disturbed by a warning from the {224} municipal agent of the
department, to the effect that an armed crowd were marching towards the
palace. This was soon followed by tidings that Petion had hindered
their further advance, and the mayor himself came to the Assembly to
receive the laudations of his friends. "Order reigns everywhere," said
he; "all precautions have been taken. The magistrates have done their
duty; they will always do so, and the hour approaches when justice will
be rendered them."
Petion then went to the Tuileries, where he addressed the King nearly
in these terms:--
"Sire, we learn that you have been warned of the arrival of a crowd at
the palace. We come to announce that this crowd is composed of unarmed
citizens who wish to set up a may-pole. I know, Sire, that the
municipality has been calumniated; but its conduct will be understood
by you."--"It ought to be by all France," responded Louis XVI.; "I
accuse no one in particular, I saw everything."--"It will be," returned
the mayor; "and but for the prudent measures taken by the municipality,
much more disagreeable events might have occurred." The King attempted
to reply, but Petion, without listening to him, went on: "Not to your
own person; you may well understand that it will always be respected."
The King, unaccustomed to interruption when speaking, said in a loud
voice: "Be silent!" There was silence for an instant, and then Louis
XVI. added: "Is it what you call respecting {225} my person to enter my
house in arms, break down my doors and use force to my
guards?"--"Sire," answered Petion, "I know the extent of my duties and
of my responsibility."--"Do your duty!" replied Louis XVI.; "You are
answerable for the tranquillity of Paris. Adieu!" And the King turned
his back on the mayor.
Petion revenged himself that very evening, by circulating a rumor that
the royal family were preparing to escape; in consequence, he requested
the commanders of the National Guard to re-enforce the sentries and
redouble their vigilance. The revolutionists, who had been
disconcerted for a moment by popular indignation, raised their heads
again. Prudhomme wrote in the _Revolutions de Paris_: "The Parisian
people--yes, the people, not the aristocratic class of citizens--have
just set a grand example to France. The King, at the instigation of
Lafayette, discharged his patriotic ministers; he paralyzed by his veto
the decree relative to the camp of twenty thousand men, and that on the
banishment of priests. Very well! the people rose and signified to him
their sovereign will that the ministers should be reinstated and these
two murderous vetoes recalled.... Doubtless it will not be long before
Europe will be full of a caricature representing Louis XVI. of the big
paunch, covered with orders, crowned with a red cap, and drinking out
of the same bottle with the _sans-culottes_, who are crying: 'The King
is drinking, the King has drunk. He has the liberty {226} cap on his
head.' Would he might have it in his heart!"
Apropos of this red bonnet which remained for three hours on the
sovereign's head, Bertrand de Molleville ventured to put some questions
to Louis XVI. on the evening of June 21. According to the Memoirs of
the former Minister of Marine, this is what the King replied: "The
cries of 'Long live the Nation' increasing in violence and seeming to
be addressed to me, I answered that the nation had no better friend
than I. Then an ill-looking man, thrusting himself through the crowd,
came close to me and said in a rude tone: 'Very well! if you are
telling the truth, prove it to us by putting on this red cap.' 'I
consent,' said I. Instantly one or two of these people advanced and
placed the cap on my hair, for it was too small for my head to enter
it. I was convinced, I don't know why, that their intention was simply
to place this cap on my head and then retire, and I was so preoccupied
with what was going on before my eyes, that I did not notice whether it
was there or not. So little did I feel it that after I had returned to
my chamber I did not observe that I still wore it until I was told. I
was greatly astonished to find it on my head, and was all the more
displeased because I could have taken it off at once without the least
difficulty. But I am convinced that if I had hesitated to receive it,
the drunken man by whom it was presented would have thrust his pike
into my stomach."
{227}
During the same interview Bertrand de Molleville congratulated the King
upon his almost miraculous escape from the dangers of the previous day.
Louis XVI. replied: "All my anxieties were for the Queen, my children
and my sister; because I feared nothing for myself."--"But it seems to
me," rejoined his interlocutor, "that this insurrection was aimed
chiefly against Your Majesty."--"I know it very well," returned Louis
XVI.; "I saw clearly that they wanted to assassinate me, and I don't
know why they did not do it; but I shall not escape them another day.
