"The queen leaned on the arm of the king, the dauphin and dauphiness
followed; Madame Elizabeth, that saint on earth if ever there was one,
headed the ladies of the court. All rose at our entrance; we were
received with one acclamation. The sight is still before me. I had seen
all that was brilliant in the courts of Europe. But this moment effaced
them all. The most splendid _salle_ on earth, crowded with uniforms, all
swords drawn and waving in the light, all countenances turned on the
king, all one shout of triumph, loyalty, and joy! Alas! alas! was it to
be the last beat of the national heart? Alas! alas! was it to be the
last flash of the splendour of France; the dazzling illumination of the
_catafalque_ of the Bourbons; the bright burst of flame from the funeral
pile of the monarchy?"
Her voice sank into silence; for the first time unbroken throughout the
room.
At length, to relieve the pause, Mordecai expressed something of a hope
that the royal family slept in peace, for that one night at least.
"I really cannot tell," briskly said the fair narrator. "But I know that
the ladies of the court did not. As the king retired, and we remained in
the opera boxes to amuse ourselves a little with the display, we heard,
to our astonishment, a proposal that the tables should be cleared away,
and the ladies invited to a dance upon the spot. The proposal was
instantly followed by the officers climbing into the boxes, and by our
tearing up our pocket-handkerchiefs to make them cockades. We descended,
and danced loyally till daybreak."
"With nothing less than field-officers, I hope?" said a superb cavalier,
with a superb smile.
"I hope so too," laughed the lady; "though really I can answer for
nothing but that the cotillon was excessively gay--that our partners, if
not the best dancers upon earth--I always honour the _garde du
corps_,"--and she bowed to the captain; "were the most obliged persons
possible."
"Ah, but roturiers, madame!" said a stiff old duke, with a scorn worthy
of ten generations of ribands of St Louis.
"True; it was most melancholy, when one comes to reflect upon it," said
the lady, with an elevation of her alabaster shoulders to the very tips
of her ears. "But on that evening roturiers were in demand--popularity
was every thing; the _bourgeoisie_ of Versailles were polished by their
friction against the _garde du corps_. And I am sure, that if the same
experiment, distressing as it might be, were tried in every opera salon
in the provinces, and we had longer dances and shorter harangues, more
fiddles and fewer patriots, all would be well again in our 'belle
France.'"
"But--your news, monsieur le capitaine," was the demand all round the
table.
"I almost dread to allude to it," said the captain, "as it may seem to
contradict the opinion of madame la duchesse; yet I am afraid that we
shall have to regret this fête as one of the most disastrous events to
the king." He stopped. But the interest of the time overcame all other
considerations. "Ah, gallantry apart, let us hear!" was the general
voice; and, with every eye instantly fixed on him, and in the midst of
lips breathless with anxiety, and bosoms beating with terror at every
turn of the tale, the captain gave us his fearful narrative:--
"The banquet of the 1st of October," said he, "had delighted us all; but
its consequences, which, I quite agree with madame, ought to have
restored peace, were fatal. It lulled Versailles into a false security,
at the moment when it roused Paris into open rebellion. The leaders of
the populace, dreading the return of the national attachment to our good
king, resolved to strike a blow which should shake the monarchy.
Happening to be sent to Paris on duty next day, I was astonished to find
every thing in agitation--The workmen all in the streets; the orators of
the Palais Royal all on their benches, declaiming in the most furious
manner. Crowds of women rushing along the Boulevards, singing their
barbarous revolutionary songs; some even brandishing knives and carrying
pikes, and all frantic against the fête. As I passed down the Rue St
Honoré, I stopped to listen to the harangue of a half-naked ruffian, who
had made a rostrum of the shoulders of two of the porters of the Halle,
and, from this moving tribune, harangued the multitude as he went along.
