In the afternoon of July 23, Berthier was brought into Paris through
the Porte S. Martin, attended by a mob, many of whom had followed for
twenty leagues.
He was in his own private carriage, with M. de la Rivière at his side.
Madame, in one of her fancies, had chosen to sit outside.
The mob danced before him and raged behind him. A hideous procession
was formed. A brass band led the way, followed by national guards, and
soldiers from all corps which they had deserted, marching arm-in-arm,
chanting with full lungs:--
'Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les aristocrats à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les aristocrats on les pendra
La liberté triomphera
Malgré les tyrans, tout réussira.'
The top of the carriage had been broken in by the people, that they
might see the hated Berthier better. He sat, white, quivering, in a
dream; seeing faces peering at him from above as men climbed behind
the cabriolet and looked down on him, from each side, as they thrust
their heads in at the windows to stare at him. He heard them hoot and
curse, but he scarcely heeded them. Sometimes blows were aimed at him,
but Étienne de la Rivière protected him. A fiddler mad with the general
excitement climbed up behind the vehicle and beat at Berthier with
his violin. The elector broke the instrument on his arm, and then the
musician struck with the handle. M. de la Rivière stood up and thrust
the fiddler from his perch, and he fell back and disappeared among the
crowd that followed.
Madame Berthier, on the box, had adorned her head with a yellow turban,
and bore a pole, to which was fastened an orange streamer; this she
waved, and at the same time shouted joyously, 'We have him here caged!
It was all my doing; I hunted him down with my dogs.'
Banners, rudely extemporised, were fluttered before the carriage,
bearing inscriptions such as these:--'He has devoured the poor.' 'He
has drunk the blood of the widow and the orphan.' 'He has cheated the
king.' 'He has betrayed his country.'
As the broken vehicle passed through the streets, pieces of sour black
bread rained in at the top and at the windows, whilst the people
howled, 'Take that and eat it, it is what you have given us to eat.'
At the fountain Maubuée the procession was arrested by a tide of people
rolled out of La Grève, whither the news had reached that Berthier was
entering Paris.
That morning, at nine o'clock, Foulon had been brought to the capital.
Some of his servants probably had let the secret escape that he was
staying in the château of M. de Sartines, late lieutenant of police, at
Viry, near Fontainebleau. Thither, accordingly, some of the electors,
followed by a troop of people, had hastened. They found the old man
walking in the park. On being arrested, he entreated the electors who
seized him to do him the honour of taking a pinch of snuff.
The people, in spite of the remonstrances of his conductors, fell upon
him, put a truss of hay on his back, adorned him with a nosegay of
nettles, and a collar of thistles. 'You wanted to give us hay,' they
said; 'you shall eat some yourself.'
Thus equipped he was led to Paris, and brought before the committee in
the Hôtel de Ville.
It was decided that he should be imprisoned in the Abbaye. But La
Grève was full of people, and it was questionable whether he could be
conducted thither in safety.
If Lafayette had been there, it was thought that the people might
have been calmed; but he was absent, and the municipality were in
uncertainty what to do. The crowd became more excited, and clamoured
for Foulon.
Bailly, gentle, and unfit for such a position, descended to the square
to entreat the mob to respect the Hôtel de Ville and the accused;
but his voice was scarcely heard, and no attention was paid to his
remonstrances.
The crowd forced the few guards before the door from their places,
and followed the mayor up the stairs into the great hall, where they
bellowed incessantly for Foulon.
After some hesitation, the electors produced him. The old gentleman
was perfectly composed. Observing a female in the crowd before him, he
detached one of the nettles from his bouquet; and, with a courteous
bow, offered it her, saying, 'I am sorry to be unable to offer you a
choicer flower, mademoiselle, but pray accept the wish, and overlook
the insignificance of the herb; and I will thank you to remind those
around you that certain plants cannot be touched with impunity.'
'You are very calm, monsieur,' said one of the guards.
'Sir,' replied Foulon at once, 'crime alone can be disconcerted. Take a
pinch of snuff.'
'Why did you want us to eat hay?' shouted some of the crowd.
'Because I eat it myself,' replied Foulon, 'in the shape of beef. Cows
eat hay--and I eat cows. Can I wish you anything better?'
M. de Poizc, one of the electors, then addressed the people, urging
upon them the illegality of precipitately condemning the accused,
without giving him an opportunity of summoning witnesses to prove his
innocence.
'Let everything be done in order.'
'Yes, in order,' the mob shouted.
'Every culprit must be first judged,' continued the elector.
'Yes, judged first and hung after,' was answered.
'That comes in order, does it not?' some one cried, and there rose a
laugh.