So I have gained nothing; it is all the same whether I am assassinated
now or two months from now!"--"Great God!" cried Bertrand de
Molleville, "does Your Majesty believe that you will be
assassinated?"--"I am convinced of it," replied the King; "I have
expected it for a long time and have accustomed myself to the thought.
Do you think I am afraid of death?"--"Certainly not, but I would desire
Your Majesty to take vigorous measures to protect yourself from
danger."--"It is possible," went on the King after a moment of
reflection, "that I may escape. There are many odds against me, and I
am not lucky. If I were alone I would risk one more attempt. Ah! if
my wife and children were not with me, people should see that I am not
so weak as they fancy. What would be their fate if the measures you
propose to me did not succeed?"--"But if they assassinate Your Majesty,
do you think that the Queen and her children would be in less
danger?"--"Yes, I think {228} so, and even were it otherwise, I should
not have to reproach myself with being the cause."
A sort of Christian fanaticism had taken possession of the King's soul.
Resigned to his fate, he ceased to struggle, and wrote to his
confessor: "Come to see me to-day; I have done with men; I want nothing
now but heaven."
[1] Listen, heaven, to the prayer
That here I make:
Preserve so good a father
To his subjects.
{229}
XXII.
LAFAYETTE IN PARIS.
One of the greatest griefs of a political career is disenchantment. To
pass from devout optimism to profound discouragement; to have treated
as alarmists or cowards whoever perceived the least cloud on the
horizon, and then to see the most formidable tempests unchained; to be
obliged to recognize at one's proper cost that one has carried illusion
to the verge of simplicity and has judged neither men nor things
aright; to have heard distressed passengers saying that a pilot without
experience or prudence is responsible for the shipwreck; to have
promised the age of gold and suddenly found one's self in the age of
iron, is a veritable torture for the pride and the conscience of a
statesman. And this torture is still more cruel when to disappointment
is added the loss of a popularity laboriously acquired; when, having
been accustomed to excite nothing but enthusiasm and applause, one is
all at once greeted with criticism, howls, and curses, and when, having
long strutted about triumphantly on the summits of the Capitol, one
sees yawning before him the gulf at the foot of the Tarpeian rock.
{230}
Such was the fate of Lafayette. A few months had sufficed to throw
down the popular idol from his pedestal, and the same persons who had
once almost burned incense before him, now thought of nothing but
flinging him into the gutter. Stunned by his fall, Lafayette could not
believe it. To familiarize himself with the fickleness, the caprices,
and the inconsequence of the multitude was impossible. For him the
Constitution was the sacred ark, and he did not believe that the very
men who had constructed this edifice at such a cost had now nothing so
much at heart as to destroy it. He would not admit that the
predictions of the royalists were about to be accomplished in every
point, and still desired to hold aloof from the complicities into which
revolutions drag the most upright minds and the most honest characters.
He who, in July, 1789, had not been able to prevent the assassination
of Foulon and Berthier; who, on October 5, had marched, despite
himself, against Versailles; who, on April 18, 1791, had been unable to
protect the departure of the royal family to Saint Cloud; who, on the
following June 21, had thought himself obliged to say to the Jacobins
in their club: "I have come to rejoin you, because I think the true
patriots are here," nevertheless imagined that just a year later, all
that was necessary to vanquish the same Jacobins was for him to show
himself and say like Caesar: "_Veni, vidi, vici_."
It was only a later illusion of the generous but imprudent man who had
already dreamed many {231} dreams. He thought the popular tiger could
be muzzled by persuasion. He was going to make a _coup d'etat_, not in
deeds, but in words, forgetting that the Revolution neither esteems nor
fears anything but force. As M. de Larmartime has said: "One gets from
factions only what one snatches." Instead of striking, Lafayette was
going to speak and write. The Jacobins might have feared his sword;
they despised his words and pen. But though it was not very wise, the
noble audacity with which the hero of America came spontaneously to
throw himself into the heat of the struggle and utter his protest in
the name of right and honor, was none the less an act of courage.
