cells, not lived in for two years, with their flooring half-destroyed,
and their narrow windows looking down into courts full of men drunken
with wine and blood! By the light of candles stuck into gun-barrels
the royal family entered this gloomy lodging. Trembling for her son,
who was frightened, the Queen took him from M. Aubier's arms and
whispered to him. The child grew calmer. "Mamma," said he, "has
promised to let me sleep in her room because I was very good before all
those wicked men." Four cells, all opening by similar small doors upon
the same corridor, comprised the quarters of the royal family. What a
night! The souvenirs of the previous day came back like dismal dreams.
Their ears were still deafened with furious cries. They seemed to see
the blood of the Swiss flowing like a torrent, the pyramids of corpses
in red uniforms, the flames of the terrible conflagration sweeping the
approaches to the Tuileries. Marie Antoinette seems under an {330}
hallucination; her emotions break her down. Is this woman, confided to
the care of an unknown servant, in this deserted old convent, really
she? Is this the Queen of France and Navarre? This the daughter of
the great Empress Maria Theresa? What uncertainty rests over the fate
of her most faithful servitors! What news will she yet learn? Who has
fallen? Who has survived the carnage? The hours of the night wear on;
Marie Antoinette has not been able to sleep a moment.
The Marquis de Tourzel and M. d'Aubier remained near the King's
bedside. Before sleeping, he talked to them with the utmost calmness
of all that had taken place. "People regret," said he, "that I did not
have the rebels attacked before they could have forced the Assembly;
but besides the fact that in accordance with the terms of the
Constitution, the National Guards might have refused to be the
aggressors, what would have been the result of this attack? The
measures of the insurrection were too well taken for my party to have
been victorious, even if I had not left the Tuileries. Do they forget
that when the seditious Commune massacred M. Mandat, it rendered his
projected defence of no avail?" While Louis XVI. was saying this, the
men placed under the windows were shouting loudly for the Queen's head.
"What has she done to them?" cried the unfortunate sovereign.
The next morning, August 11, several persons were authorized to enter
the cells of the convent. {331} Among them was one of the officers of
the King's bedchamber, Francois Hue, who had incurred the greatest
dangers on the previous day. Cards of admission were distributed by
the inspector of the Assembly hall. A large guard was stationed at all
the issues of the corridor. No one could pass without being stopped
and questioned. After surmounting all obstacles, M. Hue reached the
cell of Louis XVI. The King was still in bed, with his head covered by
a coarse cloth. He looked tenderly at his faithful servant. M. Hue,
who could scarcely speak for sobbing, apprised his unhappy master of
the tragic death of several persons whom His Majesty was especially
fond of, among others, the Chevalier d'Allonville, who had been
under-governor to the first Dauphin, and several officers of the
bedchamber: MM. Le Tellier, Pallas, and de Marchais. "I have, at
least," said Louis XVI., "the consolation of seeing you saved from this
massacre!"
All night long, Madame Elisabeth, the Princess de Lamballe, and Madame
de Tourzel had prayed and wept in silence at the door of the chamber
where Marie Antoinette watched beside her sleeping children. It was
not until morning, after cruel insomnia, that the wretched Queen was at
last able to close her eyes. And when, after a few minutes, she opened
them again, what an awakening!
At eight o'clock in the morning Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel arrived
at the Feuillants. "I cannot say enough," she writes in her _Souvenirs
de Quarante {332} Ans_, "about the goodness of the King and Queen; they
asked me many questions about the persons concerning whom I could give
them any tidings. Madame and the Dauphin received me with touching
signs of affection; they embraced me, and Madame said: 'My dear
Pauline, do not leave us any more!'" The courtiers of misfortune came
one after another. Madame Campan and her sister, Madame Auguie, saw
the Prince de Poix, M. d'Aubier, M. de Saint-Pardou, Madame Elisabeth's
equerry, MM. de Goguelat, Hue, and de Chamilly in the first cell; in
the second they found the King. They wanted to kiss his hand, but he
prevented it, and embraced them without speaking. In the third cell
they saw the Queen, waited on by an unknown woman. Marie Antoinette
held out her arms. "Come!" she cried; "come, unhappy women! come and
see one who is still more unhappy than you, since it is she who has
been the cause of all your sorrow!" She added: "We are ruined. We
have reached the place at last to which they have been leading us for
three years by every possible outrage; we shall succumb in this
horrible revolution, and many others will perish after us. Everybody
has contributed to our ruin: the innovators like fools, others like the
ambitious, in order to aid their own fortunes; for the most furious of
the Jacobins wanted gold and places, and the crowd expected pillage.