'Gentlemen,' said a M. Osselin, 'in order that a man should be judged,
he must have judges. Let us send M. Foulon before the proper tribunal.'
This proposal was met with cries of dissatisfaction.
'We will have him judged at once.'
'We will not let him go before tribunals which are sure to acquit him.'
'The judges are his friends.'
Such were some of the cries that rose upon the proposition of M.
Osselin. That gentleman, without losing his presence of mind, replied,
'Well, if you do not like the ordinary judges, it is indispensable that
you should nominate others.'
This suggestion did not meet the end proposed by its author.
The mass of the people called repeatedly, 'Do you judge him, you
electors!'
'No,' answered M. Osselin; 'we have no authority either to judge or to
make judges. Name them yourselves.'
Again M. Osselin was mistaken. He had calculated on the people
hesitating to form a criminal tribunal; but with one voice they
proposed the curés of S. Étienne du Mont and of S. André des Arcs.
'Two judges are insufficient!' cried M. Osselin; 'there must be seven.'
Then, after a little difficulty, the people agreed upon five more.
'Very well; now you have seven judges,' said M. Osselin, who laboured
to save Foulon, and for that purpose raised difficulties; 'you must
have also a secretary.'
'You shall be secretary.'
'And a procureur du roi.'
'We name M. Duveyrier.'
That gentleman, forced against his will to act as prosecutor, asked
what charges were brought against the accused.
The people shouted in reply that the prisoner impoverished the land to
enrich himself, that he wanted to make the peasants eat hay, that he
had counselled the king to bombard Paris.
'We bring a capital accusation against him,--of treason towards the
nation.'
'If the accusation be capital,' said the two curés, rising, 'we refuse
to act as judges.'
'It is capital,' the people shouted.
'We are forbidden by the canons of the Church to shed blood,' said the
curé of S. Étienne du Mont, 'therefore my brother priest and I refuse
to act as judges.'
A storm burst forth. Some cried, 'The priests are right;' others
thundered, 'We are being hoodwinked; they want to save the prisoner.'
The clamour for judgment on the unfortunate Foulon became deafening.
The electors began to fear for themselves.
'Gentlemen, we want two judges in the place of the priests,' said one
of them.
'We name MM. Bailly and Lafayette.'
'But M. de Lafayette is absent. What is to be done? shall we wait for
him, or will you name some one as a substitute?'
'You judges name your coadjutor.'
But at that moment Lafayette came in and seated himself at the bureau
of the electors.
With some difficulty silence was impressed on the crowd in the hall,
and then Lafayette addressed them.
'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I cannot blame your anger and your indignation
against this man. I myself have never esteemed him; I have always
regarded him as a rogue, and I believe in my heart that no punishment
can exceed his deserts. You wish him to be sentenced; we have the same
wish, he shall be sentenced and punished; but he has accomplices,
and it is important that we should know their names. I am going to
order him to be conducted to the Abbaye; there he shall be tried and
condemned to the infamous death he has so richly deserved.'
'Yes, yes!' was the unanimous response; 'send him away to prison. Bring
him out.'
Foulon looked round, opened his snuff-box, poured the rest of its
contents into his palm, and applied it to his nose.
'This may be my last snuff,' said he collectedly to those who stood by
him. 'I have now none to offer you, I grieve to state.'
A man at that instant forced his way before the bureau, and exclaimed,
'You electors are mocking us. What need is there of judging a man who
has been judged these thirty years?'
Instantly a rush was made at Foulon, and he was dragged by a multitude
of hands along the hall. In vain he struggled; in vain did Lafayette
cry to the people to hearken to reason, in vain did Bailly ring his
bell and address the mob. Their enemy was within their grasp, and he
was swept away from the tribunal.
'Bah!' said Foulon; 'you will sting your hands with the nettles.'
He was drawn through the door; it was like the vortex of a whirlpool,
and in this portal the life was almost crushed out of him by the
press. As he was thrust into the open air and sunlight, he looked up at
the sky, then cloudless and of the deepest azure.
'Stand back!' said he; and disengaging his arm, he flung his bunch of
nettles in the faces of those before him. 'Eat them, you rascals,' he
said, and laughed bitterly.
His appearance was hailed with repeated thunders of--'To the lantern!'
'Make him ask pardon of the nation,' was shouted.
'Give me space to make my bow,' said Foulon, calm as ever, though a
rope was being attached to his neck.
'Ask pardon of the nation!' was repeated.
'I exceedingly regret, great nation of French,' said the old man,
bending ironically, and laying his hand on his heart, 'I deplore, with
all my heart, that Providence and the stupidity of your king prevented
me from having literally made you munch thistles like an ass.'
A scream of rage from those around him was the response.