Every falsehood, calumny, and abomination that could come from the lips
of man, were poured out by the wretch before me. The sounds of 'Vive
Marat!' told me his name. I afterwards heard that he lived on the
profits of a low journal, in a cellar, with a gang of wretches
constantly drunk, and thus was only the fitter for the rabble. He told
them that there was a conspiracy on foot to massacre the patriots of
Paris; that the troops from the provinces were coming, by order of the
king, to put man, woman, and child to the sword; that the fête at
Marseilles was given to the vanguard of the army to pledge them to this
terrible purpose; that the governors of the provinces were all in the
league of blood; and that the bakers of Paris had received an order from
Versailles to put poison in all their loaves within the next twenty-four
hours. 'Frenchmen,' exclaimed this livid villain, tearing his hair, and
howling with the wildness of a demoniac, 'do you love your wives and
children? Will you suffer them to die in agonies before your eyes? Wait,
and you will have nothing to do but dig their graves. Advance, and you
will have nothing to do but drive the tyrant, with his horde of priests
and nobles, into the Seine. Pause, and you are massacred. Arm, and you
are invincible.' He was answered by shouts of vengeance.
"I remained that night at the headquarters of the staff of Paris, the
Hotel de Ville. I was awakened before daybreak by the sound of a drum;
and, on opening my eyes, was startled by lights flashing across the
ceiling of the room where I slept. Shots followed; and it was evident
that there was a conflict in the streets. I buckled on my sabre hastily,
and, taking my pistols, went to join the staff. I found them in the
balcony in front of the building, maintaining a feeble fire against the
multitude. The night was dark as pitch, cold and stormy, and except for
the sparkle of the muskets from below, and the blaze of the torches in
the hands of our assailants, we could scarcely have conjectured by whom
we were attacked. This continued until daylight; when we at last got
sight of our enemy. Never was there a more tremendous view. Every avenue
to the Place de Grève seemed pouring in its thousands and tens of
thousands. Pikes, bayonets on poles, and rusty muskets, filled the eye
as far as it could reach. Flags, with all kinds of atrocious
inscriptions against the king and queen, were waving in the blast;
drums, horns, and every uncouth noise of the raging million filled the
air. And in front of this innumerable mass pressed on a column of
desperadoes, headed by a woman, or a man disguised as a woman, beating a
drum, and crying out, in the intervals of every roar, 'Bread, bread!'
"To resist was evidently hopeless, or only to provoke massacre; but I
had already dispatched an express to the officer in command at the
Tuileries, to come and save the arms and ammunition deposited at the
Hotel de Ville; and we expected the reinforcement from minute to minute.
While my eyes turned, in this fever of life and death, towards the
quarter from which the troops were to come, a sudden shout from the
multitude made me look round; a fellow, perhaps one of the _funambules_
of the Fauxbourg theatres, was climbing up to the belfry by a rope, with
the agility of a monkey. His purpose was seen by us at once, and seen
with fresh alarm; for, if he had been able to reach the great bell, the
terrible 'tocsin' would have aroused the country for ten leagues round,
and have poured a hundred thousand armed peasantry into Paris. I pointed
him out to the guard, and they fired a volley at him as he swung above
their heads. They missed him, the populace shouted, and the fellow,
taking off his cap and waving it in triumph, still climbed on. I next
fired both my pistols at him; which was the luckier of the two I cannot
tell, but I saw him stagger just as he planted his foot on the
battlement; he was evidently hit, and a general yell from the multitude
told that they saw it too; he made a convulsive spring to secure
himself, fell back, lost his hold, and plunged headlong from a height of
a hundred and fifty feet to the ground! Another tried the same
adventure, and with the same fate; three in succession were shot; but
enthusiasm or madness gave them courage, and at length half a dozen
making the attempt together, the belfry was reached, and the tocsin was
rung. Its effect _was_ terrible. The multitude seemed to be inspired
with a new spirit of rage as they heard its clang. Every bell in Paris
soon began to clang in succession. The din was deafening; the populace
seemed to become more daring and desperate every moment; all was uproar.