There is not a patriot in the whole infamous horde; the emigrants had
their schemes and manoeuvres; {333} the foreigners wanted to profit by
the dissensions of France; everybody has had a part in our
misfortunes." Here the Dauphin entered with his sister and Madame de
Tourzel. "Poor children!" cried the Queen. "How cruel it is not to
transmit to them so noble a heritage, and to say: All is over for us!"
And as the little Dauphin, seeing his mother and those around her
weeping, began to shed tears also: "My child," the Queen said,
embracing him, "you see I have consolations too; the friends whom
misfortune deprived me of were not worth as much as those it gave me."
Then Marie Antoinette asked for news of the Princess de Tarente, Madame
de la Roche-Aymon, and others whom she had left at the Tuileries. She
compassionated the fate of the victims of the previous day.
Madame Campan expressed a desire to know what the foreign ambassadors
had done in this catastrophe. The Queen replied that they had done
nothing, but that the English ambassadress, Lady Sutherland, had just
displayed some interest by sending linen for the Dauphin, who was in
need of it.
What memories must not that little cell in the Feuillants convent have
left in the souls of those who were privileged to present there the
homage of their devotion to the Queen! "I think I still see," Madame
Campan has said in her Memoirs, "I shall always see, that little cell,
hung with green paper, that wretched couch from which the dethroned
sovereign stretched out her arms to us, saying that our {334} woes, of
which she was the cause, aggravated her own. There, for the last time,
I saw the tears flowing and heard the sobs of her whose birth and
natural gifts, and above all the goodness of whose heart had destined
her to be the ornament of all thrones and the happiness of all peoples."
During the 11th and 12th of August the tortures of the 10th were
renewed for the royal family. They were obliged to occupy the odious
box of the _Logographe_ during the sessions of the Assembly, and from
there witness, as at a show, the slow and painful death-struggle of
royalty. As she was on her way to this wretched hole, Marie Antoinette
perceived in the garden some curious spectators on whose faces a
certain compassion was depicted. She saluted them. Then a voice
cried: "Don't put on so many airs with that graceful head; it is not
worth while. You'll not have it much longer." From the box of the
_Logographe_ the royal family listened to the most offensive motions;
to decrees according the Marseillais a payment of thirty sous a day,
ordering all statues of kings to be overthrown, and petitions demanding
the heads of all the Swiss who had escaped the massacre. At last the
Assembly grew tired of the long humiliation of the august captives. On
Monday, August 13, they were not present at the session, and during the
day they were notified that in the evening they were to be
incarcerated, not in the Luxembourg,--that palace being too good for
them,--but in the tower of the Temple. When Marie {335} Antoinette was
informed of this decision, she turned toward Madame de Tourzel, and
putting her hands over her eyes, said: "I always asked the Count
d'Artois to have that villanous tower of the Temple torn down; it
always filled me with horror!" Petion told Louis XVI. that the
Communal Council had decreed that none of the persons proposed for the
service of the royal family should follow them to their new abode. By
force of remonstrance the King finally obtained permission that the
Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter should be
excepted from this interdiction, and also MM. Hue and de Chamilly, and
Mesdames Thibaud, Basire, Navarre, and Saint-Brice. The departure for
the Temple took place at five in the evening. The royal family went in
a large carriage with Manuel and Petion, who kept their hats on. The
coachman and footmen, dressed in gray, served their masters for the
last time. National Guards escorted the carriage on foot and with
reversed arms. The passage through a hostile multitude occupied not
less than two hours. The vehicle, which moved very slowly, stopped for
several moments in the Place Vendome. There Manuel pointed out the
statue of Louis XIV., which had been thrown down from its pedestal. At
first the descendant of the great King reddened with indignation, then,
tranquillizing himself instantly, he calmly replied: "It is fortunate,
Sir, that the rage of the people spends itself on inanimate objects."