While with the army, that asylum of generous ideas, the sentiments on
which his ancestors had prided themselves rekindled in his heart.
Memories of his early youth revived anew. Doubtless he also recalled
his personal obligations to Louis XVI. On his return from the United
States, had he not been created major-general over the heads of a
multitude of older officers? Had not the Queen accorded him at that
epoch the most flattering eulogies? Had he not been received at the
great receptions of May 29, 1785, when any other officer unless highly
born would have remained in the OEil-de-Boeuf or paid his court in the
passage of the chapel? Had he not accepted the rank of
lieutenant-general from the King, on June 30, 1791? The gentleman
reappeared beneath the revolutionist. The humiliation of a throne for
which his ancestors had so often shed their blood {232} caused him a
real grief, and it is perhaps regrettable that Louis XVI. should have
refused the hand which his recent adversary extended loyally though
late.
Lafayette was encamped near Bavay with the Army of the North when the
first tidings of June 20 reached him. His soul was roused to
indignation, and he wanted to start at once for Paris to lift his voice
against the Jacobins. Old Marshal Luckner tried in vain to restrain
him by saying that the _sans-culottes_ would have his head. Nothing
could stop him. Placing his army in safety under the cannon of
Maubeuge, he started with no companion but an aide-de-camp. At
Soissons some persons tried to dissuade him from going further by
painting a doleful picture of the dangers to which he would expose
himself. He listened to nobody and went on his way. Reaching Paris in
the night of June 27-28, he alighted at the house of his intimate
friend, the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, who was about to play so
honorable a part. As soon as morning came, Lafayette was at the door
of the National Assembly, asking permission to offer the homage of his
respect. This authorization having been granted, he entered the hall.
The right applauded; the left kept silence. Being allowed to speak, he
declared that he was the author of the letter to the Assembly of June
16, whose authenticity had been denied, and that he openly avowed
responsibility for it. He then expressed himself in the sincerest
terms concerning the outrages committed in {233} the palace of the
Tuileries on June 20. He said he had received from the officers,
subalterns, and soldiers of his army a great number of addresses
expressive of their love for the Constitution, their respect for the
authorities, and their patriotic hatred against seditious men of all
parties. He ended by imploring the Assembly to punish the authors or
instigators of the violences committed on June 20, as guilty of treason
against the nation, and to destroy a sect which encroached upon
National Sovereignty, and terrorized citizens, and by their public
debates removed all doubts concerning the atrocity of their projects.
"In my own name and that of all honest men in the kingdom," said he in
conclusion, "I entreat you to take efficacious measures to make all
constitutional authorities respected, particularly your own and that of
the King, and to assure the army that the Constitution will receive no
injury from within, while so many brave Frenchmen are lavishing their
blood to defend it on the frontiers."
Applause from the right and from some of those in the galleries began
anew. The president said: "The National Assembly has sworn to maintain
the Constitution. Faithful to its oath, it will be able to guarantee
it against all attacks. It accords to you the honors of the session."
The general went to take his seat on the right. Deputy Kersaint
observed that his place was on the petitioners' bench. The general
obeyed this hint and sat down modestly on the bench assigned him.
Renewed applause {234} ensued. Thereupon Guadet ascended the tribune
and said in an ironic tone: "At the moment when M. Lafayette's presence
in Paris was announced to me, a most consoling idea presented itself.
So we have no more external enemies, thought I; the Austrians are
conquered. This illusion did not last long. Our enemies remain the
same. Our exterior situation is not altered, and yet M. Lafayette is
in Paris! What powerful motives have brought him hither? Our internal
troubles? Does he fear, then, that the National Assembly is not strong
enough to repress them? He constitutes himself the organ of his army
and of honest men. Where are these honest men? How has the army been
able to deliberate?" Guadet concluded thus: "I demand that the
Minister of War be asked whether he gave leave of absence to M.
Lafayette, and that the extraordinary Committee of Twelve make a report
to-morrow on the danger of granting the right of petition to generals."