I could soon see the effect of the tocsin in the new crowds which
recruited our assailants from all sides. Their fire became heavier;
still, in the spirit of men fighting for their lives, we kept them at
bay till the last cartridge was in our muskets. But, at the moment of
despair, we saw the distant approach of the reinforcement from the
Tuileries; and breathed for an instant. Yet, judge of our astonishment,
when it had no sooner entered the crowd, than, instead of driving the
wretches before them, we saw the soldiers scatter, mix, and actually
fraternize with the _canaille_; a general scene of embracing and
huzzaing followed, the shakos were placed on the heads of the rabble,
the hats and caps of the rabble were hoisted on the soldiers' bayonets;
and to our horror alike at their treachery and our inevitable
destruction, the troops wearing the king's uniform, pushed forward,
heading the column of insurrection. We fired our last volley, and all
was over. The multitude burst into the hotel like a torrent. All our
party were either killed or wounded. For the last half hour we had not a
hundred men able to pull a trigger against a fire from the streets, from
windows, and from house tops, on every side of the squares. That any one
of us escaped from the showers of bullets is a miracle. My own escape
was the merest chance. On the first rush of the crowd into the hall, I
happened to come in contact with one of the leaders of the party, a
horrid-looking ruffian in a red cap, who roared out that he had marked
me for bringing down the citizen climber up the belfry. The fellow fired
his pistol so close to my face that it scorched me. In the agony of the
pain I rushed on him; he drew his sabre and attempted to cut me down;
but my sword was already out, and I anticipated him by a blow which
finished his patriotism, at least in this world. In the next moment, I
was trampled down, and we fell together."
I can of course offer but an imperfect transcript of the brave
guardsman's narrative; seconded as it was by an intelligent countenance,
and that national vividness of voice and gesture which often tell so
much more than words. But, to describe its effect on his auditory is
impossible. Every countenance was riveted on him, every change of those
extraordinary scenes was marked by a new expression of every face round
the table. Sighs and tears, wringing hands, and eyes turned on heaven,
were universal evidences of the interest excited by his fearful detail.
Yet, unused as I was to this quick emotion among my own sober
countrymen, I could scarcely wonder even at its wildness. They were
listening to the fate of all that belonged to them by affection,
loyalty, hope, and possession, on this side of the grave. Every hour was
big with the destinies of their king, their relations, and their
country. On the events happening, even at the moment, depended, whether
a deluge of blood might not roll over France, whether flame might not be
devouring their ancient castles, whether they might not be doomed to
mendicancy in a strange land, wanderers through the earth, without a
spot whereon to lay their head, fugitives forever. Yet the anxiety for
those left behind was of a still deeper dye; the loved, the familiar,
the honoured, all involved in a tide of calamity, irresistible by human
strength or skill.--All so near, yet all so lost; like the crew of some
noble ship hopelessly struggling with the winds and waves, within sight
of the shore, within reach almost of the very voices of their friends,
yet at the mercy of a tremendous element which forbade their ever
treading on firm ground.
But there was still much to tell; the fate of the royal family was the
general question; and the remainder of the melancholy tale was given
with manly sensibility.
"When I recovered my senses it was late in the day; and I found myself
in humble room, with only an old woman for my attendant; but my wounds
bandaged, and every appearance of my having fallen into friendly hands.
The conjecture was true. I was in the house of one of my father's
_gardes de chasse_, who, having commenced tavern-keeper in the Fauxbourg
St Antoine some years back, and being a thriving man, had become a
'personage' in his section, and was now a captain in the Fédérés.
Forced, _malgré_, to join the march to the Hotel de Ville, he had seen
me in the mêlée, and dragged me from under a heap of killed and wounded.
