze dispersed at intervals the clouds of
smoke which veiled the sun, and gave a dun and murky hue to whatever lay
beneath. If a flood of sunshine now and then poured in to make a hundred
thousand weapons glitter over the heads of the crowd, the black row of
cannon belched forth their red fires to extinguish the purer light. The
foremost of the people, with glaring eyes, and blackened and grinning
faces, looked scarcely human, in their excess of eagerness, activity,
and strength. Yet more terrific were the sounds: the clang of the tocsin
at regular intervals, the shouts of the besiegers, the shrieks of the
wounded, the roar of the fire which was consuming the guard-houses, the
crash of the ruins falling on all sides, a heavy splash in the moat from
time to time, as some one was toppled from the ramparts to be smothered
in its mud,—and above all these, the triumphant cries of victory and
liberty achieved,—these were enough to dizzy weak brains, and give
inspiration to strong ones. Here were also the terrors which sooner or
later chill the marrow of despotism, and the stern joy with which its
retribution fires the heart of the patriot. Here were the servants of
tyranny quailing before the glance of the people; kneeling soldiers
craving mercy of mechanics, of women, of some of every class whom, in
the execution of their fancied duty, they had outraged. Here were men
shrinking from violence with a craven horror, and women driven by a
sense of wrong to show how disgusting physical courage may be made. Here
were also sons led on to the attack by their hitherto anxious fathers;
husbands thrust forward into danger by their wives; and little children
upreared by their mothers amidst the fire and smoke, to take one last
look of the hated edifice which was soon to be levelled with the ground.
The towers of palaces might be seen afar, where princes were quaking at
this final assurance of the downfall of their despotic sway, knowing
that the assumed sanctity of royalty was being wafted away with every
puff of smoke which spread itself over the sky, and their
irresponsibility melting in fires lighted by the hands which they had
vainly attempted to fetter, and blown by the breath which they had
imagined they could stifle. They had denied the birth of that liberty
whose baptism in fire and in blood was now being celebrated in a
many-voiced chaunt with which the earth should ring for centuries. Some
from other lands were already present to hear and join in it; some free
Britons to aid, some wondering slaves of other despots to slink
homewards with whispered tidings of its import; for from that day to
this, the history of the fall of the Bastille has been told as a secret
in the vineyards of Portugal, and among the groves of Spain, and in the
patriotic conclaves of the youth of Italy, while it has been loudly and
joyfully proclaimed from one end to the other of Great Britain, till her
lisping children are familiar with the tale.
The congregation would not have been complete without the presence of
another class of witnesses whose very existence will perhaps be matter
of incredulity in some future age of the world;—that class which man has
taken upon himself to institute, and which will one day rise up against
him in judgment of his abused power. There were captives present in this
scene of lawless freedom,—or rather of freedom above the law. They were
there, first trembling before the assailants, and then marvelling at the
treatment they received, as the kid would marvel at being dandled by the
lion. So it appeared to be with most of them, while one or two caught
the tone of popular triumph before the doors of their cells were opened,
and others received their deliverance in a manner that rent the heart of
the deliverers.
When the capture of the place was complete, and its defenders had been
carried off, some to be sacrificed for the sins of the government, and
others to meet with mercy, Charles pressed forward, with a multitude of
companions, to release the captives. It was hard labour to pull the
clenched doors from their staples and hinges; and in some cases it was
found easier to effect the work in a yet more irregular manner: as in
one to which Steele called Charles’s attention when they accidentally
met in the centre of the fortress, where the light of day, however,
streamed upon them through the demolished roof. Steele’s face was
working in strong emotion, and he appeared speechless while he seized
his friend by the arm, and drew him to gaze on what made his heart’s
blood boil. Steele pointed through a breach in the enormous wall, whose
thickness shut out all sound from the inmate of the dungeon it inclosed;
and there, with eyes drooped before the unwonted light,—a light which,
however, only half displayed the squalid sickliness of his countenance,
sat one who seemed to take no heed of any human presence. His expanded
nostrils and half-opened mouth seemed to betoken that there had been
passion and expectation within him; but the apathy and despondency of
his attitude exhibited a strange contradiction to these evidences. When
the first face appeared through the opening, he fumbled uneasily with
his hands in his coarse dungeon dress; and when he was hailed, more and
more loudly, under the idea that he was deaf, his beard was seen to stir
upon his breast, and his lips to move, as if he was attempting in vain
to articulate a sound. The endeavour presently ceased, though voice
after voice was heard in importunity,—sometimes endearing, sometimes
rallying,—that he would rise and help to free himself. It was a work of
time to make a breach large enough to admit his deliverers; and at last,
just before the first of them clambered in, the captive uplifted his
broken and unmodulated voice in a few words, one or two of which Steele
recognized to be English.
“O! he is a Briton!” cried he, clenching his hands above his head in the
extremity of passion; and, staggering against the wall, he uttered a
deep curse on the tyranny by which a countryman had been goaded into
madness far from his own land, and from all who could know or avenge his
state. Again and again he looked; again and again he withdrew, unable to
bear the alternating aspects of idiotcy and gibbering madness. At last,
he made trial of a new kind of stimulus; leaning through the breach, and
calling to the captive,—
“O come, and take the hand of a brother once more! Look up, and tell us
that your deliverers are welcome! Let it be crime, or let it be misery
that has stricken you so deeply, the last day of your dungeon life is
over. Come, and hear about England! Come and feel the fresh air——”
The prisoner here shivered, as if already chilled by the air of a warm
July day. Encouraged by this sign of attention, Steele went on.
“Only tell us whom you fear, and we will carry you far from them. Only
name those you love, and I will get you tidings of them. Come and help
us to free yourself and others; for you know more of the secrets of this
horrible place than we.”
He would not move, however; and when they got to him, they found that he
was chained by the middle to the wall behind him. It was impossible to
learn from him his name, alleged offence, or period of imprisonment.
It was not till the Count de Solages was also liberated that it was
ascertained that his name was White; that he had been confined for some
unknown offence for many years in the castle of Vincennes, whence he was
removed, in company with the count, to the Bastille, seven years before.
--------------
CHAPTER V.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BARGAINING.
The people carried away all the prisoners on their shoulders, intending
to make them tell their stories in the coffee-houses of Paris; but
Steele could not bear to see his countryman,—such a mere wreck of
humanity as he was,—thus exhibited. He thankfully accepted his friend
Charles’s invitation to bring him first to his house, and try whether
the intellects of the sufferer could be restored by any method of
treatment—treatment which was more likely to be efficacious if
administered by one who could speak his own language than by strangers.
Fired as Steele had been in the achievement of the great work of the
day, he now left the completion of it to others. While the mayor and
executive were sending forth their popular decrees,—while the king was
informed for the first time that his realm was in a state of
revolution,—while the helpless ministry looked in one another’s dismayed
faces,—while the city architects were employed under a regular
commission to make a perfect blank where the Bastille had stood, Steele
was watching over his released countryman, fondly hoping that he traced
an hourly growing resemblance to manhood, not only in external
appearance, but in thought and action. He tried to make him vary his
posture, and to walk;—an exercise to which he was as much averse as one
who has taken laudanum. The next thing was to induce him to speak, which
proved less difficult, provided he was permitted to mix up French and
English after his own fashion. There was sometimes more and sometimes
less sense in what he said, and it was occasionally interrupted by fits
of impotent passion, for which no immediate cause could be assigned.
These, however, came on only after his new way of life had continued for
some time, and were indeed stages in the growth of the unmanageable
madness which sent him, after all remedial means had been tried, to end
his days in the lunatic asylum at Charenton.
Before these had become terrifying to Charles’s children, they did not
shrink from talking to him, and were encouraged to do so, as he spoke
more, and more sensibly to them than to any one else.
“Why are you so very fond of water, I wonder?” exclaimed Julien, one
day, laughing, when White held out his hand to snatch some which looked
cool and clear in the boy’s hand. “O yes, you may have it. I can get
plenty more. Why do you want so much water?”
“I drink water. And my rat—Where is my rat?”
None of the family could make out why he looked about him for a rat: but
Steele’s conjecture was that such an animal might have found its way out
of the moat of the prison into the cell where no other living thing
could enter but the silent turnkey. On inquiry, this was found to be the
case; and the circumstances were touching in the extreme to those who
had never known what it was to want such a resource. It was observed
that White was as greedy of bread as of water, though not always for the
purpose of eating it. Nothing could tempt him from it when there was any
in the room; and whatever was offered in exchange for a crust, however
delicate to the taste, or glittering to the eye, was rejected. “Bread,
bread. Water, water,” was for ever his cry.
“He likes to play on my bird-organ,” observed Julien, “and I told him he
might keep it: but he thrust it back upon me for a piece of bread. He
sold it much cheaper, papa,—for far less bread,—than the people that
made it. I think that is very silly.”
“It depends upon the value he puts upon what he has in exchange,”
answered papa.
“Well, you told me how much bread was worth this organ; and it was much
more than I gave him.”
“Yes; but you might happen to be shut up, as he has been, where one loaf
of bread would be more useful to you than ten such at home.”
“Why more useful? I can but eat bread anywhere.”
“Yes; you can give it away,” interposed mamma. “If you were shut up for
several years in a silent and nearly dark place, where nobody ever came
to you, and were to hear a noise one day, and to see something moving,
and to find out that it was a rat which had made its way to your cell;
and if you wished that the rat should come again, and learn to know you,
and feed tamely out of your hand, would you not desire to have some food
to give it?”
“O yes: I would give it part of my dinner.”
“But if you had very little dinner, scarcely enough to satisfy your own
hunger, you would buy more bread for your rat if you could. If your
jailer asked you much more than the bread would be worth out of prison,
you would give it him rather than your rat should not come and play with
you. You would pay him first all your copper, and then all your silver,
and then all your gold.”
“Yes, because I could not play with money so pleasantly as with a live
animal, and there would be nothing else that I could buy in such a
place. I had rather have the company of my rat than a pocket full of
gold.”
“So White thought,” observed Marguerite, “and he gave the turnkey every
thing he had left for bread, till his buttons, and his pencil case, and
even his watch were all gone. It was a long time before he could bring
himself to part with his watch; for the moving of the wheels was
something to look at, and the ticking kept his ears awake, and made him
feel less desolate: but when it came to giving up his watch or his rat,
he thought he could least spare his live companion: so he carefully
observed for some time the shifting of the glimmering light upon the
wall, as the morning passed into noon, and noon into afternoon and
evening, and then he thought this sort of dial might serve him instead
of a watch, and he gave it to the turnkey on condition of having an
ounce more bread every day for a year.”
“He must have been pleased to have made his bargain for a whole year.”
“His pleasure lasted a very short while. The turnkey came earlier than
usual one day when the rat was there, and twisted its neck before White
could stop him.”
Julien stamped with grief and anger when he heard this; but presently
supposed the turnkey was honest enough to restore the watch. Charles
shook his head in answer, and told his little son that poor White had
been quite crazy since that day, and had talked about nothing but a rat,
and shown no desire for any thing but bread and water since, though it
was six years ago that his misfortune had happened.
“Did you ever hear of paying for water, Julien; or for air?”
No: Julien thought that God had given both so freely that it would be a
sin to sell them. His father thought this not a good reason; for it
seemed to him fair that men should buy and sell whenever one wanted
something that another person had too much of; as much air and water as
corn and flax, which were also given by God.
“Ah, but, papa, it costs men a great deal of trouble to prepare corn and
flax.”
