MIRABEAU'S SUCCESSOR.
The royal carriage sadly travelled the Paris Road, watched by the two
moody men who had forced it to alter its direction. Between Epernay and
Dormans, Charny, from his stature and his high seat, could distinguish a
four-in-hand coach approaching from the way of Paris.
He guessed that it brought grave news of some important character.
Indeed, it was hailed with cheers for the National Assembly, and
contained three officials. One was Hatour Maubourg, Lafayette's right
hand man, Petion and Barnave, members of the House.
Of the three the oldest stepped up to the royal carriage, leaving his
own, and roughly opening the door, he said:
"I am Petion, and these Barnave and Latour, members of the Assembly,
sent by it to serve you as escort and see that the wrath of the populace
does not anticipate justice with its own hand. Close up there to make
room for me."
The Queen darted on all three one of those disdainful glances which the
haughty daughter of Maria Theresa deigned to let fall from her pride.
Latour was a gentleman of the old school, like Lafayette, and he could
not support the glance. He declined to enter the carriage on the ground
that the occupants were too closely packed.
"I will get into the following one," he said.
"Get in where you like," said Petion; "my place is with the King and the
Queen, and in I go."
He stepped in at the same time. He looked one after another at the King,
the Queen and Lady Elizabeth, who occupied the back seat.
"Excuse me, madam," he said to the last, "but the place of honor belongs
to me as representative of the Assembly. Be obliging enough to rise and
take the front seat."
"Whoever heard of such a thing?" muttered the Queen.
"Sir!" began the King.
"That is the way of it; so, rise, madam, and give your place to me."
Lady Elizabeth obeyed, with a sign of resignation to her brother and
sister.
Latour had gone to the cab to ask the ladies to let him travel with
them. Member Barnave stood without, wavering about entering the
conveyance where seven persons were.
"Are you not coming, Barnave?" asked Petion.
"Where am I to put myself?" inquired the somewhat embarrassed man.
"Would you like my place?" demanded the Queen tartly.
"I thank you, madam," rejoined Barnave, stung; "a seat in the front will
do for me."
It was made by Lady Elizabeth drawing the Princess Royal to her side
while the Queen took the Dauphin on her knee. Barnave was thus placed
opposite the Queen.
"All ready," cried Petion, without asking the King, "on you go!"
The vehicle resumed the journey, to cheers for the National Assembly.
It was the people who stepped into the royal carriage with their
representatives.
There was silence during which each studied the others except Petion who
seemed in his roughness to be indifferent to everything.
Jerome Petion, _alias_ Villeneuve, was about thirty-two; his features
were sharply defined; his merit lay in the exaltation, clearness and
straightforwardness of his political opinions. Born at Chartres, he was
a lawyer when sent to Paris in 1789, as member of the Assembly. He was
fated to be Mayor of Paris, enjoy popularity effacing that of Bailly
and Lafayette and die on the Bordeaux salt meadow wastes, devoured by
wolves. His friends called him the Virtuous Petion. He and Camille
Desmoulins were republicans when nobody else in France knew the word.
Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave was born at Grenoble; he was hardly
thirty; in the Assembly he had acquired both his reputation and great
popularity, by struggling with Mirabeau as the latter waned. All the
great orator's enemies were necessarily friends of Barnave and had
sustained him. He appeared but five-and-twenty, with bright blue eyes, a
largish mouth, turned-up nose and sharp voice. But his form was elegant;
a duelist and aggressive, he looked like a young military captain in
citizen's dress. He was worth more than he seemed.
He belonged to the Constitutional Royalist party.
"Gentlemen," said the King as he took his seat, "I declare to you that
it never was my intention to quit the kingdom."
"That being so, the words will save France," replied Barnave, looking at
him ere he sat down.
Thereupon something strange transpired between this scion of the country
middle class and the woman descended from the greatest throne of Europe.
Each tried to read the other's heart, not like two political foes,
hiding state secrets, but like a man and a woman seeking mysteries of
love.
Barnave aimed in all things to be the heir and successor of Mirabeau.
In everybody's eyes Mirabeau passed for having enjoyed the King's
confidence and the Queen's affection. We know what the truth was. It was
not only the fashion then to spread libels but to believe in them.
Barnave's desire to be Mirabeau in all respects is what led him to be
appointed one of the three Commissioners to bring back the Royal Family.
He came with the assurance of the man who knows that he has the power to
make himself hated if he cannot make himself loved.
The Queen divined this with her woman's eye if she did not perceive it.
She also observed Barnave's moodiness.
Half a dozen times in a quarter of an hour, Barnave turned to look
at the three Lifeguards on the box, examining them with scrupulous
attention, and dropping his glance to the Queen more hard and hostile
than before.
Barnave knew that one of the trio was Charny, but which he was ignorant
of: and public rumor accredited Charny as the Queen's paramour. He was
jealous, though it is hard to explain such a feeling in him; but the
Queen guessed that, too.
From that moment she was stronger; she knew the flaw in the adversary's
breastplate and she could strike true.