Ramond, one of the most courageous members of the right, was the next
speaker: "Four days ago," said he, "an armed multitude asked to appear
before you. Positive laws forbade such a thing, and a proclamation
made by the department on the previous day recalled this law and
demanded that it should be put into execution. You paid no attention,
but admitted armed men into your midst. To-day M. Lafayette presents
himself; he is known only by reason of his love of liberty; his life is
a series of combats against despotisms of every sort; he has {235}
sacrificed his life and fortune to the Revolution. It is against this
man that pretended suspicions are directed and every passion unchained.
Has the National Assembly two weights and measures, then? Certainly,
if respect is to be had to persons, it should be shown to this eldest
son of French liberty." This eulogy exasperated the left. Deputy
Saladin exclaimed: "I ask M. Ramond if he is making M. Lafayette's
funeral oration?" However, the right was still in the majority. After
a long tumult Guadet's motion against Lafayette was rejected by 339
votes against 234. The general left the Assembly surrounded by a
numerous cortege of deputies and National Guards, and went directly to
the palace of the Tuileries.
It is the decisive moment. The vote just taken may serve as the
starting-point of a conservative reaction if the King will trust
himself to Lafayette. But how will he receive him? The sovereign's
greeting will be polite, but not cordial. The King and Queen say they
are persuaded that there is no safety but in the Constitution. Louis
XVI. adds that he would consider it a very fortunate thing if the
Austrians were beaten without delay. Lafayette is treated with a
courtesy through which suspicion pierces. When he leaves the palace, a
large crowd accompany him to his house and plant a may-pole before the
door. On the next day Louis XVI. was to review four thousand men of
the National Guard. Lafayette had proposed to appear at this review
{236} beside the King and make a speech in favor of order. But the
court does not desire the general's aid, and takes what measures it can
to defeat this project. Petion, whom it had preferred to Lafayette as
mayor of Paris, countermands the review an hour before daybreak.
Perhaps Louis XVI. might have succeeded in overcoming his repugnance to
Lafayette and submitted to be rescued by him. But the Queen absolutely
refused to trust the man whom she considered her evil genius. She had
seen him rise like a spectre at every hapless hour. He had brought her
back to Paris a prisoner on the 6th of October. He had been her
jailer. His apparition amid the glare of torches in the Court of the
Carrousel had frozen her with terror when she was flying from her
prison, the Tuileries, to begin the fatal journey to Varennes. His
aides-de-camp had pursued her. He was responsible for her arrest; he
was present at her humiliating and sorrowful return; the sight of his
face, the sound of his voice, made her tremble; she could not hear his
name without a shudder. In vain Madame Elisabeth exclaimed: "Let us
forget the past and throw ourselves into the arms of the only man who
can save the King and his family!" Marie Antoinette's pride revolted
at the thought of owing anything to her former persecutor. Moreover,
in his latest confidential communications with her, Mirabeau had said:
"Madame, be on your guard against Lafayette; if ever he commands the
army, he would like to keep {237} the King in his tent." In the
Queen's opinion, to rely on Lafayette would be to accept him as regent
of the palace under a sluggard King. Protector for protector, she
preferred Danton. Danton, who, subsidized from the civil list, accepts
money without knowing whether he will fairly earn it; Danton, who,
while awaiting events, had made the cynical remark that he would "save
the King or kill him." Strange that the orator of the faubourgs
inspired the daughter of Caesars with less repugnance than the
gentleman, the marquis. "They propose M. de Lafayette as a resource,"
she said to Madame Campan; "but it would be better to perish than owe
our safety to the man who has done us most harm."
However, Lafayette was not yet discouraged. He wished to save the
royal family in spite of themselves. He assembled several officers of
the National Guard at his house. He represented to them the dangers
into which the apathy of each plunged the affairs of all; he showed the
urgent necessity of combining against the avowed enterprises of the
anarchists, of inspiring the National Assembly with the firmness
required to repress the intended attacks, and foretold the inevitable
calamities which would result from the weakness and disunion of honest
men. He wanted to march against the Jacobin Club and close it. But,
in consequence of the instructions issued by the court, the royalists
of the National Guard were indisposed to second him in this measure.