“True; and now you have hit upon the right reason. If corn and flax grew
of themselves on land which belonged to nobody, would you pay for them,
or just gather them without paying?”
“I should be very silly to pay when I might have them without.”
“So I think: but would corn and flax be less valuable then than now,
when we have to pay very dear for them?”
“The corn would be just as good to eat, and the flax to make linen of:
but they would not to change away.”
“No more than the air, which is very useful in breathing, or water which
we could not do without, and which yet would be a very poor thing to
carry to market. Now, would you call water a valuable thing or not,
Julien?”
“No, not at all, because it will buy nothing——O yes, but it is though;
because we could not do without it.—Mamma, is water valuable or not?”
“Very valuable in use, but not usually in exchange. When things are
valuable in exchange, it is either because they cost labour before they
could be used, or because they are very scarce.”
“So,” observed Charles, “if a mine should ever be dug so deep that the
air is not fresh at the bottom where the miners work, the owner of the
mine would be very glad to buy air of any one who could convey it down
by a machine. Such an one would be wise to charge so much a gallon for
the fresh air he supplied, to pay for the labour and expense of his
machine, and for the trouble of working it.”
Marguerite then mentioned that she once staid in a small country town
during a drought. There was no reservoir of water, and all the pumps and
cisterns were dry. The poor people went out by night into the
neighbouring country, and watched the springs; and any one who was
fortunate enough to obtain a gallon of fresh water was well paid for it.
The price rose every day, till at last one woman gave a calf for a
pailfull of water, hoping to save her cow, it being certain that both
must die without this supply.
“And did she save her cow?”
“Yes. While the woman was anxiously sitting up in bed, planning what she
should change away next, she fancied there was a different feel in the
air; and on looking out of the window, she found the sky covered with
black clouds; and before morning, the trade in water was over. There was
nobody to give a doit for a cistern-full.”
“It was just so with me,” observed Charles, “when I was besieged in the
cellar. I was parched with thirst, and would have given a pipe of my
best wine to any one who would have let me down a quart of water through
the trap-door. Three hours after, I myself threw hundreds of gallons on
the fire at the guard houses, when the order was given to take them down
in an orderly way; and I did not consider such use of the water any
waste. So much for the value which is given by scarcity.”
“But, papa, though things are more valuable to people when there is a
scarcity of them, the people are less rich than they were before. That
seems to me very odd.”
“Because you have been accustomed to consider value and wealth as the
same things, which they are not. Our wealth consists in whatever is
valuable in use as well as in exchange. Owing to the storm of last year,
I have less wealth in my possession now than I had then, though what I
have may, perhaps, exchange for more wealth still. I have as much
furniture, and as many clothes and luxuries, and as much money; but I
have fewer growing vines, and much less wine. If I were to use up my own
grapes and wine instead of selling them, they would last a much shorter
time than my stock of the former year would have lasted. So I have less
wealth in possession. But the value of wine has risen so high, in
consequence of scarcity, that I can get as much now of other things in
exchange for a pint, as I could, fourteen months ago, in exchange for a
gallon.”
“But that is partly because the wine is older. Mr. Steele is very
particular about the wine being old, and he pays you much more, he told
me, the longer it has been kept.”
“And it is very fair he should, for reasons which you can hardly
understand yet.”
“Try him,” said Marguerite.
“It is impossible, my dear. I refer to the charges I am at for the rent
of my cellar, the wear of my casks, and the loss of interest upon the
capital locked up in the wine. All this must be paid out of the
improvement in the quality of the article; and all this, Julien must
wait a few years to understand.
“Now tell me, my boy, whether you think it a good thing or not that
there should be a scarcity of wine?”
“Why, papa, as we do not want to drink all you have ourselves, and as
people will give you as much for it as they would for twice as much, I
do not think it signifies to you; but it must be a bad thing for the
people of Paris that there is so little wine to be had. At least you
said so about the bread.”
“But if my wine should be as dear next year, and I should have no more
losses from storms, and no more expense than in common years, in growing
my wine, would the high price be a good thing for me or not?”
“It would be good for you, and bad for your customers; only I think they
would not give you so much for your wine. They would remember that there
had been no more storms, and they would find people that had cheaper
wine to sell, and then they would leave off buying of you.”
“And they would be very right, if there was anybody to sell cheaper; as
there would be, if labourers had less wages, and so made it less
expensive to grow and prepare wine. But if some way was found of making
more wine than ever, in a cheaper way than ever, who would be the better
for that?”
“The people that buy of you, because I suppose you would let them have
it cheaper.”
“And papa too,” said Marguerite, “for many people would buy wine who
cannot afford it now.”
“Therefore,” concluded Charles, “a high exchangeable value is not at all
a good thing for everybody, though it may be for a time to some few. And
a low exchangeable value is a very good thing to everybody, if it arises
from the only cause which can render it permanent,—a diminution of the
cost of production.”
“But if this happened with every article,” pursued Marguerite, “there
would be an end of the cheapness, though not of the plenty. As many of
one thing would exchange for a certain number of other things as
before.”
“True; but less labour would purchase them all; and this is the grand
consideration. As less labour will now purchase a deal table than was
once necessary to procure a rough hewn log in its place, less labour
still may hereafter buy a mahogany one; and this is a desirable thing
for the purchasers of tables, and no less for the makers, who will then
sell a hundred times the number they can dispose of now.”
--------------
CHAPTER VI.
NEW DEVICES.
The Parisians soon after showed that they knew little of the resources
on which the supply of the wants of the state should depend, by having
recourse to a measure which, however popular, was one of great
folly;—folly to be exceeded only by an act of the populace which took
place nearly at the same time.
The coffers of the government had long been empty. Loans of almost every
kind, and under every species of pretence, had been raised upon the
suffering nation, some of which proved failures in their primary object,
while others, however great the proceeds in amount, seemed to be
exhausted with somewhat the same speed as water that is poured into a
sieve. Never money went away so fast before; and whilst the government
was dismayed at its magic property of disappearance, the people grew
more and more angry at what they thought the extravagance of their
rulers. Neither of them took into the account the scarcity of most of
the necessaries of life, and both regarded money as having the same
value as ever,—as being, in itself, the thing required to supply the
necessities of the state. To both it was equally inconceivable why, if
so much had defrayed such and such expenses in former years, double the
sum would go no way at all at present. The ministers and the court could
only tremble at the necessity of owning the truth, while the people
raged, and could be appeased only by court largesses for the relief of
the starving: which largesses went as little way when they had changed
hands as before. Neither party suspected that money, although scarce,
had become very cheap through the still greater scarcity of other
things; and in the absence of this necessary knowledge, everybody was
eager about gold and silver.
The National Assembly had tried all means, first by themselves, and then
with the assistance of Necker, to raise a supply, without which the
affairs of the state could not, they believed, proceed; and all in vain.
Then Necker had leave given him to pursue his own methods; and, popular
as he was, no one had a doubt that he would succeed. But he failed,
though he issued the most tempting proposals; offered the highest
interest that ever was heard of, even in such an emergency; and exerted
his utmost personal influence in favour of the loan. The subscription
was not half filled: the reason of which was that many had no money,
having spent it all in buying necessaries; and as many in France as had
taken their money (much of it had gone into other countries) expected to
want it themselves for the same purposes, or had not confidence enough
in the stability of the government to take it for a creditor. So the
king’s horses went on to eat borrowed hay or to want it; and the king’s
servants to clamour for their wages; and the king’s tradesmen to decline
orders on one pretence or another; and the police threatened to leave
the home minister to keep order by himself; and state couriers went
unwillingly forth on their journies; and business lagged in every
department of the administration.
At this moment, it entered some wise head that, if people would not lend
money, they might lend or give something else; not corn or hay, or any
of the necessaries of life; for every one knew there was still less of
these things than of money; but gold and silver in any form. It would
have been hard to say what lasting good this could do amidst the
impossibility of procuring the necessaries of which gold and silver are
only the representatives: but no matter for that. Nobody was asked to
explain the affair, and apparently none troubled themselves to think
about it; so delighted were all with the new notion of giving away
trinkets to save the state. The idea of a patriotic contribution was
charming,—a contribution in which almost everybody could join; women and
children, and persons of many degrees below the class of capitalists.
The court joined: the gentlemen sacrificing nearly half their watches
and seals, and the ladies adopting simplicity as a fashion, and sending
away the jewellery they could not wear as Arcadian shepherdesses and
Sicilian nymphs. The Assembly followed, every member thereof stooping
down at the same moment to strip his shoes of their buckles, so that
their act of patriotic devotion made really a very fine show. This gave
the signal to the whole country, and all France was forthwith unbuckled
in respect of the feet. She became also quakerlike as to the hands, for
not a maiden but took out her lover’s hair from his parting gift, and
flung the ring into the lap of the nation; not a wife that did not part
with the token of her wifehood in the cause. Pecks of gold rings,
bushels of silver buckles, with huge store of other baubles, were at
once in the possession of the state; and the people no longer doubted
that all would henceforth be well.
And what was really the event?—The gold answered the same purpose as it
does when a basin full of it coined stands on the banker’s counter
during a run. It satisfied the ignorant that all must be safe where
there is so much wealth actually before one’s eyes. It hushed the
clamours of the people for a little while; and made the servants of the
government willing to go on somewhat longer upon credit; so that more
industry and briskness prevailed for a time, at the risk of ultimate
disappointment, and an aggravation of popular fury,—now diverted but not
dispersed. A mob went about to _levy_ these _voluntary_ offerings, an
act ludicrously inconsistent with their next proceeding; if, indeed, any
of the events of this extraordinary time could be regarded as ludicrous.
They called at Charles’s house among others, whence, as it happened, no
such offerings had yet gone forth. Charles had resisted Pauline’s wish
to lend the queen her thimble, and Julien’s offer to pay his first tax
with the silver-tipped riding-whip grandpapa had given him. Neither
would he allow Marguerite’s few ornaments, all keepsakes, to be thrown
away in any such manner. He would give the coat off his back to the
state, he said, when it could do any service; but the proposed gifts
could only help to make jewellery a drug, without supplying one more
person with bread, or lessening by so much as one scruple the burdens of
the state. He was disposed to be vexed when he came home one day, and
found a short allowance of spoons at the dinner-table, the clock on the
mantel-piece gone, and his wife as destitute of external ornament as any
Arcadian shepherdess at Versailles. He laughed, however, at his wife’s
apologies for having made a voluntary offering against her own will as
well as his, and hoped that she would be as little the worse as the
state would be the better for the sacrifice. Goldsmiths and jewellers of
enterprise and capital would profit by the fancy, he observed, if nobody
else did; and the many losers might find some comfort in sympathy with
the very few winners.
The people, meanwhile, were bitterly complaining of famine, and the more
gold was carried to the treasury, the more bread was bought up before
the eyes of those who were deprived of it from its increased price. It
mattered not that some was given away in charity by the king, and more,
to suit his own purposes, by the duke of Orleans; the people were
rendered unable to purchase it, and furnished with the plea of want,
wherewith to make the streets of Paris echo. It would have been better
to have let the exchange of wedding rings for bread be made without the
interposition of the king or his ministers, even without taking into
consideration the events which followed. A report was soon industriously
spread that the bread furnished by court charity was of a bad quality.
It was believed, like everything that was then said against the court;
and the consequence was that an anomalous and melancholy sight was seen
by as many as walked in the city. Clamorous, starving crowds besieged
the bakers’ shops, and carried off all the bread from their ovens, all
the flour from their bins; while the discontented among the mob
politicians of the Orleans faction were on the way to snatch the food
from the mouths of the hungry and throw it into the river, and to cut
the sacks, and mix the flour with the puddles of the streets. Want and
waste, faction and delusion were here seen in their direct extremes.