"Did you hear what that man who was conducting the carriage said about
the Count of Charny?" she asked of Louis XVI.
Barnave gave a start which did not escape the Queen, whose knees was
touching his.
"He declared, did he not, that he was responsible for the count's life?"
rejoined the sovereign.
"Exactly, and that he answered for his life to his wife."
Barnave half closed his eyes but he did not lose a syllable.
"Now the countess is my old friend Andrea Taverney. Do you think, on our
return to Paris, that it will be handsome to give him leave to go and
cheer his wife. He has run great risks, and his brother has been killed
on our behalf. I think that to claim his continued service beside us
would be to act cruelly to the happy couple."
Barnave breathed again and opened his eyes fully.
"You are right, though I doubt that the count will accept it," returned
the King.
"In that case we shall both have done our duty--we in proposing it and
the count in refusing."
By magnetic sympathy she felt that Barnave's irritation was softening.
At the same time that his generous heart understood that he had been
unfair to her his shame sprang up.
He had borne himself with a high head like a judge, and now she suddenly
spoke the very words which determined her innocence of the charge which
she could not have foreseen, or her repentance. Why not innocence?
"We would stand in the better position," continued the Queen, "from
our not having taken Count Charny with us, and from my thinking, on my
part, that he was in Paris when he suddenly appeared by the side of our
carriage."
"It is so," proceeded the monarch; "but it only proves that the count
has no need of stimulant when his duty is in question."
There was no longer any doubt that she was guiltless.
How was Barnave to obtain the Queen's forgiveness for having wronged her
as a woman? He did not dare address her, and was he to wait till she
spoke the first? She said nothing at all as she was satisfied with the
effect she had produced.
He had become gentle, almost humble; he implored her with a look, but
she did not appear to pay him any heed.
He was in one of those moods when to rouse a woman from inattention he
would have undertaken the twelve labors of Hercules, at the risk of the
first being too much for him.
He was beseeching "the Supreme Being," which was the fashionable God
in 1789, when they had ceased to believe in heaven, for some chance to
bring attention upon him, when all at once, as though the Ruler, under
whatever title addressed, had heard the prayer, a poor priest who waited
for the King to go by, approached from the roadside to see the august
prisoner the nearer, and said as he raised his supplicating hands and
tear-wet eyes:
"God bless your Majesty!"
It was a long time since the crowd had a chance of flying into anger.
Nothing had presented itself since the hapless Knight of St. Louis,
whose head was still following on the pike-point. This occasion was
eagerly embraced.
The mob replied to the reverence with a roar: they threw themselves on
the priest in a twinkling, and he was flung down and would have been
flayed alive before Barnave broke from his abstraction had not the
frightened Queen appealed to him.
"Oh, sir, do you not see what is going on?"
He raised his head, plunged a rapid look into the ocean which submerged
the priest, and rolled in growling and tumultuous waves up to the
carriage; he burst the door with such violence that he would have fallen
out if the Princess Elizabeth had not caught him by the coat.
"You villains!" he shouted. "Tigers, who cannot be French men! or
France, the home of the brave, has become a den of assassins!"
This apostrophe may appear bombastic to us but it was in the style of
the period. Besides, the denunciator belonged to the National Assembly
and supreme power spoke by his voice. The crowd recoiled and the old man
was saved.
He rose and said:
"You did well to save an old man, young sir--he will ever pray for you."
He made the sign of the cross, and went his way, the throng opening to
him, dominated by the voice and attitude of Barnave, who seemed the
statue of Command. When the victim was gone from sight, the young deputy
simply and naturally retook his seat, as if he were not aware he had
saved a human life.
"I thank you, sir," said the Queen.
These few words set him quivering over all his frame. In all the long
period during which we have accompanied Marie Antoinette, though she had
been more lovely, never had she been more touching.
He was contemplating so much motherly grace when the prince uttered a
cry of pain at the moment when Barnave was inclined to fall at the knees
of dying Majesty. The boy had played some roguish trick on the virtuous
Petion, who had deemed it proper to pull his ears. The King reddened
with anger, the Queen turned pale with shame. She held out her arms and
pulled the boy from between Petion's knees, so that Barnave received him
between his. She still wished to draw him to her but he resisted,
saying:
"I am comfortable here."
Through motherly playfulness or womanly seductiveness, she allowed the
boy to stay. It is impossible to tell what passed in Barnave's heart: he
was both proud and happy. The prince set to playing with the buttons of
the member's coat, which bore the motto: "Live Free or Die."
"What does that mean?" he wanted to know.
As Barnave was silent, Petion interpreted.
"My little man, that means that the French have sworn never to know
masters more, if you can understand that? Explain it otherwise, Barnave,
if you can."
The other was hushed: the motto, which he had thought sublime, seemed
almost cruel at present. But he took the boy's hand and respectfully
kissed it. The Queen wiped away a tear, risen from her heart.
The carriage, moving theatre of this little episode, continued to roll
forward through the hooting of the mob, bearing to death six of the
eight passengers.