To his recollection I probably owed my life; for the patriots mingled
plunder with their principles, stripped all the fallen, and the pike and
dagger finished the career of many of the wounded. It happened, too,
that I could not have fallen into a better spot for information. My
_cidevant garde de chasse_ was loyal to the midriff; but his position as
the master of a tavern, made his house a rendezvous of the leading
patriots of his section. Immediately after their victory of the morning,
a sort of council was held on what they were to do next; and the room
where I lay being separated from their place of meeting only by a slight
partition, I could hear every syllable of their speeches, which, indeed,
they took no pains to whisper; they clearly thought that Paris was their
own. Lying on my bed, I learned that the attack on the Hotel de Ville
was only a part of a grand scheme of operations; that an insurrection
was to be organized throughout France; that the king was to be deposed,
and a 'lieutenant of the kingdom' appointed, until the sovereign people
had declared their will; and that the first movement was to be a march
of all the Parisian sections to Versailles. I should have started from
my pillow, to spring sabre in hand among the traitors; but I was held
down by my wounds, and perhaps still more by the entreaties of my old
attendant, who protested against my stirring, as it would be instantly
followed by her murder and that of every inmate of the house. The club
now proceeded to enjoy themselves after the labours of the day. They had
a republican carouse. Their revels were horrible. They speedily became
intoxicated, sang, danced, embraced, fought, and were reconciled again.
Then came the harangues; each orator exceeding his predecessor in
blasphemy, till all was execration, cries of vengeance against kings and
priests, and roars of massacre. I there heard the names of men long
suspected, but of whom they now spoke openly as the true leaders of the
national movement; and of others marked for assassination. They drank
toasts to Death, to Queen Poissarde, and to Goddess Guillotine. It was a
pandemonium.
"A drum at length beat the 'Alarme' in the streets; the orgie was at an
end, and amid a crash of bottles and glasses, they staggered, as well as
their feet could carry them, out of the house. They were received by the
mob with shouts of laughter. But the column moved forward; to the amount
of thousands, as I could judge by their trampling, and the clashing of
their arms. When the sound had died away in the distance, my humble
friend entered my room, thanking his stars that 'he had contrived to
escape this march.'
"'Where are they gone?' I asked.
"'To Versailles,' was his shuddering answer.
"Nothing could now detain me. After one or two helpless efforts to rise
from my bed, and an hour or two of almost despair, I succeeded in
getting on my feet, and procuring a horse. Versailles was now my only
object. I knew all the importance of arriving at the palace at the
earliest moment; I knew the unprotected state of the king, and knew that
it was my place to be near his person in all chances. I was on the point
of sallying forth in my uniform, when the precaution of my friend forced
me back; telling me, truly enough, that, in the ferment of the public
mind, it would be impossible for me to reach Versailles as a _garde du
corps_, and that my being killed or taken, would effectually prevent me
from bearing any information of the state of the capital. This decided
me; and, disguised as a courier, I set out by a cross-road in hope to
arrive before the multitude.
"But I had not gone above a league when I fell in with a scattered
platoon of the mob, who were rambling along as if on a party of
pleasure; tossing their pikes and clashing their sabres to all kinds of
revolutionary songs. I was instantly seized, as a 'courier of the
Aristocrats.' Their sagacity, once at work, found out a hundred names
for me:--I was a 'spy of Pitt,' an 'agent of the Austrians,' a
'disguised priest,' and an 'emigrant noble;' my protestations were in
vain, and they held a court-martial, on me and my horse, on the road;
and ordered me to deliver up my despatches, on pain of being piked on
the spot. But I could give up none; for the best of all possible
reasons. Every fold of my drapery was searched, and then I was to be
piked for _not_ having despatches; it being clear that I was more than a
courier, and that my message was too important to be trusted to pen and
ink. I was now in real peril; for the party had continued to sing and
drink until they had nearly made themselves frantic; and as Versailles
was still a dozen miles off, and they were unlikely to annihilate the
garrison before nightfall, they prepared to render their share of
service to their country by annihilating me. In this real dilemma, my
good genius interposed, in the shape of an enormous _poissarde_; who,
rushing through the crowd, which she smote with much the same effect as
an elephant would with his trunk, threw her huge arms round me, called
me her _cher Jacques_, poured out a volley of professional eloquence on
the shrinking heroes, and proclaimed me her son returning from the army!