At this time, Charles and Marguerite did not allow their children to go
out under any guardianship but that of their father, as it was
impossible to foresee what might happen in the streets before they could
get home again. They were as safe as any could be at such a time;—safer
than the few who ventured abroad in carriages at the risk of insult
wherever they turned; safer than the sordidly fed and clad, who were
seized upon by the agents of faction to augment their mobs, and be made
the instruments of violence under the penalty of suffering it
themselves. The parents and children were also safer together than
separate; as a domestic party, abroad to take the air, presented as
unsuspicious a group, and one as likely to pass unnoticed, as could well
be imagined. Yet they had their occasional alarms; and when there was no
cause to fear for themselves, were too often grieved and shocked at what
they beheld inflicted on others.
“O papa!” cried Julien, one day, as they were walking; “what are they
doing at Maigrot’s shop? I do believe the crowd is coming there next.”
Maigrot was a baker, well known to Charles’s family, and much beloved by
the children, on account of the little hot cakes which seemed to be
always ready to pop out of the oven and into their mouths, when they
went with the servant to deliver orders or pay bills.
Instead of his usual smiling face, Maigrot was now seen in a state of
desperate anxiety, as well as could be judged from the glimpse of him at
his door, trying first to slip out, and then to force his way between
the two men who were evidently placed at the entrance as guards till the
mob should come up. Foiled in his attempt, Maigrot disappeared, and
Charles thought that it might depend on whether there was a way of exit
at the back of the house, whether his head would presently be carried on
a pike, between two loaves of his own bread, or whether he would be
kneading and baking in peace ten years hence. There seemed to be just
time to run and give a word of advice to whomsoever might be waiting in
the shop, and Charles ran forward to do so. He was prevented entering;
but seeing Maigrot’s wife sinking and trembling behind the counter, and
looking absolutely incapable of any resolution whatever, he called out
to her to assist in emptying the flour bins and distributing the bread,
and to fear nothing, and all would be well. The woman tossed off a glass
of water which stood beside her, and rallied for the effort. In such
effort lay the only resource of sufferers under violence in those days;
for the magistracy were unable to afford assistance; or, if able, were
not to be depended on. The shop was presently emptied and gutted, and
its stock carried away, without, however, being in this instance
preceded by the horrible display of a human head. Maigrot had escaped
and actually joined in with the mob in time to see his own flour cast
into the Seine. Nobody thought more of the baker, and he took advantage
of this disregard to learn a great deal of his own doings which he did
not know before. He now overheard that his flour was mixed with hurtful
ingredients by order of his customer, the king; that an inferior kind
was sold at high prices as the best; and that there were stores of meal
concealed somewhere about his premises, to victual the soldiers who were
to be brought to rule the city, and give the king his own way. All this
was news to Maigrot, who was compelled to listen to these falsehoods in
silence: more fortunate than many who had lost their lives as well as
their good name under similar charges. A defender sprang up, however,
when he least expected it.
Charles and his little son could not help following to look on, when the
mob proceeded with the flour down to the river. They stood on the
outskirts of the crowd, watching sack after sack as, with hoarse shouts,
it was heaved into the water so as to make the heaviest splash possible.
A new amusement presently occurred to some of the leaders; that of
testing the political opinions of the passers by by the judgment they
should pronounce on the quality of the flour. Those who declared it good
must, of course, be parasites of the court; those who made mouths at it
were the friends of the people; and the moment this point was settled,
every gazer from a distance was hauled to the water’s edge to undergo
the test; every approaching carriage was waylaid and stopped, and its
inmates brought on the shoulders of the mob. Of course, all gave
judgment on the same side;—a thing likely to happen without much
dishonesty, when the raw flour was crammed into the mouth by foul and
sometimes bloody hands. It would have been difficult to pronounce it
very good under such circumstances of administration.
Among the most piteous looking of those under test was the marquis de
Thou, who was taken from a non-descript sort of carriage, on his way, as
he vowed, to the duke of Orleans, but certainly attended by more than
one servant of the royal household. While prosecuting his explanations
with gesture and grimace, uplifted as he was above the crowd, he looked
so like a monkey riding a bear that a universal shout of mockery arose.
He was lowered for a moment, out of sight; and the laugh rose louder
than ever when he reappeared, held at arms’ length by a hundred hands,
powdered all over like a miller. His position made the judgment he had
to give all the more difficult, for it enabled him to perceive the royal
servants watching him on one side, the duke of Orleans and some of his
fiercest followers on another, and the pitiless mob around.
“Ah! it is very, very good food for the poor, without doubt,” he
declared, while in full view of the court party, and with his mouth
stuffed with a compound which had just been taken from a puddle
underfoot. “Very fine nourishment for a good king to buy dear, and give
away to a hungry people.—Ah! no more,—no more, I pray you! I shall
presently dine, and it is enough. I cannot praise it more than I have
done.—Ah! but” (seeing the duke frowning) “I do not say but it may be a
little sour,—and somewhat bitter,—yes, O yes, and gritty,—and, O do not
murder me, and I will also say hurtful.—And poisonous? Yes, no doubt it
is poisonous,—clearly poisonous.—But, how bountiful of the king to think
of how the poor should be fed!”
The marquis might think himself fortunate in getting off with a ducking
in the yeasty flood, into which he was let down astride on a flour sack.
While sneaking away through the crowd, after shaking his dripping queue,
and drawing a long breath, he encountered Charles, whom he immediately
recognised, and with inconsiderate selfishness, exposed to the notice of
the crowd by his appeal.
“Ah, my friend, here is a condition I am in! For our old friendship’s
sake,—for the sake of our vicinity in Guienne, aid me!”
“Do not answer him. Take no notice,” whispered Maigrot from behind;
“’tis as much as your life is worth.”
But Charles could not be inhuman. He gave the old man his arm to conduct
him to the carriage which he intended to order to his own house. Before
he had well turned his back, however, a piercing shriek from Julien made
him look round. The mob were about to carry the boy towards the sacks.
“Do not be alarmed, my dear,” said he. “Taste the flour, and say whether
you think it good; and I will come to you in a moment to do the same.”
Julien shrieked no more, but he looked ruefully in his father’s face,
when Charles returned. As soon as he had gulped down his share and could
speak, he said he had never tasted raw flour before, but it was not so
good as the hot cakes that were made of it sometimes.—The boy escaped
with being only laughed at.—His father’s turn came next.
Charles stipulated, when laid hold of, to be allowed to feed himself,
and refused laughingly to taste what came out of the puddle till his
neighbours should have separated the mud from the flour. With a very
oracular look, he then proceeded from sack to sack, tasting and
pronouncing, apparently unmoved by the speculations he heard going on
all round him as to whether he was a royalist from about the court, or a
spy from Versailles, or only an ignorant stranger from the provinces.
When he had apparently made up his mind, he began a sort of conversation
with those nearest to him, which he exalted by degrees into a speech.
“When I,” he observed, “I, the very first, opened a prisoner’s cell in
the Bastille——”
He was interrupted by loud cheers from all who heard; and this drew the
attention of more.
“——I found,” continued Charles, “a mess of wholesome food in that
horrible place. Every other kind of poison was there,—the poison of
damps and a close atmosphere; the poison of inactivity which brings on
disease and death; the poison of cruelty by which all the kindly
feelings are turned into bitterness in the soul of the oppressed; and
the poison of hopelessness, by which the currents of life are chilled,
and the heart of the captive is sunk within him till he dies. All these
poisons we found in every cell; but to all their inmates was denied that
quicker poison which would have been welcome to end their woes. Some, we
know, have lived thirty-five years under this slow death, while a very
small mixture of drugs with their bread would have released them in
fewer hours. That this quicker method was ever used, we have no proof;
that it was not used in the case of those whom we released, we know, not
by their state of health alone; for that, alas! was not to be boasted
of;—but by the experience of some of us. When we were heated with toil
and choked with dust, we drank the draughts which the prisoners left
untasted in their cells. When a way was made among the ruins, women came
to see what a work their husbands had achieved; and when their children
craved food, rather than return home before all was finished, they gave
their little ones the bread which the captives had loathed. Many thus
ate and drank; and I appeal to you whether any evil came of that day;
whether the sleep of the next night was not sound as became the rest
which succeeds to an heroic effort. No one was poisoned with the food
then provided by the government; and yet that horrible dungeon was the
place, if there be any, for poison to do its work. And if not attempted
there, will it be here? Here, where there are a million of eyes on the
watch to detect treasons against the people? Here, where there are
hundreds of thousands of defenders of the public safety? No, fellow
citizens: this is not the kind of treason which is meditated against us.
There are none that dare practise so directly on your lives. But there
is a treason no less fatal, though more disguised, which is even at this
moment in operation against you. You ask me two questions;—whether this
food is of a bad quality; and whether you are not half-starved; and both
these evils you ascribe to your rulers.—To the first I answer, that this
food is, to the best of my judgment, good; and, whether good or bad,
that the government has nothing to do with it, since it forms no part of
the stores that the king has bought up for distribution. It is flour of
the same harvest, the same field, the same mill, the same bin, that I
and mine have been supplied from; and it has nourished me well for the
work I have had to do; for letting in the light of day upon the foulest
dungeon that ever deformed the earth,—for watching over those who have
been released from it,—for attending to the proceedings of the
Assembly,—for meditating by night and consulting by day how the rights
of the people may best be attained and secured. Keep the same food to
strengthen you for the same purposes. Do not forget your other
complaint;—that you are starving: and remember that however much this
may be owing to the misrule and courtly extravagance you denounce, the
grievance will not be removed by your feeding the fishes with that which
your children are craving. I spoke of another kind of treason than that
which you suspect, and I see about me too many tokens of its
existence;—the treason which would not poison but starve you.
“Of the motives of this treason I have nothing to say, for I am wholly
ignorant of them. I only insist that there can be no truly patriotic aim
under the project of depriving you of the food which is at best but
scantily supplied. Do you find in the most plentiful seasons that we
have corn enough to make sport with in the river? Are your houses even
then so filled with grain that, after feeding your children and domestic
animals, you have enough left for the eels of the Seine? Is it to give
you this over-supply that the peasantry of the provinces live under
roofs of rushes, and couch upon beds of straw? Tell me,—is there in the
happiest of times such a superfluity that no Frenchman has a want or
wish for more?”
Furious cries of denial rose from all sides, joined with curses upon the
government which year by year, by its extravagance, snatched the
hard-earned bread from the labourer’s hands.