Manuel might have gone on to say that {336} on this very Place Vendome
"Queen Violet," one of the most furious vixens of the October Days, had
just been crushed by the fall of this equestrian statue of Louis XIV.
to which she was hanging in order to help bring it down. The statue of
Henry IV. in the Place Royale, that of Louis XIII. in the Place des
Victoires, and that of Louis XV. in the place that bears his name, had
fallen at the same time.
The royal family arrived at the Temple at seven in the evening. The
lanterns placed on the projecting portions of the walls and the
battlements of the great tower made it resemble a catafalque surrounded
by funeral lights. The Queen wore a shoe with a hole in it, through
which her foot could be seen. "You would not believe," said she,
smiling, "that a Queen of France was in need of shoes." The doors
closed upon the captives, and a sanguinary crowd complained of the
thickness of the walls separating them from their prey.
{337}
XXXIII.
THE TEMPLE.
There are places which, by the very souvenirs they evoke, seem fatal
and accursed. Such was the dungeon that was to serve as a prison for
Louis XVI. and his family. The great tower for which Marie Antoinette
had felt a nameless instinctive repugnance in the happiest days of her
reign, arose at the extremity of Paris like a gigantic phantom, and
recalled in a sinister fashion the tragedies of the Middle Ages and the
sombre legends of the Templars. It was formerly the manor, the
fortress, of that religious and military Order of the Temple, founded
in the Holy Land at the beginning of the twelfth century, to protect
the pilgrims, and which, after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
had spread all over Europe. The great tower was built by Frere Hubert,
in the early years of the thirteenth century, in the midst of an
enclosure surrounded by turreted walls. There ruled, by cross and
sword, those men of iron, in white habits, who took the triple vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, and who excited royal jealousy by the
increase of their power. It was there that Philippe le Bel went on
October 13, {338} 1307, with his lawyers and his archers, to lay his
hand on the grand-master, seize the treasures of the order, and on the
same day, at the same hour, cause all Templars to be arrested
throughout the realm. Then began that mysterious trial which has
remained an insoluble problem to posterity, and after which these
monastic knights, whose bravery and whose exploits have made so
prolonged an echo, perished in prisons or on scaffolds. Pursued by
horrible accusations, they had confessed under torture, but they denied
at execution. When the grand-master, Jacques de Molay, and the
commander of Normandy were burned alive before the garden of Philippe
le Bel, March 11, 1314, even in the midst of flames, they did not cease
to attest the innocence of the Order of the Temple. The people,
astonished by their heroism, believed that they had summoned the Pope
and the King to appear in the presence of God before the end of the
year. Clement V., on April 20, and Philippe IV., on November 29,
obeyed the summons.