Instantly he was seen, high above the people's heads, dangling to the
lantern, but only for an instant. The rope broke and he fell. He was
again run up, and again the cord gave way. Then his head was hacked off
and elevated on a pike.
At that same moment the news flew through La Grève that Berthier was
entering Paris by the Porte S. Martin, and the crowd, to a man, rushed
in that direction.
At the Fontaine Maubuée, the two crowds clashed. He who bore the head
of Foulon ran forward amidst the cheers of the mob that accompanied
Berthier. In the madness of her own excitement, Madame Plomb did not
observe him, and he passed her when her head was turned in the opposite
direction. Her yellow flag engrossed her attention; it was a streamer a
couple of yards long, and as she brandished it the silk twisted itself
around the horses, for sometimes she used it as a whip. Every time the
mob shouted, she stood up, whirled her flag, and shouted also.
The people were unable to make her out, with her long black gown, her
ash-grey face, blazing eyes, and saffron turban. They supposed she was
masked, and represented the genius of Death, and some applauded her:
'Behold Berthier conducted to judgment by Death.'
At the moment that the procession began to move on, a man hastily
dressed in a black ox-hide, his face covered with lamp-black, and the
horns of the ox on his head, holding a pitchfork, leaped upon the box,
and forced the driver to yield his place to him.
Instantly vociferous cheers greeted this new adjunct to the spectacle.
'He is driven to destruction by Death and the Devil!' was cried; and
the mob danced and screamed around the coach.
It was then that he who bore Foulon's head on a pike had the brutality
to thrust the ghastly object--the dead mouth of which was filled with
hay--into the carriage for Berthier to look at.
The miserable man's eyes glazed at the sight, and he smiled a ghastly
smile.
Then the bearer of the trophy sprang up behind the carriage, holding
his pike aloft.
The band recommenced their martial strain. The soldiers took up the
chant, the banners fluttered forward; the devil blew a hideous blast
on a cow's horn, and Madame Plomb waved her flag: thus the procession
advanced.
Arrived before the Hôtel de Ville, M. de la Rivière with difficulty
drew Berthier out of the vehicle. The unfortunate man was sick, faint,
and dizzy, and he probably would have been unable to walk, had it been
required of him, but a compact body of guards surrounding him bore him
forward into the great hall of S. John.
Without being conscious of where he was, or what was being done, he
felt himself forced before the bar.
Silence was enforced, and then the procureur, recently appointed by the
people, began to speak.
Berthier raised his hand, and all noticed how it shook.
'I am tired,' he said; 'I have not shut my eyes for two or three
nights. Let me have a little repose, I pray you.'
'No; no repose for you, till you have been sentenced,' cried the
assistants.
'At least give me a chair.'
One was handed to him, and he fell into it, the picture of
wretchedness. His eyes were lustreless, his complexion dull and dingy,
and his hair limp. His great cheeks hung down like the dewlaps of a
cow. He had not shaved for a week, and his mouth and chin were covered
with a coarse growth of short hair. When he put up his shaking hand
to wipe his eyes, he exposed a dirty hand, and ruffles at his wrist
draggled and soiled.
'What is the charge you bring against him?' asked M. Duveyrier.
'He supplied the army with ammunition to butcher us.'
'He has made his fortune by the compact of famine.'
'He has kept back provisions from the city, when the poor were
perishing for want of bread.'
'He stole from me my betrothed,' said a young man in a white smock, and
with the marks of plaster on his hands and in his hair. 'He destroyed
her fair fame, and she drowned herself in the Seine.'
'He robbed me of my little daughter,' cried a quack doctor, stepping
forward, 'and I have never seen her since.'
'Monster!' yelled an old woman, shaking her fist in his face, 'where is
my little Antoinette?'
'We will only hear crimes against the nation,' said Bailly, the mayor.
'Confine yourselves to these.'
'Why did you bring the troops round Paris? Why did you keep back the
corn?' the people cried.
'I have obeyed superior orders,' answered Berthier, huskily. 'You have
my papers; examine them.'
'I accuse him,' cried a shrill voice, and Madame Plomb tore her way
towards the front,--'I accuse him,--I, his wife!' she said. 'He has
been unfaithful to me. He has filled his house with profligates, he has
kicked my cat, he has called me the leaden woman, he has shut me up in
the Bastille--me, his wife, in the Bastille!'
The crowd groaned, and then hooted.
'Look here, Beast,' she said, letting her streamer hang down above his
head; 'is not this like a scythe? am not I Death? The people call me
so! See! I suspend the scythe above your head; come on! the devil is
waiting for you without; come on!'
'Come on, come on!' roared the mob.
'Were you able to escape in the forest?' she asked.
He did not answer, but looked at her with filmy eyes.