“This is all true,” replied Charles, “and is in course of being
reformed: but when did even a tyrannical government inflict upon you
such evils as you are this day inflicting upon yourselves? When has it
robbed the shops of one of the most useful class of men among you, and
carried away boat-loads of the food for which thousands are pining, and
destroyed your means of life before your eyes? A worse enemy than even a
weak king and a licentious court is making sport of your miseries, and
overwhelming you with such as cannot be repaired. Yes! let it not hurt
your pride to hear of woes that cannot be repaired; for even the power
of the sovereign people is not unlimited, great as you have proved it to
be. You have abolished servile parliaments, and obtained a virtuous
assembly of representatives. You have swept away the stronghold of
oppression, and can tread with free steps the turf from which its very
foundations have been extracted. You have rejected a constitution which
was an insufficient warrant for your liberties, and are in the way to
obtain universal assent to that noble Declaration of Rights which shall
become the social contract of every civilized nation.—All these things,
and others which would have been called impossibilities ten years ago,
you have achieved. But there are impossibilities remaining which more
truly deserve the name. You cannot prevent multitudes dying when famine
is in the land; you cannot call up a new harvest before the seed has
sprouted; you cannot insist upon supplies from other lands which are
already drained. You can waste your resources, but you cannot recall
them. With however much pride or levity you may at this hour fling away
the staff of your life, you cannot retard the day when you will sink for
want of it,—when you will kneel in the mud by the brink of this very
current, and crave the waters to give up what you have buried in them,
or to drown your miseries with your life.—Will you suffer yourselves
thus to be made sport of? Will you permit yourselves to be goaded into
madness, in order that you may be ready for madmen’s deeds? Will you
throw away what is in your own hands, that others may reduce you to
crave the small pittance which will remain in theirs? Those who have
incited you to the deeds of this day take very good care that all our
granaries shall not be emptied. They reserve a few, that you may at
length,—when all their schemes are ripe,—be their tools through your
literal dependence on them for bread.—Disappoint this plot as far as you
can. It is now too late to keep plenty in your own hands; but baffle the
approaches of famine to the last moment; for with hunger comes slavery;
or, if you will not have slavery, death; and in either case, your
country must surrender your services at the very moment when she wants
them most.—Where is the patriotism of bringing things to this
pass?—Where also is the justice of condemning unheard so useful a class
of men as those from whom you have taken their property without
accusation, and, in many cases, their lives, on nothing better than
suspicion of their having communicated with the court?—We must respect
rights, as well as frame a Declaration of them. We must cherish the
innocent and useful of society, if we wish to restrain those who are
neither the one nor the other. Let there be a contrast between the
oppressors and the friends of the people. Let tyrants tremble, while
industrious citizens dwell in peace.”
It was now easy to wind up the discourse to the point contemplated.
Charles proposed that Maigrot should be permitted, under proper
guardianship, to bake a provision of loaves out of this very flour; and
if they proved good, that all that remained of his property should be
restored to him. The crowd rather relished the idea of waiting the
operation, in full prospect of a batch of hot rolls gratis as the
result, and the proposal was received with acclamations.—Charles
immediately singled out Maigrot, as he stood on the outskirts of the
mob, requested him to lead the way homewards, put a loaf into each arm
of his little son, swung a sack of flour on his own shoulders, and
headed the most singular of all the extraordinary processions which
attracted the gaze of Paris in those times.
The duke of Orleans made no opposition. He saw that the game was up for
this day, and departed in an opposite direction, having no particular
wish to hear the verdict which he knew would be passed upon the bread,
or to witness the exultation of the baker.—Before night, Maigrot not
only felt his head safe upon his shoulders, but was the most eminent
baker in Paris; and, if he had but had any flour remaining, might have
boasted such a business as he had till now never thought of aspiring to.
--------------
CHAPTER VII.
MOB SOVEREIGNTY.
The endeavours of individuals like Charles to make the people wise were
of little avail, however successful at the moment, in opposition to
influences of a different character which were perpetually at work upon
the mob of Paris. The obstinacy of the king in refusing to sign the
declaration of rights, the imbecility of the ministry, the arts and
clamours of the leaders of different parties, and, above all, the
destitution of which they took advantage, overcame all principles of
subordination, all sentiments of loyalty, and filled the people with a
rage which rendered them as blind to their own interests as unjust
towards those of the ranks above them. Riot and waste spread and grew
from day to day, and the wise saw no more prospect of relief than the
foolish of danger.
The king had been told, on the day the Bastille was taken, that his
capital was in a state of revolution; but, nearly three months
afterwards, he was still wondering what the event might mean; talking
over with the queen the kindnesses he had always intended showing to his
people, and assuring the people’s parliament that the best thing he
could do for them was to preserve his dignity and prerogative. He could
still at Versailles ride abroad unmolested in the mornings, feast his
body-guard in the middle of the day, and look on while the ladies of the
court were dancing in the evening, and sleep the whole night without
hearing the drums and larums which kept all Paris awake; and could not
therefore believe that all would not come right, when the people should
have been persuaded of the atrocious unreasonableness of the Declaration
they wanted him to sign. When he heard that they drowned their flour in
hatred of him, he did all he could think of in ordering that more should
be given them; and when the queen discovered that which every one would
have kept from her,—that she was hated,—she curled her proud lip, and
reared her graceful head, and thought that the citizens must be ignorant
indeed if they fancied they could understand her springs of action, or
believed that they could intimidate her. With the dauphin at her knee,
she expatiated to the ladies of her court on the misfortune of kings and
queens having any connexion at all with the people beneath them, whom it
was at all times difficult to manage, and who might, as now, cause
serious trouble, and interfere materially with the peace of royalty. She
had at that moment little idea how the peace of royalty was to be
invaded this very day.
A murmur of horror and looks of dismay penetrated even into the presence
of her majesty, when tidings arrived of the approach of an army of women
from Paris.
“Of women!” cried the gouvernante of the dauphin. “Is it because they
can crave bread with a shriller wail?”
“Of women!” exclaimed the lady Alice de Thou. “They come to plead for
the rights of their children. I remember when they brought the little
ones in their arms after the storm, and we gave them all we had.”
“Of women!” said the queen, thoughtfully. Then, with fire in her eyes,
she continued, looking steadfastly on the trembling chamberlain who
brought the news, “Since they are women, it is _my_ head they want. Is
it not so? Speak. Are they not come for me?”
As soon as the chamberlain could speak, he muttered that he feared they
were indeed not women, but ruffians in disguise.
“Aye, just so,” observed the queen. “Their womanhood is emblematical;
and the hint of their purpose is not lost upon me. I hope they are
indeed men, and can handle arms. I would take my death more willingly,
being shot at as a mark, than being torn to pieces by the foul hands of
the rabble. A death-blow from afar rather than a touch from any one of
them!”
All present, except the chamberlain, were loud in their protestations
against the possibility of any such danger. It was inconceivable; it was
barbarous; it was horrific; it was a thing unheard of; in short, it was
absolutely inconceivable. The chamberlain mournfully admitted that the
whole was indeed inconceivable to all who had not witnessed the
procession, like a troop of furies from the regions below, taking their
way through every savage district on the earth, and swelling their ranks
with all that could be gathered up of hideous and corrupt. That her
majesty’s sacred person should fall into such hands——
All now began to urge flight, and the queen was for a moment disposed to
listen; but finding that the king was out shooting, had been sent for,
and was expected every instant, she resolved to wait his arrival, and
then it was too late. The poissardes, real and pretended, had by that
time rushed into the place, filled the streets, stopped up the avenue,
and taken up a position of control in the Chamber of Assembly. The king
reached the palace through a back entrance, in safety, but it was in
vain to think of leaving it again.
A hasty council was summoned, consisting of the royal family, and a few
confidential servants, whose attachment to the persons of majesty might
set against the enervating terror which had seized upon the ministers,
and prevented their exerting any influence over these new and appalling
circumstances. Within the circle, rapid consultation went on in low
voices, while some kept watch at the doors. When discussing the
necessity of signing the declaration of rights,—which was one of the
demands of the mob without,—the queen’s manner and tone were perceived
suddenly to change, and she appeared to make light of the danger under
which even her spirit had quailed but just before.
“Be careful;” she whispered to the person next her. “There is a creature
of the duke of Orleans in the room. I wonder how he got in.”
The lady Alice, who was watching her, followed the glance of her eye,
and saw that it rested on one whom she little expected to see.
“Madam!” she exclaimed, “it is my father!”
“Yes, my child; come to share your loyalty, now that the women below
have made him afraid. If the palace is stormed, he must find a refuge
once more under the Orleans provision-carts, which are, I suppose, in
waiting, as usual. We must give him no news to carry; and Alice, as soon
as he is gone, I must have your head-dress to wear, as the best
protection while your father points the way to us. I would not, however,
be so cruel, my child, as to deck you with mine. You would lose your
pretty head in a trice, and then the marquis would altogether go from
us. It is through you that we are still favoured with his countenance
occasionally.”
Alice’s tearful eyes had besought mercy for her parent long before the
queen seemed disposed to yield it. While the adherence of the noblesse
to the royal cause was regarded as a matter of course, and therefore not
rewarded with extraordinary gratitude, all symptoms of halting or
defection were observed with scorn, and commented on without reserve by
the haughty woman who regarded her rank and empire as natural, instead
of conventional, and would as soon have dreamed of being denied the use
of her limbs and senses as the privileges of royalty.
It was through her influence that the king refused to sign the
declaration till the last moment,—when he was compelled to do so at a
tremendous sacrifice of regal dignity;—at the bidding, namely, of twelve
poissardes who forced their way into the presence with the deputies from
the Assembly, and under the compulsion of threats of what might be
expected from the army of eighteen thousand men who had marched from
Paris during the afternoon, under the enforced command of Lafayette.
Never was anything beheld more dreary than the aspect, more disgusting
than the incidents of this day and night. The skies frowned upon the
scene, and wind and rain added to the difficulty of what was achieved,
and the horror of what was witnessed. The deputies and their attendants,
the poissardes, appeared in the king’s presence, covered with mud and
drenched with rain; the House of Assembly was crowded with women, who
came in for shelter, taking their seats among the members, now eating
and drinking, and now lifting up an outcry to drown the voice of an
unpopular deputy; the fires of the bivouacs in the streets were quenched
with torrents of rain, again and again, and the peaceable inhabitants
were in fear of being compelled at length to throw open their gates to
the rabble. The leading figure of the mob, however, had a peculiar
reason for disliking the weather, as he took care to show everybody. He
was a gaunt-looking ruffian, with a high pointed cap, and grotesque
garb, well armed, but especially proud of an axe which he carried, ready
for immediate use at the slightest hint from the leaders of the mob.
With all his fear,—the only fear he seemed capable of,—that it should be
rusted with the wet, and he thus delayed in his vocation, he could not
refrain from brandishing it over his head, and displaying it in sight of
the sentinels, and such of the body-guards as looked out now and then
from the palace. This ruffian took his stand immediately under the
king’s window, prepared a cannon as a convenient block, and waited
impatiently for victims. He could not be persuaded to quit his post for
shelter; but he did once step aside for brandy. On his return, he found
two poissardes sitting astride on his cannon, face to face, tossing off
their drams, and devouring the rations which their prompting demon had
taken care to provide. The executioner warned them off, and prevailed by
the offer of a better seat within five minutes. A hint was enough to
show them his meaning. He just pointed towards an approaching group,
consisting of an unfortunate soldier with whom some of the mob had
picked a quarrel as he was going to his post for the night,—and his
captors. The victim looked dogged. He saw the cold metal block on which
the axe was presently to ring his death-stroke: he saw the fidgetty
executioner, and the fierce women, gathering round, munching their
suppers as if his life-blood was the draught they looked for to wash
down the last mouthful: he saw that no help was within reach or call. He
saw all this, and seemed disposed to take quietly, though sullenly, what
was inevitable. He stood firm while they pulled off his stock; he moved
forwards when they pushed him; he kneeled when they pressed upon his
shoulders; but some impatience in their manner of doing so excited his
passions in a moment to their utmost strength. Before they could keep
him down, he was not only on his feet again, but bounding high in the
air, grappling with the executioner for the axe, kicking, trampling,
buffeting all who laid hands on him, and creating a hubbub which brought
the king to the window above, and conveyed to the senses of the ladies a
knowledge of what was passing. It was a short struggle; but a struggle
it was to the last, and force alone could subdue the victim. One virago
clutched the hair of his head, and others held down his feet. When his
blood flowed on the ground, and mixed with the puddles of rain, one or
two stooped down to see how the eyes rolled and the nostrils yet
quivered, while, on the other side the block, the executioner, mindful
of his promise, tossed the headless body to a little distance, so that
his friends might sit on it to finish their meal. What are the invisible
issues of life there was no one present to think, during the whole
scene, unless the victim himself might have been conscious of his
thoughts darting that way; but such was the visible issue of a life
which a stupendous and delicate natural apparatus had been appointed to
create, sustain, and develop. It had originated in the deepest passions
of human nature; been maintained by appliances, both natural and moral,
which the keenest powers can barely recognize, and not estimate; and
developed for objects of which man has only the remotest ken. Such was
the visible issue of this mighty series of operations. That the handy
work of Providence should ever have been thus crushed, and its mysteries
thus boldly made sport of, may in time appear as incredible as it would
now seem that children had ever been encouraged to pull planets from
their spheres in mockery, and quench the milky way,—supposing such power
to have been left in their hands. In the latter case, who would be
answerable for the profanation? Surely those who taught mockery in the
place of reverence. Who then was answerable in the former case? Those
who made the perpetrators ignorant through oppression, and savage by
misrule. The responsibilities of a certain order through many centuries
were called to judgment during the brief period before us; and the
sentence of condemnation not only went forth on the four winds to the
farthest corners of the globe, but shall be repeated down to those
remote ages when it shall be forgotten on earth, though recorded in
heaven, that man ever shed the blood of man.