The possessions of the order were given to the Hospitallers of Saint
John of Jerusalem, who transformed themselves into Knights of Malta
toward the middle of the sixteenth century. The Temple became the
provincial house of the grand-prior of the Order of Malta for the
_nation_ or _language_ of France, and the great tower contained
successively the treasure, the arsenal, and the archives. In 1607, the
grand-prior, Jacques de Souvre, had a house built in {339} front of the
old manor, between the court and the garden, which was called the
palace of the grand-prior. His successor, Philippe de Vendome, made
his palace a rendezvous of elegance and pleasure. There shone that
Anacreon in a cassock, the gay and sprightly Abbe de Chaulieu, who died
a fervent Christian in the voluptuous abode where he had dwelt a
careless Epicurean. There young Voltaire went to complete the lessons
he had begun in the sceptical circle of Ninon de l'Enclos. The office
of grand-prior, which was worth sixty thousand livres a year, passed
afterwards to Prince de Conti, who in 1765 sheltered Jean-Jacques
Rousseau there, as _lettres de cachet_ could not penetrate within its
privileged precinct. Under Louis XVI. the palace of the grand-prior
had served as a passing hostelry to the young and brilliant Count
d'Artois when he came from Versailles to Paris. The flowers of the
entertainments given there by the Prince were hardly faded when Louis
XVI. suddenly entered it as a prisoner.
It was seven o'clock in the evening when the wretched King and his
family, coming from the convent of the Feuillants, arrived at the
Temple. Situated near the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, not far from the
former site of the Bastille, the Temple enclosure at this period was
not more than two hundred yards long by nearly as many wide. The rest
of the ancient precinct had disappeared under the pavements or the
houses of the great city. Nevertheless, the enclosure still formed a
sort of little {340} private city, sometimes called the
Ville-Neuve-du-Temple, the gates of which were closed every night. In
one of its angles stood the house called the grand-prior's palace.
This was the first stopping-place of the royal family, which had been
entrusted by Petion to the surveillance of the municipality and the
guard of Santerre. The municipal officers stayed close to the King,
kept their hats on, and gave him no title except "Monsieur." Louis
XVI., not doubting that the palace of the grand-prior was the residence
assigned him by the nation until the close of his career, began to
visit its apartments. While the municipal officers took a cruel
pleasure in this error, thinking of the still keener one they would
enjoy when they disabused him of it, he pleased himself by allotting
the different rooms in advance. The word palace had an unpleasant
sound to the persecutors of royalty. The Temple tower looked more like
a prison. Toward eleven o'clock, one of the commissioners ordered the
august captives to collect such linen and other clothing as they had
been able to procure, and follow him. They silently obeyed, and left
the palace. The night was very dark. They passed through a double row
of soldiers holding naked sabres. The municipal officers carried
lanterns. One of them broke the dismal silence he had observed
throughout the march. "Thy master," said he to M. Hue, "has been
accustomed to gilded canopies. Very well! he is going to find out how
we lodge the assassins of the people."
{341}
The lamps in the windows of the old quadrangular dungeon lighted up its
high pinnacles and turrets, its gigantic profile and gloomy bulk. The
immense tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, and with walls nine
feet thick, rose, menacing and fatal, amidst the darkness. Beside it
was another tower, narrower and not so high, but which was also flanked
by turrets. Thus the whole dungeon was composed of two distinct yet
united towers. The second of these, called the little tower, to
distinguish it from the great one, was selected as the prison of the
former hosts of Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Tuileries.
The little tower of the Temple, which had no interior communication
with the great one against which it stood, was a long quadrangle
flanked by two turrets. Four steps led to the door, which was low and
narrow, and opened on a landing at the end of which began a winding
staircase shaped like a snail-shell. Wide from its base as far as the
first story, it grew narrower as it climbed up into the second. The
door, which was considered too weak, was to be strengthened on the
following day by heavy bars, and supplied with an enormous lock brought
from the prisons of the Chatelet. The Queen was put on the second
floor, and the King on the third. On entering his chamber, Louis XVI.
found a miserable bed in an alcove without tapestry or curtains. He
showed neither ill humor nor surprise. Engravings, indecent for the
most part, covered the walls. He {342} took them down himself. "I
will not leave such objects before my children's eyes," said he. Then
he lay down and slept tranquilly.
The first days of captivity were relatively calm. The prisoners
consoled themselves by their family life, reading, and, above all,
prayer. Forgetting that he had been a king, and remembering that he
was a father, Louis XVI. gave lessons to the Dauphin. "It would have
been worth while for the whole nation to be present at these lessons;
they would have been both surprised and touched at all the sensible,
cordial, and kindly things the good King found to say when the map of
France lay spread out before him, or concerning the chronology of his
predecessors. Everything in his remarks showed the love he bore his
subjects and how greatly his paternal heart desired their happiness.
What great and useful lessons one could learn in listening to this
captive king instructing a child born to the throne and condemned to
share the captivity of his parents." (_Souvenirs de Quarante Ans_, by
Madame de Bearn, _nee_ de Tourzel.)