'No,' she replied to herself, 'no, you were not able. I shut the way
with a curse. Did your eyes help you? No; I blinded them with a curse.
Did your ears assist you? No; I stopped them with a curse. Did your
hands do you good service? No; I paralysed them with a curse. Did your
feet bear you swiftly along? No; I lamed them with a curse. Come with
me; I must hand you over to my friend the devil.'
Bailly sprang to his feet, rang his bell repeatedly, cried to the
people to listen to him, but could only obtain a half audience. He
laboured to calm this unbridled multitude possessed by rage; he exposed
with eloquence that prudence, necessity, reason demand that the life of
the accused should be spared till he had been given every opportunity
of exculpating himself from the charges laid against him. He showed
that before he could be convicted every attempt should be made to
discover his accomplices. But his eloquence was in vain. The people
were starving, and one of the causes of their hunger was in their
power. Some of these people had not eaten for two days, and hunger
makes all animals, man included, ferocious.
'I commit him to the prison of the Abbaye Saint-Germain,' said Bailly,
in despair. 'Guards, you are responsible for his safety. Guards, attend
to me; let him be injured at your peril. Close your ranks about him,
and keep off the mob. You are responsible,' he again cried, trembling
in his alarm; 'remember!'
With Berthier and the national guard the rest of those in the hall
poured out, leaving the electors alone, listening to the hideous rout
outside.
On the steps the crowd grappled with the soldiers for the victim; they
were thrust this way and that way; they were tripped up; they were
blinded by their hats being drawn over their eyes.
Foremost was the plaster-cast maker. He gave a great shout,--his hand
was on Berthier's collar.
The next to seize him was the doctor.
'Where is my daughter?' asked the old man, in a scream.
The prisoner did not answer.
'Don't kill him!' shrieked the doctor, as the young man smote at him.
'Spare him till he has told me where my little daughter is. My darling
Veronique, where is she? Tell me, Berthier, tell me.' He shook him
violently.
'Give me back my Antoinette!' screamed the hag who had accused him in
the hall.
'Sacré, let me go!' cried Berthier, struggling with the plaster-cast
dealer.
'Answer me, man, for the death of my friend Matthias André!' exclaimed
Étienne Percenez, leaping at his throat.
They stumbled down one of the steps, and the doctor fell; Berthier
recovered himself, and wrenched a musket from one of the guard, and
with it defended himself, madly striking right and left.
The plaster-cast dealer seized a pike, and smote at him with it; the
blow fell on Berthier's fingers, and he dropped the gun, screaming
with pain. Knives were unsheathed, and the infuriated people rushed in
upon him.
'Stay, stay!' cried Madame Plomb, uncoiling the long yellow strip of
silk from her head. 'Strangle him; I have promised him this.' She threw
the coil about his throat, his hands went up into the air; his feet
were tripped up, and he fell.
'Stand off, stand off!' yelled his wife; 'let me kiss him.' She stooped
over the suffocating man, whose eyes were shot from their sockets, and
whose face was dark with congested blood.
'He is like Gabrielle's father,' exclaimed madame, laughing.
'How his feet spurn, and his hands clutch at the steps! Ah, ah,
Berthier! I salute you. You are purple,--leaden like me.'
Then the mob fell upon him with knives and bayonets, and the
unfortunate woman saw nothing but a writhing knot of people, splashing
in blood, that spouted between their trampling feet, and poured down
the steps.
'Ah, ha! madame,' roared a butcher, catching the poor lady by the arm,
'see, see! you have your vengeance on them both now.' He pointed to
Berthier's head, at that moment elevated on the end of the pitchfork
belonging to the man masked in the black ox-hide.
'Yes,' said madame, 'the devil possesses him now.'
'And your father, madame?'
'What of him? He is not dead, you know. That was poor Adolphe they
buried.'
'Pooh!'
Dancing above the sea of heads was a face stiffened in death, with the
mouth crammed full of blood-sodden hay.
Madame Berthier gazed wildly at it for a full minute, following it with
her eyes.
Then she uttered a scream, so piercing that it was heard in the hall by
Bailly and the electors.
'Who have killed him? Show me the murderers!'
'Madame,' said the butcher, 'you have been his murderer. You have
killed them both.'
She turned with another cry, thrust her hands into her dishevelled
grey hair, and starting forwards, fell down the steps, struck her head
against the stones in falling, and would have been trodden to death
by the raging crowd, in their eagerness to approach the corpse of
Berthier, had not Percenez sprung to her assistance, stooped and raised
her in his arms.
'Help me, friend,' he said to a guard, 'let us place her in safety.'
So they bore her, stunned, and with her temple bleeding, to the home of
Madame Deschwanden.