One or two more such murders on the cannon and at the palace gates had
not the effect of alarming the court or the really patriotic leaders of
the people so far as to keep them on the watch through the night. The
king believed that all was safe when he had given the signature which it
was the professed object of the expedition to obtain. The queen was
assured by Lafayette that the people were wearied, and that nothing was
to be apprehended till morning; and the general himself reposed in his
hotel in full confidence of the security of all parties. All were not,
however, thus satisfied. Some of the deputies refused to withdraw from
their chamber; and while all was sleep and silence in the palace, except
where some watchful ear caught the soft tread of the sentinels in the
corridors, and the pattering of the rain without, and at intervals, some
tidings from the passing gust, of revelry in the streets,—while armed
ruffians sang their songs, or snored in their dreams round the
watch-fires where the shrill-voiced poissardes were broiling their
rations, or heating their strong liquors,—a few of the wiser deputies
sat, each in his place, with folded arms, and in perfect silence, while
the light of a single lamp fell on their uncovered heads and thoughtful
countenances, and foresight was invisibly presenting to each pictures of
that which was about to befall their monarchy and themselves. Revellers,
legislators, and sentinels were not the only ones who watched. One or
two, who did not partake the general’s confidence in the people thus
strangely congregated, wandered from watch-fire to watch-fire, and about
the precincts of the palace, to be in readiness to warn Lafayette of the
first symptoms of movement.
Among these was Charles, whose anxiety had been awakened by the aspect
of Paris after the departure of the army for Versailles. It was well
known that Lafayette’s generalship on this occasion was enforced; and
not all the apparatus of triumph amidst which the troops marched
out,—not all the drumming, and military music, and display of flags
amidst the rain, and echo of shouting heard above the strong winds,
could remove the impression of the hollowness of all this rejoicing,—the
desperation of this defiance. When the sights and sounds were gone, a
deep gloom settled down upon Paris. The shops were shut, the streets
were silent, except where the waggons, laden with meat, bread, and
brandy, converged towards the Versailles road, or where groups of two or
three observers whispered their anticipations to each other, mindful of
none but political storms, and questioning only whether the sun of
royalty would not this night have a crimson setting, to rise upon their
state no more.
Charles had been among these observers, and the tidings he brought home
made his wife anxious to depart from this revolutionary city, and take
refuge in their country possessions. She would be ready to go at any
moment, she declared, and when would there be so favourable a time as
when the place was half emptied of its inhabitants, the police otherwise
engaged than in watching the proceedings of private individuals, and all
fear at an end of any attack upon the wine-stores? Charles was half
disposed to listen to the scheme, though his views of what was likely to
happen differed as widely from his wife’s as the prevailing tone of mind
by which they were influenced. Marguerite feared the worst: her husband
hoped all might yet be well, and thought it, at all events, a good thing
that something decided must arise out of the present crisis. He
determined to follow the march to Versailles, and to return as soon as
he could anticipate the event, to bid Marguerite stay and make herself
easy, or to carry her, her father and children into Guienne. While she
was packing up the few necessaries she meant to take with her, and
persuading all the household but herself to go early to rest, Charles
was reconnoitring the proceedings of such as were preparing a terrible
retribution for those under whose tyranny they had suffered.
He was no spy; being devoted to no party, and acting for his own honest
purposes; and he therefore used no concealment. He conversed with the
riotous poissardes on public injuries, conferred with the deputies on
public order, and exchanged a few words with the sentinels on the
probability of an attack on the palace in the morning. The horrible
threats breathed over the fires against the queen, the brutal exultation
which appeared through mysterious and slang expressions respecting the
royal household, made him wonder at the apparent defencelessness of the
palace. He was by no means satisfied that all was safe till morning, and
said so to a little muffled up man whom he found standing in the shadow,
close by the great iron gates. He could not make out whether this man
was a mere looker on, like himself, or a watch appointed by either
party.
“Is it your own choice to be out to-night, sir; or are you occupying a
post? Because, in the first case I would direct you where you might see
more of the state of things than here; and, in the other, I would
strongly recommend your appealing to the general for support.”
“Alas! yes. I am sent hither,” replied the quavering voice of the
muffled up person. “None would willingly be abroad this night, and all
my desire is to be left unobserved in this shadow at present;—unless,
indeed, some friend should pass who might protect me, and from whom I
might learn that which I am sent to ascertain.—You seem, sir, to be an
orderly, honest man. Can you tell me whether the duke,—whether Orleans
is at hand?”
“Orleans being the most honest and orderly of men, hey, marquis?” said
Charles, laughing. “So you are sent out by lady Alice for tidings, and
you wait here for them till Orleans passes by—Is it not so?”
“Ah! what can I do? These canaille will smother me again with flour, or
drag me to the cold cannon;” and here the little man shivered, and his
teeth chattered. “Do but bring me to Orleans, my good sir, or get me a
re-entrance into the palace, and I will——I will——This morning air is so
raw! and I am——I am——not fit for enterprise.”
Charles fully agreed with him; but having no interest to get a royal spy
housed before his errand was done, he could only tell him that, to the
best of his belief, Orleans was lingering about the road between
Versailles and Paris, or hanging somewhere on the outskirts of the
encampment to witness the issue, without being implicated.
“Ah! how he is happy in comparison with me!” cried the poor marquis. “I
have never, sir, meddled with politics——”
“Further than as all the noblesse have operated,” interrupted Charles.
“I mean in stimulating the people to meddle with politics. You have
wrought at second hand, marquis, hitherto. Now is your time for taking
your part finally, and acting in it.”
“Alas! what evils come of any one interfering in such affairs but
ministers and deputies! Let them act, and let us be neutral. This is all
I ask.”
“Aye, but, marquis, it is too late to ask this; because there has been
great mistake about what is, and what is not, being neutral. I dare say
you believed yourself neutral when you lay sleeping in bed, while your
peasantry were keeping the frogs quiet in your ponds. I dare say you had
no thought of politics in your boar hunts, or when three fathers of
families were sent to the galleys for alarming the lady Alice’s brooding
doves. Yet you were all the while——”
The marquis’s light blue eyes were now seen by the lamp light to be
opened upon Charles with such an expression of vacant wonderment that it
was plain there was no use in proceeding. He evidently had yet to learn
the true province of politics; and, for his part, he thought the
merchant must have drunk a little too deep in his own wine, to be
talking of peasants and pigeons in connexion with an insurrection in
Paris.—He would never have had courage to leave his nook by himself; but
now that he had met a face that he knew, it required more courage to
remain there by himself, and he therefore hooked Charles by the arm, and
said he would be wholly guided by him. Charles would rather have
dispensed with his attachment, but could not shake off the old man into
darkness and helplessness, if he himself preferred venturing into the
light of the watch-fires, and upon the threshold of Lafayette’s lodging,
whither he was warned he would be conveyed.
If the marquis had carried a bold front, nothing would have happened to
him, any more than to his companion; but his slouched hat, halting gait,
and shrinking deportment at once drew attention upon him. The
consequence was that he heard double the number of threats, and
imprecations ten times more horrid than had met Charles’s ears before.
If he had now regained entrance into the palace, he could have told that
which would have made even the queen’s fiery blood run cold, and have
given the whole household a foretaste of worse horrors than even those
of the ensuing day.
When they had arrived at the last of the line of fires, the marquis
believed his purgatory to be nearly over, and indulged himself in a few
ejaculations of thankfulness on the occasion. He was overheard, seized,
dragged to the light, his coat torn open, and his hat pushed back. The
queue looked suspicious; the manner of speech, mixed up, as even these
people could perceive, of high breeding and imbecility, gave assurance
that he was a court adherent; to which there was to be opposed only his
own and Charles’s assurance that he was a companion and friend of
Orleans. The knot of drinkers hesitated whether to cut off his head or
let him go, and the marquis stood panting with open lips and closed
teeth, when an amiable creature, partly masculine in her attire, and
wholly so in her address, proposed a half measure.
“If he is one of them,” she observed, “we shall find him again in the
palace presently; so let us mark him.”
With the word, she seized the poor man’s nose with the left hand, a
burning stick with the right, and branded his forehead with a cross;
then pushed him away, and turned to Charles, offering to drink to him in
his own liquor, the choicest in Paris, if Orleans said true. She pointed
at the same time to a waggon near, on which, to his amazement, Charles
saw piled wine-casks with his own mark, and brandy-bottles sealed with
his own seal.
Perceiving at a glance that his cellars must have been forced since he
left home, and that all further resistance would be useless, he
determined to yield to his wife’s desire to quit Paris; and he hastened
to discharge his duty of rousing and warning the general, before turning
his back on this scene of disorder.
Lafayette was up in a moment, and, though still trusting in the
peaceable disposition of the people, dressed himself hastily, that he
might be among them by daybreak. Before he could leave his hotel,
however, warning sounds came from the direction of the palace, and
messengers succeeded one another rapidly, stating that an attack was
being made on the great iron gates, that blood had already been shed,
and that the lives of the whole royal family seemed to be at the
people’s mercy. The general threw himself upon a horse which happened to
be standing saddled below, and galloped off, before Charles could
recommend the marquis de Thou to his protection, should he happen to
find him in the hands of the populace. His own anxiety to get home was
such as ill to brook any delay, and to admit little other interest of
any kind; but chance threw him once more in the path of the old man.
As he was making the best of his way towards the Paris road, stemming
the tide of people that was rushing towards the palace, he was suddenly
jostled and thrown down by an impulse in the contrary direction. Nor was
he the only one. Many were bruised, some trampled, while a fugitive
burst through the throng, followed by a knot of pursuers, who overthrew
all that came in their way, while their mingled curses and laughter
contrasted strangely with the panting cry of the pursued. Some cried out
that it was the king; others uttered imprecations against him as one of
the hated guards; while Charles saw, amidst his tattered, scared, and
helpless condition, that it was no other than the poor marquis. His
desperation gave the hunted man strength to clear the mob, and to fly
some way beyond, till he reached the trees of the avenue, where there
was an end of his safety unless some better aid was brought him than his
own failing strength. His enemies dogged him, surrounded him;—some
brandishing pitchforks, others large knives, and not a few firing off
their muskets to give a new impulse to his terror. This sight was
intolerable to Charles, who saw in such cruelty none of the palliations
which he had admitted in the case of some former acts of violence.