All now was sentiment. The _poissarde_ was probably in earnest, for her
faculties were in nearly the same condition with those of her fellow
patriots. I was honoured with a general embrace, and shared the
privilege of the travelling bottle. As the night was now rapidly
falling, an orator proposed that the overthrow of the monarchy should be
deferred till the next day. A Fédéré uniform was provided for me; I was
hailed as a brother; we pitched a tent, lighted fires, cooked a supper,
and bivouacked for the night. This was, I acknowledge, the first night
of my seeing actual service since the commencement of my soldiership.
"In ten minutes the whole party were asleep. I arose, stole away, left
my newly found mother to lament her lost son again, and with a heavy
heart took the road to Versailles. The night had changed to sudden
tempest, and the sky grown dark as death. It was a night for the fall of
a dynasty. But there was a lurid blaze in the distant horizon, and from
time to time a shout, or a sound of musketry, which told me only too
well where Versailles lay. I need not say what my feelings were while I
was traversing that solitary road, yet within hearing of this tremendous
mass of revolt; or what I imagined in every roar, as it came mingled
with the bellowing of the thunder. The attack might be commencing at the
moment; the blaze that I saw might be the conflagration of the palace;
the roar might be the battle over the bodies of the royal family. I
never passed three hours in such real anxiety of mind, and they were
deepened by the total loneliness of the whole road. I did not meet a
single human being; for the inhabitants of the few cottages had fled, or
put out all their lights, and shut themselves up in their houses. The
multitude had rushed on, leaving nothing but silence and terror behind.
"The church clocks were striking three in the morning when I arrived at
Versailles, after the most exhausting journey that I had ever made. But
there, what a scene met my eye! It was beyond all that I had ever
imagined of ferocity and rabble triumph. Though it was still night, the
multitude thronged the streets; the windows were all lighted up, huge
fires were blazing in all directions, torches were carried about at the
head of every troop of the banditti; it was the bivouac of a hundred
thousand bedlamites. It was now that I owned the lucky chance which had
made me a Fédéré. In any other dress I should have been a suspicious
person, and have probably been put to death; but in the brown coat,
sabre, and red cap of the Sectionaire, I was fraternized with in all
quarters. My first object was to approach the palace, if possible. But
there I found a _cordon_ of the national guard drawn up, who had no
faith even in my mob costume; and was repelled. I could only see at a
distance, drawn up in front of the palace, a strong line of troops--the
regiment of Flanders and the Swiss battalion. All in the palace was
darkness. It struck me as the most funereal sight that I had ever
beheld.
"In my disappointment I wandered through the town. The night was rainy,
and gusts of wind tore every thing before them, yet the armed populace
remained carousing in the streets--all was shouting, oaths, and
execrations against the royal family. Some groups were feasting on the
plunder of the houses of entertainment, others were dancing and roaring
the 'Carmagnole.' One party had broken into the theatre, and dressed
themselves in the spoils of the wardrobe; others were drilling, and
exhibiting their skill by firing at the king's arms hung over the shops
of the restaurateurs. Those shops were crowded with hundreds eating and
drinking at free cost. All the _cafés_ and gaming-houses were lighted
from top to bottom. The streets were a solid throng, and almost as
bright as at noonday, and the jangling of all the Savoyard organs,
horns, and voices, the riot and roar of the multitude, and the frequent
and desperate quarrels of the different sections, who challenged each
other to fight during this lingering period, were absolutely
distracting. Versailles looked alternately like one vast masquerade,
like an encampment of savages, and like a city taken by storm. Wild
work, too, had been done during the day.
"As, wearied to death, I threw myself down to rest on the steps of one
of the churches, a procession of patriots happened to fix its quarters
on the spot. Its leader, an old grotesque-looking fellow, dressed in a
priest's vestments--doubtless a part of the plunder of the night--and
seated on a barrel on wheels, like a Silenus, from which, at their
several halts, he harangued his followers, and drank to the 'downfal of
the Bourbons,' soon let me into the history of the last twelve hours.
