IN THE ASSEMBLY.
The blow, and the insult with which he accompanied it, put an end for
the moment to my repentance. But short as was the distance across the
floor from the one door to the other, it gave me time to think again;
to remember that this was Louis; and that whatever cause I had had to
complain of him, whatever grounds to suspect that he was the tool of
others, no friend could have done more to assuage my wrath, nor the
most honest more to withhold me from entering on an impossible task.
Melting quickly, melting almost instantly, I felt with a kind of
horror that if kindness alone had led him to interpose, I had made him
the worst return in the world; in fine, before the outer door could be
opened to us, I repented anew. When the usher held it for me to pass,
I bade him close it, and, to Louis' surprise, turned, and, muttering
something, ran back. Before he could do more than utter a cry I was
across the vestibule; a moment, and I had the door of the Assembly
open.
Instantly I saw before me--I suppose that my hand had raised the latch
noisily--tiers of surprised faces all turned my way. I heard a murmur
of mingled annoyance and laughter. The next moment I was threading my
way to my place with the monotonous voice of the President in my ears,
and the scene round me so changed--from that low-toned altercation
outside, to this Chamber full of light and life, and thronged with
starers--that I sank into my seat, dazzled and abashed; and almost
forgetful for the time of the purpose which brought me thither.
A little, and my face grew hotter still; and with good reason. Each of
the benches on which we sat held three. I shared mine with one of the
Harincourts and M. d'Aulnoy, my place being between them. I had
scarcely taken it five seconds, when Harincourt rose slowly, and,
without turning his face to me, moved away down the gangway, and,
fanning himself delicately with his hat, assumed a leaning position
against a desk with his gaze on the President. Half a minute, and
D'Aulnoy followed his example. Then the three behind me rose, and
quietly and without looking at me found other places. The three before
me followed suit. In two minutes I sat alone, isolated, a mark for all
eyes; a kind of leper in the Assembly!
I ought to have been prepared for some such demonstration. But I was
not, and my cheeks burned, as if the curious looks to which I was
exposed were a hot fire. It was impossible for me, taken by surprise,
to hide my embarrassment; for, wherever I gazed, I met sneering eyes
and contemptuous glances; and pride would not let me hang my head. For
many minutes, therefore, I was unconscious of everything but that
scorching gaze. I could not hear what was going forward. The
President's voice was a dull, meaningless drawl to me.
Yet all the while anger and resentment were hardening me in my
resolve; and, presently, the cloud passed from my mind, and left me
exulting. The monotonous reading, to which I had listened without
understanding it, came to an end, and was followed by short, sharp
interrogations--a question and an answer, a name and a reply. It was
that awoke me. The drawl had been the reading of the cahier; now they
were voting on it.
Presently it would be my turn; it was coming to my turn now. With each
vote--I need not say that all were affirmative--more faces, and yet
more, were turned to the place where I sat; more eyes, some hostile,
some triumphant, some merely curious, were directed to my face. Under
other circumstances this might have cowed me; now it did not. I was
wrought up to face it. The unfriendly looks of so many who had called
themselves my friends, the scornful glances of new men of ennobled
families, who had been glad of my father's countenance, the
consciousness that all had deserted me merely because I maintained in
practice opinions which half of them had proclaimed in words--these
things hardened me to a pitch of scorn no whit below that of my
opponents; while the knowledge that to blench now must cover me with
lasting shame closed the door to thoughts of surrender.
The Assembly, on the other hand, felt the novelty of its position. Men
were not yet accustomed to the war of the Senate; to duels of words
more deadly than those of the sword: and a certain doubt, a certain
hesitation, held the majority in suspense, watching to see what would
happen. Moreover, the leaders, both M. de St. Alais, who headed the
hotter and prouder party of the Court, and the nobles of the Robe and
Parliament, who had only lately discovered that their interest lay in
the same direction, found themselves embarrassed by the very smallness
of the opposition; since a substantial majority must have been
accepted as a fact, whereas one man--one man only standing in the way
of unanimity--presented himself as a thing to be removed, if the way
could be discovered.
"M. le Comte de Cantal?" the President cried, and looked, not at the
person he named, but at me.
"Content!"
"M. le Vicomte de Marignac?"
"Content!"
The next name I could not hear, for in my excitement it seemed that
all in the Chamber were looking at me, that voice was failing me, that
when the moment came I should sit dumb and paralysed, unable to speak,
and for ever disgraced. I thought of this, not of what was passing;
then, in a moment, self-control returned; I heard the last name before
mine, that of M. d'Aulnoy, heard the answer given. Then my own name,
echoing in hollow silence.