Forgetting all but what was before his eyes, he snatched a pike, threw
himself in front of the pursuit, reached the victim just as he fell
exhausted at the foot of a tree, and stood astride over him, with one
hand in an attitude of defence, while the other beckoned to the people
to listen. He shouted amid the din, and the few words which were heard
by those nearest to him served his purpose of diverting their thoughts
from immediate murder. He told them that, in the name of the marquis’s
tenantry, he demanded that the marquis should be placed in the custody
of the Assembly of deputies, to answer for an infringement of the new
laws by which the property of the peasantry was protected. He told them
that the general was gone to the palace, to mediate between the queen
and the poissardes, and as it would be a pity that those who heard him
should be absent from so interesting a spectacle, he and one or two more
would take charge of the criminal, and convey him before the sitting
deputies. A well-timed roll of the drums and discharge of musketry
confirmed his appeal, and drew away his auditors, so that in a few
moments, when the last lingerers had gratified themselves with pricking
their victim a little with the points of their various weapons, Charles
found himself alone with the almost lifeless old man.
On hearing that his further existence probably depended on his reaching
the assembly while the mob was engaged elsewhere, the marquis made an
effort to rise and walk, and found himself so much less hurt than
frightened that he accomplished the transit with small difficulty. Such
a deplorable object was never before presented to the Assembly, at least
under the title of a marquis. He had scarcely a shred of clothing under
the soldier’s cloak which Charles had borrowed from a sentinel at the
door. His powdered hair was dripping with rain, and his face smeared
with blood. He wept bitterly; murmuring, in the tones of a woman, his
wonder as to what he could have ever done to offend the people, and how
the world could have grown so cruel and ungrateful. The Assembly had
little leisure at this time, and were glad to accept Charles’s offer of
conveying the prisoner away, and his guarantee that the marquis should
set out for his estate in the provinces without delay, and not return
till the troubles of the capital were at an end. The marquis was little
disposed to make opposition.
“Take me away,” he said, “though I only fly from one doom to another.
You say my tenants are enraged against me; and I say that they will
drink my blood. The vile are sovereigns in these days, and the noble
have the knife at their throats from day to day. O, if they had killed
me under the tree, it would have been over; but now it is still to come.
O save me! Do not leave me! Make me your servant. Employ me as you will;
but do not let them kill me!”
Charles recommended that the old man should in fact travel into Guienne
as his servant, and take possession of his chateau or not, according to
the apparent disposition of the peasantry when they should arrive.—Not a
moment was to be lost in proceeding to Paris, if the departure of the
family was to take place while the populace and the troops were engaged
at Versailles, and the whole attention of the magistracy was directed
upon what was passing there.
An empty cart was found in which to stow the marquis, while his
protector walked by its side. They left behind them the most fearful
spectacles of that day,—the murder of some of the guards, the narrow
escape of the queen, the brutal joy of the mob at the enforced consent
of the royal family to be conveyed to Paris, and the beginning of that
dreadful march itself, as anomalous, as disgusting, as any spectacle
that was ever presented as a pageant. But, one circumstance which
signalized that march, they were also witnesses to. Half-way between
Versailles and Paris, on a mound planted with trees, a figure was seen,
moving behind the stems, and peeping forth at every sound of wheels or
footsteps. It was Orleans, who had stationed himself here to watch the
issue of his plot,—the return of the expedition, with the bodies of his
royal cousins, dead or alive.
With some difficulty, he was persuaded to come down and speak to his
humble servant the marquis; and when he did greet him, it was with
something very like a smile at his crest-fallen appearance, and
querulous complainings.
“My good friend, these are strange times,” he observed. “I should think
your valet has hardly had time to attend to you this morning. However,
you will find plenty unoccupied at Paris to renew your powder.—O, you
wish to go at once, and shoot on your own territory. Well; perhaps you
are wise, since our kind of shooting here is not exactly to your taste.
You must take care, however; for I hear that more bullets fly from
behind the hedges there than in the open fields. Farewell, my dear sir,
for I see your companion is impatient. He wants to be keeping guard over
his wine-cellars. I wish him an ample fortune out of the wines therein
contained at this moment.”
Charles’s impatience was not only on account of his own affairs. He
distrusted Orleans so far as to be vexed that the marquis whispered to
him their plan of escape. There was no particular sign of interest in
the duke’s countenance at the relation; and it only remained to be hoped
that no harm would come of this unnecessary confidence. The marquis was
far from thinking it unnecessary, as a word from the duke would procure
passports for the whole family. This word Orleans was prevailed upon to
write, and furnished with it, the marquis poured out his gratitude more
vehemently than, but a few months before, he would have supposed
possible; and then bade his vehicle proceed, watching from a distance
how the duke once more passed the enclosure, and took his station among
the trees as before.
The cellars were found to be indeed more than half emptied; and of the
casks that remained, one or two were staved, to drown the gunpowder and
other combustibles. No attack had been made upon the house, and
Marguerite had sufficiently got the better of her terrors, to be ready
for immediate departure. No obstacle arose, and Steele, with Pierre
under him, consented to remain in charge of the property till Charles
could return, after having deposited his family in security.
The marquis made a rather singular-looking valet, with a manner
alternating between superciliousness and awkward deference,—a strutting
gait when he forgot what he was about, and a cringing one when he
happened to cast a glance upon his dress. He passed muster very well,
however, as a battered old soldier turned valet; his strut passing for
regimental paces, and his cringe being ascribed to the honourable wounds
he was supposed to bear. M. Raucourt took off the attention of all who
might be disposed to make remarks, by telling everybody that he was
going to see his olive groves. The party travelled with more speed than
the dismal procession from Versailles; so that before the royal family
was mournfully ushered into the Hotel de Ville at dusk, Charles and his
household were some leagues on their journey southwards.
--------------
CHAPTER VIII.
UPSHOT OF FEUDALISM.
The hopeful disposition of both Charles and Antoine was remarkable at
all times, and in whatever society they were. When they were together,
it became well nigh excessive, and occasioned no little amusement to
their friends in happy times, and much sighing from the apprehensive
Marguerite in such evil days as they were now fallen upon. Each excited
the other to perceive bright specks on the dark horizon, and neither
would lag behind the other in discerning cause for encouragement, and in
pointing out that, as good had issued from apparent evil in some former
analogous instance, it would be a sin to doubt that the same thing might
happen again. Marguerite was almost offended that, while she looked
tremblingly around as the dancing waters of the Garonne first flashed
upon their sight under the gleam of an October sun, her husband
encouraged the joyous gestures of the children standing on his knee, and
burst out singing one of the popular provincial airs to which the banks
of that river so often echo. But when Antoine came forth to meet them as
they alighted, in high spirits, though he had actually nothing good to
tell them, however disposed to hope for everything blissful, Marguerite
turned from him to her father, as the most reasonable personage of the
two.
Antoine was beginning a laugh at his brother’s first choice of the
luxury of a valet, but checked himself instantly on hearing who it was,
and wherefore.
“Do you suppose he may safely dress himself, and appear to arrive at his
chateau to-morrow?”
“Why, scarcely yet, perhaps,” replied Antoine, gravely. “The peasantry
are in an uncomfortable, irascible state, and the poor man would hardly
have fair play among them; but it cannot last long, and then we shall
have him trampling our crops again as solemnly as ever; perched, like a
wax figure, on horseback, and utterly unable to comprehend such a thing
as a curse against himself; or to bestow a thought as to whose ground he
is trespassing upon.”
“Let us hope he has learned more consideration by his misfortunes,” said
Charles. “At any rate, he may yet learn it by using his eyes and ears in
the interval between this hour and his restoration to his honours and
privileges,—which I suppose will happen by the time he has learned to
tie his own queue according to his own fancy. Meanwhile, how is
Favorite?”
“O, our beauty! She has rather languished this season; but she will be
all the more brilliant next year; for two bad seasons give a pretty fair
security that the third will be good. It is as if the steam of blood had
come from your city, Charles, like a blight, and shrivelled her swelling
fruit. The crisis is come, you say. There will soon be no more blood,
and wine will gush instead. Yes, yes, next season all will be well.”
“But our peasant neighbours, Antoine. Has their condition improved as
you were confident it would?”
“How should it yet? The time is not come. They have not yet got over the
scarcity of last year. But the woodcocks will soon be here; and the lady
Alice’s doves multiply all the faster now they are left to themselves;
and in the spring, there will be a greater resource of cattle, and of
their milk; and the bad seasons have not destroyed our fish. We are
planning to get larger and larger supplies from Bordeaux, as well as to
send out more boats upon the river.”
“Corn is too dear, at present, I suppose, for the poor, if indeed you
have enough for the rich?”
“We are all somewhat better off in that respect than we were; but a
great part of the discontent arises from the incessant changes in the
value of whatever we get to eat, as long as the supply is turned out of
its usual course. When we can no longer depend on an article whose
supply is usually pretty regular, and its price not very variable, we
are subject to a perpetual rise and fall which we cannot calculate, and
which brings disappointments to the people which they are ill able to
bear.”
“How do you mean? I thought our poor helped out their subsistence by
nettle broth and frog stew; and for these, I suppose, they pay neither
labour nor money?”
“No; but they must have something in addition. Presently it will be
woodcocks—the most uncertain article of food that can be. If there
should be a fine flight of them to be had for the killing, labour will
become cheaper to us capitalists, while the labourers will be better
rewarded: that is, it will cost us less to feed our labourers, while
they will get more food for an equal quantity of labour. This, while it
lasts, lessens the cost of production, and if it went on a whole year,
would cheapen our corn considerably next harvest. But the resource lasts
a very short time, and the reduction of the price of corn, therefore, is
only of that temporary kind which proceeds from a relaxation of demand.
Before the people well understand how this is, the cattle begin to come
in from the woods,—more numerous than ever, from so much arable land
having, since the storm, yielded a kind of rude pasture. This is a
somewhat less uncertain resource than the woodcocks, and lowers the
value of corn for a longer period. What I want, to fill up the intervals
of these uncertain supplies, is a permanent provision of fish.”
“How strangely the values of things are turned topsy-turvy!” exclaimed
Charles. “Time was when our peasantry would no more have thought of
dining off woodcocks than I of giving my servants a daily dessert of
pine-apples. Dainty game of that sort is commonly thought to rise in
value with the progress of improvement.”
“And so it does; and that it now exchanges for less either of money or
bread, than the commonest sorts of meat did three years ago, is a proof
that our condition has gone back instead of improving. It is a proof
that the produce of our toil is scantier than it was; that the produce
which we cannot command—that which comes and goes without our will and
pleasure—exchanges for less when there are more to demand it.”
“We may say the same of cattle.”
“Just at present; because our cattle is for the most part wild, having
got abroad into the woods at the time of the hurricane. But when we have
collected our flocks and herds again, and can attend to their breeding,
so as to proportion the supply to the demand, we shall find their value
permanently depend, like that of the crops with which they will then be
fed, on the cost of production.”
“Of course, if they feed on crops grown for their use. At present, when
they pasture themselves on land which would otherwise lie waste, they
are cheap when there happens to be, a sufficient supply of fish and
woodcocks, because there is little cost of production;—no rent, little
capital, and less labour. Any sudden rise of value proceeds from a
temporary increase of demand. It is to equalize the demand for butcher’s
meat, that I and some of my neighbours want to procure a regular supply
of fish.”