'Brave Frenchmen,' exclaimed the ruffian, 'the eyes of the world are
fixed upon you; and this night you have done what the world has never
rivalled. You have shaken the throne of the tyrant. What cared you for
the satellites of the Bourbon? You scorned their bayonets; you laughed
at their bullets. Nothing can resist the energy of Frenchmen.' This
flourish was, of course, received with a roar. The orator now produced a
scarf which he had wrapped round his waist, and waved it in the light
before them. 'Look here, citizen soldiers,' he cried; 'brave Fédérés,
see this gore. It is the blood of the monsters who would extinguish the
liberty of France. Yesterday I headed a battalion of our heroes in the
attack of the palace. One of the slaves of the tyrant Capet rushed on me
sword in hand; I sent a bullet through his heart, and, as he fell, I
tore this scarf from his body. See the marks of his blood.' It may be
conceived with what feelings I heard this narrative.--The palace had
been sacked, the queen insulted, my friends and comrades murdered. I
gave an involuntary groan; his fierce eye fell upon me as I endeavoured
to make my escape from this horrible neighbourhood, and he ordered me to
approach him. The fifty pikes which were brandished at his word made
obedience necessary. He whispered, 'I know you well; you are at my
mercy; I have often played the barrel organ outside the walls of your
_corps-de-garde_; you are acquainted with the secret ways of the palace,
and you must lead us in, or die upon the spot.' He probably took my
astonishment and silence for acquiescence; for he put a musket into my
hand. 'This night,' said he, aloud, 'will settle every thing. The whole
race of the Bourbons are doomed. The fry may have escaped, but we have
netted all the best fish. We have friends, too, in high quarters;' and
he shook a purse of louis-d'ors at my ear. 'We are to storm the palace
an hour before daybreak; the troops must either join us or be put to
death; the king and his tribe will be sent to a dungeon, and France,
before to-morrow night, will have at her head, if not the greatest man,
the richest fool, in Europe.' He burst out into an irrestrainable laugh,
in which the whole party joined; but the sound of cannon broke off his
speech; all shouldered pike or musket; I was placed under the especial
surveillance of a pair with drawn sabres, which had probably seem some
savage service during the night, for they were clotted with blood; and
with me for their guide, the horde of savages rushed forward, shouting,
to join the grand attack on the defenders of our unfortunate king.
"My situation had grown more trying at every moment, but escape was
impossible, and my next thought was to make the best of my misfortune,
enter the palace along with the crowd, and, when once there, die by the
side of my old comrades. I had, however, expected a sanguinary struggle.
What was my astonishment when I saw the massive gates, which might have
been so easily defended, broken open at once--a few random shots the
only resistance, and the staircases and ante-rooms in possession of the
multitude within a quarter of an hour. 'Where is La Fayette?' in wrath
and indignation, I cried to one of the wounded _garde-du-corps_, whom I
had rescued from the knives of my _sans-culotte_ companions. 'He is
asleep,' answered the dying man, with a bitter smile. 'Where are the
National Guard whom he brought with him last night from Paris?' I asked,
in astonishment. 'They are asleep, too,' was the contemptuous answer. I
rushed on, and at length reached my friends; tore off my Fédéré uniform,
and used, with what strength was left me, my bayonet, until it was
broken.
"I shall say no more of that night of horrors. The palace was completely
stormed. The splendid rooms, now the scene of battle hand to hand; the
royal furniture, statues, pictures, tossed and trampled in heaps;
wounded and dead men lying every where; the constant discharge of
muskets and pistols; the breaking open of doors with the blows of
hatchets and hammers; the shrieks of women flying for their lives, or
hanging over their wounded sons and husbands; and the huzzas of the
rabble, at every fresh entrance which they forced into the suites of
apartments, were indescribable. I pass over the other transactions of
those terrible hours; but some unaccountable chance saved the royal
family--I fear, for deeper sufferings; for the next step was
degradation.