"M. le Vicomte de Saux?"
I stood up. I spoke, my voice sounding harsh, and like another man's.
"I dissent from this cahier!" I cried.
I expected an outburst of wrath; it did not come. Instead, a peal of
laughter, in which I distinguished St. Alais' tones, rang through the
room, and brought the blood to my cheeks. The laughter lasted some
time, rose and fell, and rose again; while I stood pilloried. Yet this
had one effect the laughers did not anticipate. On occasions the most
taciturn become eloquent. I forgot the periods from Rochefoucauld and
Liancourt, which I had so carefully prepared; I forgot the passages
from Turgot, of which I had made notes, and I broke out in a strain I
had not foreseen or intended.
"Messieurs!" I cried, hurling my voice through the Chamber, "I dissent
from this cahier because it is effete and futile; because, if for no
other reason, the time when it could have been of service is past. You
claim your privileges; they are gone! Your exemptions; they are gone!
You protest against the union of your representatives with those of
the people; but they have sat with them! They have sat with them, and
you can no more undo that by a protest than you can set back the tide!
The thing is done. The dog is hungry, you have given it a bone. Do you
think to get the bone back, unmouthed, whole, without loss? Then you
are mad. But this is not all, nor the principal of my objections to
this cahier. France to-day stands naked, bankrupt, without treasury,
without money. Do you think to help her, to clothe her, to enrich her,
by maintaining your privileges, by maintaining your exemptions, by
standing out for the last jot and tittle of your rights? No,
Messieurs. In the old days those exemptions, those rights, those
privileges, wherein our ancestors gloried, and gloried well, were
given to them because they were the buckler of France. They maintained
and armed and led men; the commonalty did the rest. But now the people
fight, the people pay, the people do all. Yes, Messieurs, it is true;
it is true that which we have all heard, '_Le manant paye pour
tout!_'"
I paused; expecting that now, at last, the long-delayed outburst of
anger would come. Instead, before any in the Chamber could speak,
there rose through the windows, which looked on the market-place, and
had been widely opened on account of the heat, a great cry of
applause; the shout of the street, that for the first time heard its
wrongs voiced. It was full of assent and rejoicing, yet no attack
could have disconcerted me more completely. I stood astonished, and
silenced.
The effect which it had on me was slight, however, in comparison with
that which it had on my opponents. The cries of dissent they were
about to utter died stillborn at the portent; and, for a moment, men
stared at one another as if they could not believe their ears. For
that moment a silence of rage, of surprise, prevailed through the
whole Chamber. Then M. de St. Alais sprang to his feet.
"What is this?" he cried, his handsome face dark with excitement. "Has
the King ordered us, too, to sit with the third estate? Has he so
humiliated us? If not, M. le President--if not, I say," he continued,
sternly putting down an attempt at applause, "and if this be not a
conspiracy between some of our body and the _canaille_ to bring about
another Jacquerie----"
The President, a weak man of a Robe family, interrupted him. "Have a
care, Monsieur," he said. "The windows are still open."
"Open?"
The President nodded.
"And what if they are? What of it?" St. Alais answered harshly. "What
of it, Monsieur?" he continued, looking round him with an eye which
seemed to collect and express the scorn of the more fiery spirits. "If
so, let it be so! Let them be open. Let the people hear both sides,
and not only those who flatter them; those who, by building on their
weakness and ignorance, and canting about their rights and our wrongs,
think to exalt themselves into Retzs and Cromwells! Yes, Monsieur le
President," he continued, while I strove in vain to interrupt him, and
half the Assembly rose to their feet in confusion, "I repeat the
phrase--who, to the ambition of a Cromwell or a Retz add their
violence, not their parts!"
The injustice of the reproach stung me, and I turned on him. "M. le
Marquis!" I cried hotly, "if, by that phrase, you refer to me----"
He laughed scornfully. "As you please, Monsieur," he said.
"I fling it back! I repudiate it!" I cried. "M. de St. Alais has
called me a Retz--a Cromwell----"
"Pardon me," he interposed swiftly; "a would-be Retz!"
"A traitor, either way!" I answered, striving against the laughter,
which at his repartee flashed through the room, bringing the blood
rushing to my face. "A traitor either way! But I say that he is the
traitor who to-day advises the King to his hurt."