“Yet fish is an article whose value rises with the progress of
improvement. It must do so in proportion as more labour is required to
procure an equal supply for an extended market. As years pass on,
Antoine, we shall have to fit out more boats for the river, and to build
them larger, and man them better, as we have to send them out farther.
But then there will be more of other things to give in exchange for
fish.”
“True; but at present we cannot give our fishermen what they think a
fair premium upon their cost of production, because our cost of
production, the cost of the labour we give in exchange, is
extraordinarily high.”
“Do they complain of the price you give?”
“Very much, but that cannot be helped. We complained of their _social
price_ in old days,—of having to pay, not only the profits and wages
necessary to procure the article, but the market dues, which were very
oppressive. They answered that they did not pocket the dues, and could
not help the high price. Now they complain that (the dues being lately
remitted) they cannot even secure their _natural price_,—that is, a
reasonable profit in addition to the cost of the labour.”
“If they cannot do this, why do they supply you? They will not surely go
on furnishing the market with fish at prime cost.”
“Certainly not, for any length of time; but, till the woodcocks come,
they must submit to wear out their boats a little, without an
equivalent, looking forward to the time when we may again afford them a
fair market price,—which will, by that time, be a money price; for then
we shall be able to get out of our present inconvenient state of barter,
and the coin which has disappeared will have found its way back.”
“Meanwhile, the people, you say, are discontented as much at the
fluctuations in their affairs as at their absolute want of many
comforts.”
“Yes; we hear perpetual complaints that no man can now calculate how
much his labour is worth. So many hours’ work will one week bring him
two good meals, and at another, not half an one. If they go into the
woods for game, so many head may to-day exchange for a coat,—to-morrow
for a house.”
“Much of this hap-hazard must also be owing to the uncertainty of public
affairs. If we could but foresee whether we really have arrived at the
crisis,—whether trade will probably flow into its natural channels again
after a certain fixed period, our condition would immediately improve.
There is no other such effectual regulator of price as clear
anticipation, because it enables us to calculate the ultimate cost of
production, on which exchangeable value finally depends.”
Antoine observed, in a low voice, that the most suffering of his poor
neighbours had lately begun to indulge in a new sort of anticipation.
They had been told,—and nobody was aware whence the report arose, that
there was a room full of coin in the chateau of the marquis de Thou.
Their own coin had somehow gone away from them, and they fancied that,
if they could but get any instead of it, all their woes would
immediately cease. Antoine had reason to believe that the chateau would
soon be attacked, unless some means of undeceiving the poor creatures
could be discovered.
The brothers comforted themselves, according to their wont, that such
means could not fail soon to present themselves. It was impossible that
so gross an error could long subsist. Their confidence did not make them
the less watchful to aid the enlightenment of the people around them;
for their hopefulness was of that kind which stimulates instead of
superseding exertion. La Favorite experienced this; for, amidst all
their hopes of what her beauty would be next year, they toiled to repair
her losses and renovate her vegetative forces. Charles could not have
brought himself to return to Paris till this was done, even if he had
been satisfied to leave Marguerite in charge of the marquis.
This gentleman chose soon to free the family from his presence, against
their advice; even in the face of their strong remonstrances. Like many
who are deficient in physical courage and mental strength, he was rash
and obstinate. As soon as he had recovered from his astonishment at not
being killed on the day of his arrival, he began to be certain that
there was no further danger, and, blind to the manifold tokens of his
extreme unpopularity, which might have greeted his senses and
understanding at any hour of any day, he determined on secretly quitting
his disguise, without troubling his kind friends to reason any further
with him. One morning, accordingly, his valet’s dress was found on the
floor of his chamber, and on his table, a note of ample, though haughty
thanks to his preservers; and by noon, the marquis’s old steed, bearing
a rider whose skirts, blue eyes, and entire deportment could not be
mistaken, was seen to trample new ploughed fields, and give promise of
riding over heedless children, as before.
The last thing that entered the old man’s head was altering his modes of
procedure in any one respect. He could not escort lady Alice, because
she was not there; but he paced the terrace, in an afternoon, with his
head half turned, as if he saw her ghost beside him. He could not lead a
long train of hunters, because some of them were in Austria, some in
England, and one or two already laid headless in a bloody grave; but he
galloped forth on the same routes, making the most of the two or three
servants who followed him still, and returning in state to sit solitary
at the head of a long table, and toast his own loyal sentiments. What
was worse,—he trampled his poor neighbours when they came in his way,
and overlooked them when they did not, as if he had never been branded
by a poissarde, or hunted in the avenue at Versailles.
All this, it may be supposed, soon came to an end,—and by means which
proved the error of the popular belief about the chamber full of gold at
the chateau. Out of pure humanity, Charles repeatedly vanquished his
resentment at the marquis’s supercilious treatment of him, and offered
warnings of the blackening gloom which settled in the faces of the
peasantry when the little great man came in sight; but the marquis had
got it into his head that Charles had an interest in frightening him. He
thought he had been more frightened than most men already, and wisely
determined to be so no more. He bowed, laid his hand on his heart,
disengaged his rein from the friendly grasp, and passed on.
“My hopefulness is nothing to his, Marguerite, after all,” observed
Charles. “You say I hope against hope. He hopes against reason. The
difference is that the one hope will vanish when most wanted, and the
other, I trust, never wear out.”
One night, when there was no moon,—one of the longest winter nights,—no
moon was wanted for a space of some miles on the banks of the Garonne.
Instead of the boats sailing black in the silver beam, they passed
crimson in the fiery glare. The sheeted snow glittered and sparkled as
if it had been noon instead of midnight: the groves dropped their melted
burden, and stood stiff and stark in wintry bareness, stripped of the
feathery lightness in which they had risen against the evening sky.
Cries which ill beseem the hour of sleep roused the night-birds, and
volumes of red smoke spread themselves abroad to eclipse the stars.
Charles’s steps were directed towards the chateau before he had received
any notice, but from his own apprehensions, whence the fire proceeded
which had scared his children from their beds. He arrived in the
court-yard,—not in time to save the marquis, but to speak with him once
more.
The old man was bound to the balustrade of his own terrace; and an
executioner stood beside him with an upraised and gleaming sword. His
appearance was much what it had been on a nearly similar occasion
before. He attempted to spring forward, and a gleam of hope shot across
his countenance when the brothers appeared: but there was a something in
their faces which checked the emotion, and his jaw dropped once more.
All efforts, all stratagems were vain. The people declared themselves
unpitying to tyrants, and resolved to do away with despotism in their
quarter of the land, in like manner with their brethren in Paris. Five
minutes for preparation was all they would allow, and even Charles at
length despaired of further favour. He approached the victim with a calm
and serious countenance. The old man looked up.
“Is there no hope?”
“There is always hope. Let us hope that in another state we shall better
know how to love and forgive one another. Here, we have a poor
understanding of this; but even here we can forgive. They will not now
forgive you; but you will leave them that which will make them do so
hereafter. Leave them your pardon.”
“O, Alice,—my daughter! Not if they murder Alice.”
“They shall not. I promise you——”
“But I did not expect this,” uttered the shivering prisoner. “I went to
bed——”
“Then collect yourself now. A few minutes’ resolution.—One effort at
calmness——”
“But is there no hope?”
“None whatever. Settle your mind to your fate. There is only misery in
struggling against it.”
“I will. I will. Only stay by me.”
“What a confidence for such a moment!” thought Charles, as he saw the
tractable expression which the countenance assumed. It was some comfort,
however, that there was any confidence which could give decency to his
dying deportment.
The people around grew impatient. The executioner lifted his sword. The
victim looked up at it, half fearfully, half meekly, like a penitent
child at the impending rod. He fell, without a sign or a cry; and at the
moment, the flames burst forth from the lower windows, as if to lick up,
in as summary a vengeance as they had been guilty of, the perpetrators
of this murder. All rushed from the terrace, with a yell of
consternation, leaving the body alone, its unclosed eyes shining in the
glare, as if gazing unmoved on that violence which could no longer reach
it in the shape of injury.—When the gust fell, and the flames retired
some space, the ruffian who held the sword returned to the place of
execution, severed the head, tossed the body into the flames, and
returned with his trophy to the cheering mob.
There was nothing for Charles and Antoine to stay for. They could
neither save property, nor prevent crime. There was no purpose to be
answered by an attempt to do the first; for the lady Alice could never
return hither, or probably find any corner of her native land in which
to dwell in peace. Any endeavour to check the people’s rage would only
have brought on more murders. It was better that they should occupy
themselves with destroying inanimate things than have their wrath
directed upon human objects. The brothers therefore left them
endeavouring to discover the treasure-chamber, and paced silently
homewards, trying whether, after such a spectacle as this, their
hopefulness could get the better of their heart-sickness.
--------------
CHAPTER IX.
ADJUSTMENT.
Marguerite began to think that she and her family had better have staid
in Paris, since violence as foul as any there, with less chance of
redress, took place in the country. But as there were fewer marked for
destruction in a thinly peopled than in a crowded district, the work of
horror was sooner over; and within a few weeks, all was quiet around her
dwelling. No judicial inquiry whatever was made into the fate of the
marquis; and night after night, ominous gleams were seen from afar,
marking where life and property were being offered up in expiation of
former tyranny. When every neighbouring chateau that was empty had been
sealed up and guarded by the people from being entered by its owners;
and when every inhabited one had been dismantled or converted into a
pile of blackened ruins, there was a truce. The gentry sighed over the
abolition of feudalism; the peasantry gloried in the destruction of the
aristocracy; and both, looking no farther than their own borders,
supposed that all was over, and the state of the country,—miserable as
it was,—settled.
Charles and his brother knew too well what was passing in Paris to
acquiesce in this belief; but they were glad of the good effects it
seemed to produce in quieting the minds, and therefore fixing the
outward circumstances of their neighbours. People went about their
regular business once more, prices grew steady in the markets, and the
mysterious, dishonest sort of bargaining which had gone on immediately
after the destruction of the chateaux, was seen no more. No golden
timepieces now passed from hand to hand, in exchange for the coarsest
articles of clothing or furniture; and if polished tables, or morsels of
curious old china were seen here and there in the hovels of half-starved
peasants, they were not put up for sale, and did not answer the purpose
of further perplexing the values of things. Seeing that Marguerite began
to feel pretty much at her ease once more, going to rest without
presentiments of being roused by fire, and venturing, with only the
children, to transact her necessary purchases among the peasantry,
Charles began to try whether he could make anything of his business at
Paris; and set out, in order that he might be on the spot to take
advantage of the first symptoms of tranquillity to meet the demand which
would then certainly arise.
He went to Paris before winter was quite over; and found more promise of
a settlement of public affairs than at any time since the commencement
of the revolution. Yet he would not hear of his family joining him, till
it should be known whether or not king, parliament, and people would
cordially agree in the new constitution which was then in preparation.
When there was not only a promise of this, but all arts and artificers
were actually put in requisition to render the spectacle of taking the
oath as magnificent as the occasion required, there was no further
pretence for Charles’s prudence to interfere with the hopefulness which
now seemed rational enough. He sent a summons to Marguerite to return
and witness the festival from which her loyalty and his patriotism might
derive equal gratification. But Marguerite was detained in the country
by her father’s illness,—his last; and the children were deprived of the
power of saying afterwards that they had witnessed in Paris the
transactions of that day which was regarded at the time as the most
remarkable in the annals of France.