"The rabble leaders insisted that the king should go with them to Paris.
Monsieur La Fayette was now awake; and he gave it as his opinion that
this was the only mode of pleasing the populace. When a king submits to
popular will, he is disgraced; and a disgraced king is undone. It was
now broad day; the struggle was at an end; the royal carriages were
ordered, and the _garde-du-corps_ were drawn up to follow them. At this
moment, the barrel-organ man, my leader of the night, passed me by with
a grimace, and whispered, 'Brother Fédéré, did I not tell you how it
would be? The play is only beginning; all that we have seen is the
farce.' He laughed, and disappeared among the crowd.
"There was one misery to come, and it was the worst; the procession to
Paris lasted almost twelve hours. It was like the march of American
savages, with their scalps and prisoners, to their wigwams. The crowd
had been largely increased by the national guards of the neighbouring
villages, and by thousands flocking from Paris on the intelligence of
the rabble victory. Our escort was useless; we ourselves were prisoners.
Surrounding the carriage of the king, thousands of the most profligate
refuse of Paris, men and women, railed and revelled, sang and shouted
the most furious insults to their majesties. And in front of this mass
were carried on pikes, as standards, the heads of two of our corps, who
had fallen fighting at the door of the queen's chamber. Loaves, borne on
pikes, and dipped in blood, formed others of their standards. Huge
placards, with the words, 'Down with the tyrant! Down with the priests!
Down with the nobles!' waved above the heads of the multitude. 'Make way
for the baker, his wife, and the little apprentice,' was shouted, with
every addition of obloquy and insolence; and in this agony we were
forced to drag on our weary steps till midnight. One abomination more
was to signalize the inhuman spirit of the time. Within about a league
of Paris, the royal equipages were ordered to halt; and for what
inconceivable purpose? It was, that the bleeding heads of our
unfortunate comrades might be dressed and powdered by the village
barber--to render them fit to enter Paris. The heads were then brought
to the carriage windows, for the approval of the royal prisoners; and
the huge procession moved onward with all its old bellowings again.
"We entered the city by torchlight, amid the firing of cannon; the
streets were all illuminated, and the mob and the multitude maddened
with brandy. Yet the scene was unlike that of the night before. There
was something in the extravagances of Versailles wholly different from
the sullen and frowning aspect of Paris. The one had the look of a
melodrame; the other the look of an execution. All was funereal. We
marched with the king to the Place du Carrousel, and when the gates of
the palace closed on him, I felt as if they were the gates of the tomb.
Perhaps it would be best that they were; that a king of France should
never suffer such another day; that he should never look on the face of
man again. He had drained the cup of agony; he had tasted all the
bitterness of death; human nature could not sustain such another day;
and, loyal as I was, I wished that the descendant of so many kings
should rather die by the hand of nature than by the hand of traitors and
villains; or should rather mingle his ashes with the last flame of the
Tuileries, than glut the thirst of rebellion with his blood on the
scaffold."
The story left us all melancholy for a while; bright eyes again
overflowed, as well they might; and stately bosoms heaved with evident
emotion. Yet, after all, the night was wound up with a capital cotillon,
danced with as much grace, and as much gaiety too, as if it had been in
the Salle d'Opera.
* * * * *
I rose early next morning, and felt the spirit-stirring power of the sea
breeze. In those days, Brighton covered but the borders of the shore. It
was scarcely more than a little line of fishermen's cottages, fenced
against the surge by the remaining timbers of boats which had long seen
their last adventure. Scattered at distances of at least a quarter of a
mile from each other, lay some houses of a better description, a few
deeply embosomed in trees, or rather in such thickets as could grow in
the perpetual exposure to the rough winds and saline exhalations of the
Channel. Of those, the one in which I had taken up my present residence
was amongst the best; though its exterior was so unpresuming, that I was
inclined to give Mordecai, or rather his gay heiress, credit for
humility, or perhaps for the refinement of striking their visiters with
the contrast between its simplicity of exterior and richness of
decoration within.