Lafayette, having no one on his side but the constitutionals, an {238}
honest but scanty group who were suspected by both of the extreme
parties, gave up the struggle. The next day, June 30, he beat a hasty
retreat to the army, after writing to the Assembly another letter which
was merely an echo of the first one. A moment since, the Jacobins were
trembling. Now, they are reassured, they triumph. In his _Chronique
des Cinquante Jours_, Roederer says: "If M. de Lafayette had had the
will and ability to make a bold stroke and seize the dictatorship,
reserving the power to relinquish it after the re-establishment of
order, one could comprehend his coming to the Assembly with the sword
of a dictator at his side; but, to show it only, without resolving to
draw it from the scabbard, was a fatal imprudence. In civil commotions
it will not answer to dare by halves."
{239}
XXIII.
THE LAMOURETTE KISS.
France had still its moments of enthusiasm and illusion before plunging
into the abyss of woes. It seemed under an hallucination, or suffering
from a sort of vertigo. A nameless frenzy, both in good and evil,
agitated and disturbed it beyond measure in 1792, that year so fertile
in surprises and dramas of every kind. Strange and bizarre epoch, full
of love and hatred, launching itself from one extreme to the other with
frightful inconstancy, now weeping with tenderness, and now howling
with rage! Society resembled a drunken man who is sometimes amiable in
his cups, and sometimes cruel. There were sudden halts on the road of
fury, oases in the midst of scorching sands, beneath a sun whose fire
consumed. But the caravan does not rest long beneath the shady trees.
Quickly it resumes its course as if urged by a mysterious force, and
soon the terrible simoom overwhelms and destroys it.
Madame Elisabeth wrote to Madame de Raigecourt, July 8, 1792: "It would
need all Madame de Sevigne's eloquence to describe properly what {240}
happened yesterday; for it was certainly the most surprising thing, the
most extraordinary, the greatest, the smallest, etc., etc. But,
fortunately, experience may aid comprehension. In a word, here were
Jacobins, Feuillants, republicans, and monarchists, abjuring all their
discords and assembling near the tree of the Constitution and of
liberty, to promise sincerely that they will act in accordance with law
and not depart from it. Luckily, August is coming, the time when, the
leaves being well grown, the tree of liberty will afford a more secure
shelter."
What had happened on the day before Madame Elisabeth wrote this letter?
There had been a very singular session of the Legislative Assembly. In
the morning, a woman named Olympe de Gouges, whose mother was a dealer
in second-hand clothing at Montauban, being consumed with a desire to
be talked about, had caused an emphatic placard to be posted up, in
which she preached concord between all parties. This placard was like
a prologue to the day's session.
Among the deputies there was a certain Abbe Lamourette, the
constitutional bishop of Lyons, who played at religious democracy. He
was an ex-Lazarist who had been professor of theology at the Seminary
at Toul. Weary of the conventual yoke, he had left his order, and at
the beginning of the Revolution was the vicar-general of the diocese of
Arras. He had published several works in which he sought to reconcile
philosophy and religion. Mirabeau was {241} one of his acolytes and
adopted him as his theologian in ordinary. Finding him fit to
"bishopize" (_a evequailler_), to use his own expression, the great
tribune recommended him to the electors of the Rhone department. It
was thus that the Abbe Lamourette became the constitutional bishop of
Lyons. After his consecration, he issued a pastoral instruction in
such agreement with current ideas that Mirabeau, his protector, induced
the Constituent Assembly to have it sent as a model to every department
in France. In 1792, the Abbe Lamourette was fifty years old. Affable,
unctuous, his mouth always full of pacific and gentle words, he naively
preached moderation, concord, and fraternity in conversations which
were like so many sermons.
For several days the discussions in the Assembly had been of
unparalleled violence. Suspicion, hatred, rancor, wrath, were
unchained in a fury that bordered on delirium. Right and left emulated
each other in outrages and invectives. Lafayette's appearance and the
fear of a foreign invasion had disturbed all minds. The National
Assembly, sitting both day and night, was like an arena of gladiators
fighting without truce or pity. It was this moment which the good Abbe
Lamourette chose for delivering his most touching sermon from the
tribune.