That day, the 14th of July, 1790, was appointed to be a high festival
throughout the kingdom: Charles passed it in the Champ de Mars;
Marguerite by the dying bed of her father; the children, under the
guardianship of their uncle Antoine, among the rejoicing peasantry; and
Steele, who had returned to Bordeaux when Charles settled himself again
in Paris, took the opportunity of visiting La Haute Favorite for the
first time after so many vicissitudes.
It seemed to them all a strange,—to the superstitious among them, an
ominous circumstance that they should be thus separated on the occasion
when all were called upon to recognize the social agreement under which
they and their successors were to live.
A gleam of the afternoon sun shone in upon the face of Marguerite’s
father as he dozed, and made him turn restlessly on his couch. His
daughter hastened to shut it out, and the movement awoke him.
“One is fit only for the grave,” he said, “when the light which shines
on all above it becomes painful.”
“Father! you are better,” said Marguerite, turning round astonished.
“No,” said he, faintly, “not better. I cannot bear this light,—or this
heat,—or—but no matter; it will presently be over. But where is
Charles?”
“He will be here very soon; but it is only two days since you became
worse; and there has been no time for him to come yet. To-day he is
waiting upon the king, and next he will wait on you.”
“On the king!” and the old man was roused at once. “And all the people?
I fancied they had left off their duty. Who waits upon the king?”
“The whole nation,” Marguerite replied, sighing to herself, however,
over her own view of the matter—that the king was, in fact, waiting upon
the nation. She proceeded to tell what was doing in Paris, and remarked
that she hoped they had finer weather there than here, where it had been
a day of continued rain, till the gleam came which had wakened her
father.
M. Raucourt was too ignorant of the events of the last two years to be
able to comprehend the present proceeding. He could not see what the
people had to do with the constitution; but laid the blame on his own
weak brain, when assured that the loyal men of France were all
consenting to the measure. Other tokens of ignorance were much more
affecting to his daughter. He wished to be raised in bed, so that he
might see his olive woods in the evening glow. They were no longer
there, and his attention must be diverted to something else. He wished
to behold the marquis de Thou passing the house for his daily ride.—The
bones of him he asked for were mouldering under the ruins of his own
abode.—“At least,” said M. Raucourt, “let me be carried to the window,
that I may see the chateau. It looks so finely on the terrace! and it is
so long since I saw it!”—Grass was growing on its hearths, and the
peasants’ children were playing hide and seek among its roofless halls.
“You have not asked for the children,” said Marguerite. “If you are so
strong this afternoon, perhaps you can bear to speak to them.” And they
were sent for, and presently made their appearance from the river-side,
full of what they had been seeing and doing. They told how one cannon
was fired when the hour struck at which the royal procession was to set
out, and another when the whole array was to be formed in the Champ de
Mars, and others to represent the taking of the oath by the king, by the
representatives of the parliament, and by Lafayette in the name of the
people.
“And what is all this for?” asked the old man. “It is a beautiful
spectacle, no doubt; but there were no such things in my time as the
king and the people swearing at the same altar.”
“The people make the king swear, and some of them do not think he likes
it,”—observed Julien, unmindful of his mother’s signs. Pauline went on,
“No more than he liked being brought prisoner from Versailles, and
having his guards’ heads cut off.”
The little girl was terrified at the effect of her words. She in vain
attempted to make up for them by saying that the king and queen were
very well now; and that the people did not expect to be starved any
more, and that everybody was to be very happy after this day. The loyal
old man said he should never be happy any more; and groaned and wept
himself into a state of exhaustion from which he did not revive, though
he lived two or three days longer.
“I wish,—I wish—” sobbed poor Pauline, “that the people had never
meddled with the king——”
“Or the king with the people,” said Julien, “for that was the beginning
of it all.”
“I am sure so do I,” said Marguerite, sighing. “It is little comfort to
say, as Antoine does, that the world cannot roll on without crushing
somebody.”
“If that somebody puts himself in the way, uncle said,” observed Julien.
“Everybody has been in the way, I think, my dear. All France is
crushed.”
“Not quite, mamma. Uncle Antoine and Mr. Steele are sitting between the
two big vines, and they say that everybody will be buying wine now that
buying and selling are going to begin again.”
It was very true that the young men were enjoying their favourite
retreat to the utmost; gilding it with the sunshine of their
expectations, and making it as musical with the voice of hope as with
the gay songs which were wafted from the revellers below.
They were not a little pleased when their anticipations were
countenanced by a letter from Charles which reached his wife on the day
of her father’s death, and was not the less in accordance with her
feelings for having been written before tidings of the old man’s illness
had reached Paris, and being, as usual, hopeful and happy.
“I have written to Antoine,” he said, “to urge all care in the
approaching vintage, and all dispatch in the management of our immediate
business. Good days are coming at last, unless despotism should bring on
itself a new punishment, and rouse once more the spirit of faction,
which has been laid to rest this day by that powerful spell, the voice
of a united nation. It would astonish you to see how commercial
confidence has already revived; and, as a consequence, how the values of
all things are becoming fixed; and, again, as a consequence of this, how
the intercourses of society are facilitated, and its peace promoted. It
was the perception and anticipation of this which to me constituted the
chief pleasure of the magnificent solemnity of this day. It was a grand
thing to behold the national altar in the midst of an amphitheatre
filled with countless thousands; but it was a grander to remember that
these thousands were only the representatives of multitudes more who
were on tiptoe on all our hills, in all our valleys, watching and
listening for the token that they may trust one another once more, and
exchange, for their mutual good, the fruits of their toil. It was
touching to see the battalion of children,—‘the hope of the
nation,’—coming forward to remind the state that it sways the fate of a
future age; but it was more touching to think of our own little ones,
and to believe that, by the present act, the reward of the social
virtues we try to teach them is secured to them.—It was imposing to see
one golden flood of light gush from a parting cloud, giving an aspect of
blessing to what had before been stormy; but it was as an analogy that
it struck us all, and impelled us to send up a shout like the homage of
worshippers of the sun. Has not a light broken through the dreariness of
our political tempests? There maybe,—let us hope there will be, from
this day, order in the elements of our social state. Let but all
preserve the faith they have sworn, and there will be no more sporting
with life and property, no absurd playing with baubles while there is a
craving for bread, no ruin to the industrious, and sudden wealth to such
as speculate on national distress. We may once more estimate the labour
of our peasantry, and the value of our own resources, and fix and
receive the due reward of each. We may reach that high point of national
prosperity in which the ascertainment and due recompense of industry
involve each other; when the values of things become calculable, and
mutual confidence has a solid basis.—I do not say that this prosperity
will come, but I hope it will; and if all others have the same hope, it
certainly will. It may be that the sovereign will lose his confidence,
and go back. It may be that the parliament or the people will do the
same; and then may follow worse miseries than we have yet known. But if
they see how much social confidence has to do with social prosperity,
they will refuse to disturb the tranquillity which has been this day
established.
“And now, however you may sigh or smile a the spirit of hope which is in
me and Antoine, what say you to it in the case of a nation? Are not its
commercial exchanges a most important branch of its intercourses? Must
not those exchanges be regulated by some principle of value, instead of
being the sport of caprice? Is not that principle the due and equable
recompense of labour, or (in business-like terms) the cost of
production? Is not this recompense secured by the natural workings of
interests—and can these interests work naturally without an anticipation
of recompense—that is, without hope, inspiring confidence? Depend upon
it, hope is not only the indispensable stimulus of individual action,
but the elastic pressure by which society is surrounded and held
together. Great is the crime of those who injure it; and especially
heinous will be the first trespass on public confidence of any who have
been in the Champ de Mars this day. As that which is national springs
from that which is individual, I will add that Antoine and Steele are
patriotic if they exult in the ripening beauties of Favorite; and if you
would be patriotic too, gladden yourself with the promise of our
children, and tell me, when we meet, that you trust with me that all
will be well both with our wines and our politics.”
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._
There are two kinds of Value: value in use, and value in exchange.
Articles of the greatest value in use may have none in exchange; as they
may be enjoyed without labour; and it is labour which confers
Exchangeable Value.
This is not the less true for capital as well as labour being employed
in production; for capital is hoarded labour.
When equal quantities of any two articles require an equal amount of
labour to produce them, they exchange exactly against one another. If
one requires more labour than the other, a smaller quantity of the one
exchanges against a larger quantity of the other.
If it were otherwise, no one would bestow a larger quantity of labour
for a less return; and the article requiring the most labour would cease
to be produced.
Exchangeable value, therefore, naturally depends on cost of production.
Naturally, but not universally; for there are influences which cause
temporary variations in exchangeable value.
These are, whatever circumstances affect demand and supply.
But these can act only temporarily; because the demand of any procurable
article creates supply; and the factitious value conferred by scarcity
soon has an end.
When this end has arrived, cost of production again determines
exchangeable value.
Its doing so may, therefore, stand as a general rule.
Though labour, immediate and hoarded, is the _regulator_, it is not the
_measure_ of exchangeable value: for the sufficient reason, that labour
itself is perpetually varying in quality and quantity, from there being
no fixed proportion between immediate and hoarded labour.
Since labour, the primary regulator, cannot serve as a measure of
exchangeable value, none of the products of labour can serve as such a
measure.
There is, therefore, no measure of exchangeable value.
Such a measure is not needed; as a due regulation of the supply of
labour, and the allowance of free scope to the principle of competition
ensure sufficient stability of exchangeable value for all practical
purposes.
In these requisites are included security of property, and freedom of
exchange, to which political tranquillity and legislative impartiality
are essential.
Price is the exponent of exchangeable value.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Words hyphenated on line or page breaks have the hyphen removed if the
preponderance of other occurences are unhyphenated. Hyphens occuring
midline are retained regardless of other unhyphenated occurences
(step-mother/stepmother, straight-forward/straightforward,
life-time/lifetime, work-house/workhouse, fish-women/fishwomen,
door-way/doorway).
At line 12 of page 27 in “For Each and For All”, there is an opening
double quote which seems superfluous. The author’s intent not being
clear, it has been retained.
Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original. Given the independent pagination of the original, these are
divided by volume.
Homes Abroad.
11.13 and immedi[di]ately placed Removed.
12.21 and get no bread?[’/”] Replaced.
19.29 to save them yet.[’/”] Replaced.
20.20 the happiness of the people[.] Added.
31.4 is the price of food?[’/”] Replaced.
45.32 prosperity of John Lawe, Esq.[’/”] Replaced.
38.18 [“]You had need take care Restored.
47.8 on a fool’s errand.[”] Added.
48.29 pleased [ta/at] the appearance Transposed.
52.31 who had settled among them[.] Added.
55.28 [y/h]ence arise discontents Transposed.
55.29 [h/y]ears years of his new life Transposed.
57.33 [rdbo/bord]ering upon it Transposed.
62.26 any thing about them.[’/”] Replaced.
67.24 [‘/“]She will do Replaced.
87.21 a gang of bush[ /-]rangers Added.
116.19 It was not Ellen[ /’]s wish Restored.
125.1 of her colonies[.] Added.
125.13 can be had el[es/se]where. Transposed.
For Each and For All.
38.13 from a deficiency of [g]ood Restored.
96.1 to convey him a[u/n]d his securities Inverted.
French Wines and Politics.
21.34 [e]verybody else Restored.
64.7 and to recal[l] the servants Added.
68.2 downfal[l] of their despotic sway Added.
80.27 as there wo[n/u]ld be Inverted.
81.7 A[u/n]d a low exchangeable value Inverted.
98.1 your literal depend[a/e]nce on them Replaced.