It was a brisk, bright morning, and the waves were curling before a
lively breeze, the sun was glowing above, and clusters of vessels,
floating down the Channel, spread their sails like masses of summer
cloud in the sunshine. It was my first sight of the ocean, and that
first sight is always a new idea. Alexander the Great, standing on the
shores of the Persian Gulf, said, "That he then first felt what the
world was." Often as I have seen the ocean since, the same conception
has always forced itself on me.
In what a magnificent world do we live! What power, what depth, what
expanse, lay before me! How singular, too, that while the grandeur of
the land arises from bold irregularity and incessant change of aspect,
from the endless variety of forest, vale, and mountain; the same effect
should be produced on the ocean by an absence of all irregularity and
all change! A simple, level horizon, perfectly unbroken, a line of
almost complete uniformity, compose a grandeur that impresses and fills
the soul as powerfully as the most cloud-piercing Alp, or the Andes
clothed with thunder.
This was the ocean in calm; but how glorious, too, in tempest! The storm
that sweeps the land is simply a destroyer or a renovator; it smites the
surface, and is gone. But the ocean is the seat of its power, the scene
of its majesty, the element in which it sports, lives, and
rules--penetrating to its depths, rolling its surface in thunder on the
shore--changing its whole motion, its aspect, its uses, and, grand as it
is in its serenity, giving it another and a more awful grandeur in its
convulsion. Then, how strangely, yet how admirably, does it fulfil its
great human object! Its depth and extent seem to render it the very
element of separation; all the armies of the earth might be swallowed up
between the shores of the Channel. Yet it is this element which actually
combines the remotest regions of the earth. Divisions and barriers are
essential to the protection of kingdoms from each other; yet what height
of mountain range, or what depth of precipice could be so secure as the
defence so simply and perpetually supplied by a surrounding sea? While
this protecting element at the same time pours the wealth of the globe
into the bosom of a nation.
Even all this is only the ocean as referred to man. How much more
magnificent is it in itself! Thrice the magnitude of the land, the world
of waters! its depth unfathomable, its mountains loftier than the
loftiest of the land, its valleys more profound, the pinnacles of its
hills islands! What immense shapes of animal and vegetable life may fill
those boundless pastures and plains on which man shall never look! What
herds, by thousands and millions, of those mighty creatures whose
skeletons we discover, from time to time, in the wreck of the
antediluvian globe! What secrets of form and power, of capacity and
enjoyment, may exist under the cover of that mighty expanse of waves
which fills the bed of the ocean, and spreads round the globe!
While those and similar ramblings were passing through my mind, as I sat
gazing on the bright and beautiful expanse before me, I was aroused by a
step on the shingle. I turned, and saw the gallant guardsman, who had so
much interested our party on the night before. But he received my
salutation with a gravity which instantly put an end to my good-humour;
and I waited for the _dénouement_, at his pleasure. He produced a small
billet from his pocket, which I opened, and which, on glancing my eye
over it, appeared to me a complete rhapsody. I begged of him to read it,
and indulge me with an explanation. He read it, and smiled.
"It is, I own, not perfectly intelligible," said he; "but some allowance
must be made for a man deeply injured, and inflamed by a sense of
wrong."
I read the signature--Lafontaine, _Capitaine des Chasseurs legers_. I
had never heard the name before. I begged to know "the nature of his
business with me, as it was altogether beyond my conjecture."
"It is perfectly probable, sir," was the reply; "for I understand that
you had never seen each other till last night, at the house of your
friend. The case is simply this:--Lafontaine, who is one of the finest
fellows breathing, has been for some time deeply smitten by the various
charms of your host's very pretty daughter, and, so far as I comprehend,
the lady has acknowledged his merits. But your arrival here has a good
deal deranged the matter. He conceives your attentions to his fair one
to be of so marked a nature, that it is impossible for him to overlook
them."