All those who had been authorized to follow the royal family to the
Temple--the Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter,
Mesdames Thibaud, Basire, Navarre, MM. de Chamilly and Francois
Hue--surrounded the captives with the most respectful and devoted
attentions. But these noble courtiers of misfortune, these voluntary
prisoners who were so glad to be associated in their {343} master's
trials, were not long to enjoy an honor they had so keenly desired. In
the night of August 18-19, two municipal officers presented themselves,
who were commissioned to fetch away "all persons not belonging to the
Capet family." The Queen pointed out in vain that the Princess de
Lamballe was her relative. The Princess must go with the others. "In
our position," has said Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the
children of France, "there was nothing to do but obey. We dressed
ourselves and then went to the Queen, to whom I resigned that dear
little Prince, whose bed had been carried into her room without awaking
him." It was an indescribable torture for Madame de Tourzel to abandon
the Dauphin, whom she cherished so tenderly, and whom she had educated
since 1789. "I abstained from looking at him," she adds, "not only to
avoid weakening the courage we had so much need of, but in order to
give no room for censure, and so come back, if possible, to a place we
left with so much regret. The Queen went instantly into the chamber of
the Princess de Lamballe, from whom she parted with the utmost grief.
To Pauline and me she showed a touching sensibility, and said to me in
an undertone: 'If we are not so happy as to see you again, take good
care of Madame de Lamballe. Do the talking on all important occasions,
and spare her as much as possible from having to answer captious and
embarrassing questions.'" The two municipal officers said to Hue and
Chamilly: "Are you {344} the valets-de-chambre?" On their affirmative
response, the two faithful servants were ordered to get up and prepare
for departure. They shook hands with each other, both of them
convinced that they had reached the end of their existence. One of the
municipal officers had said that very day in their presence: "The
guillotine is permanent, and strikes with death the pretended servants
of Louis." When they descended to the Queen's antechamber, a very
small room in which the Princess de Lamballe slept, they found that
Princess and Madame de Tourzel all ready to start, and clasped in one
embrace with the Queen, the children, and Madame Elisabeth. Tender and
heart-breaking farewells, presages of separations more cruel still!
All these exiles from the prison left at the same time. Only one of
them, M. Francois Hue, was to return. He was examined at the
Hotel-de-Ville, and at the close of this interrogation an order was
signed permitting him to be taken back to the tower. "How happy I
was," he writes, "to return to the Temple! I ran to the King's
chamber. He was already up and dressed, and was reading as usual in
the little tower. The moment he saw me, his anxiety to know what had
occurred made him advance toward me; but the presence of the municipal
officers and the guards who were near him made all conversation
impossible. I indicated by a glance that, for the moment, prudence
forbade me to explain myself. Feeling the necessity of silence as well
as myself, the King resumed his {345} reading and waited for a more
opportune moment. Some hours later, I hastily informed him what
questions had been asked me and what I had replied." (_Dernieres Annees
de Louis XVI., par Francois Hue_.)
The unfortunate sovereign doubtless believed that the others were also
about to return. Vain hope! During the day Manuel announced to the
King that none of them would come back to the Temple. "What has become
of them?" asked Louis XVI. anxiously.--"They are prisoners at the
Force," returned Manuel.--"What are they going to do with the only
servant I have left?" asked the King, glancing at M. Hue.--"The Commune
leaves him with you," said Manuel; "but as he cannot do everything, men
will be sent to assist him."--"I do not want them," replied Louis XVI.;
"what he cannot do, we will do ourselves. Please God, we will not
voluntarily give those who have been taken from us the chagrin of
seeing their places taken by others!" In Manuel's presence, the Queen
and Madame Elisabeth aided M. Hue to prepare the things most necessary
for the new prisoners of the Force. The two Princesses arranged the
packets of linen and other matters with the skill and activity of
chambermaids.
Behold the heir of Louis XIV., the King of France and Navarre, with but
a single servant left him! He has but one coat, and at night his
sister mends it. Behold the daughter of the German Caesars, with not
even one woman to wait upon her, and who waits on herself, incessantly
watched, meanwhile, by the {346} inquisitors of the Commune; who cannot
speak a word or make a gesture unwitnessed by a squad of informers who
pursue her even into the chamber where she goes to change her dress,
and who spy on her even when she is sleeping! And yet neither the
calmness nor the dignity of the prisoners suffers any loss.