"And not he who comes here with a mob at his back?" St. Alais
retorted, with heat almost equal to my own. "Who, one man, would
brow-beat a hundred, and dictate to this Assembly?"
"Monsieur repeats himself," I cried, cutting him short in my turn,
though no laughter followed my gibe. "I deny what he says. I fling
back his accusations; I retort upon him! And, for the rest, I object
to this cahier, I dissent from it, I----"
But the Assembly was at the end of its patience. A roar of "Withdraw!
withdraw!" drowned my voice, and, in a moment, the meeting so orderly
a few minutes before, became a scene of wild uproar. A few of the
elder men continued to keep their seats, but the majority rose; some
had already sprung to the windows, and closed them, and still stood
with their feet on the ledge, looking down on the confusion. Others
had gone to the door and taken their stand there, perhaps with the
idea of resisting intrusion. The President in vain cried for silence.
His voice, equally with mine, was lost in the persistent clamour,
which swelled to a louder pitch whenever I offered to speak, and sank
only when I desisted.
At length M. de St. Alais raised his hand, and with little difficulty
procured silence. Before I could take advantage of it, the President
interposed. "The Assembly of the noblesse of Quercy," he said
hurriedly, "is in favour of this cahier, maintaining our ancient
rights, privileges, and exemptions. The Vicomte de Saux alone
protests. The cahier will be presented."
"I protest!" I cried weakly.
"I have said so," the President answered, with a sneer. And a peal of
derisive laughter, mingled with shouts of applause, ran round the
Chamber. "The cahier will be presented. The matter is concluded."
Then, in a moment, magically, as it seemed to me, the Chamber resumed
its ordinary aspect. The Members who had risen returned to their
seats, those who had closed the windows descended, a few retired, the
President proceeded with some ordinary business. Every trace of the
storm disappeared. In a twinkling all was as it had been.
Even where I sat; for no isolation, no division from my fellows could
exceed that in which I had sat before. But whereas before I had had my
weapon in reserve and my revenge in prospect, that was no longer so. I
had shot my bolt, and I sat miserable, fettered by the silence and the
strange glances that hemmed me in, and growing each moment more
depressed and more self-conscious; longing to escape, yet shrinking
from moving, even from looking about me.
In this condition not the least of my misery lay in the reflection
that I had done no good; that I had suffered for a quixotism, and
shown myself stubborn and obstinate to no purpose. Too late, I
considered that I might have maintained my principles and yet
conformed; I might have stated my convictions and waived them in
deference to the majority. I might have----
But alas! whatever I might have done, I had not done it; and the die
was cast. I had declared myself against my order; I had forfeited all
I could claim from my order. Henceforth, I was not of it. It was no
fancy that already men who had occasion to pass before me drew their
skirts aside and bowed formally as to one of another class!
How long I should have endured this penance--these veiled insults and
the courtesy that stung deeper--before I plucked up spirit to
withdraw, I cannot say. It was an interposition from without that
broke the spell. An usher came to me with a note. I opened it with
clumsy fingers under a fire of hostile eyes, and found that it was
from Louis.
"If you have a spark of honour"--it ran--"you will meet me, without a
moment's delay, in the garden at the back of the Chapter House. Do so,
and you may still call yourself a gentleman. Refuse, or delay even for
ten minutes, and I will publish your shame from one end of Quercy to
the other. He cannot call himself Adrien du Pont de Saux, who puts up
with a blow!"
I read it twice while the usher waited. The words had a cruel,
heartless ring in them; the taunting challenge was brutal in its
directness. Yet my heart grew soft as I read, and I had much ado to
keep the tears from my eyes--under all those eyes. For Louis did not
deceive me this time. This note, so unlike him, this desperate attempt
to draw me out, and save me from opponents more ruthless, were too
transparent to delude me; and, in a moment, the icy bands which had
been growing over me melted. I still sat alone; but I was not quite
deserted. I could hold up my head again, for I had a friend. I
remembered that, after all, through all, I was Adrien du Pont de Saux,
guiltless of aught worse than holding in Quercy opinions which the
Lameths and Mirabeaus, the Liancourts and Rochefoucaulds held in their
provinces; guiltless, I told myself, of aught besides standing for
right and justice.
But the usher waited. I took from the desk before me a scrap of paper,
and wrote my answer. "Adrien does not fight with Louis because St.
Alais struck Saux."
I wrapped it up and gave it to the usher; then I sat back a different
man, able to meet all eyes, with a heart armed against all
misfortunes. Friendship, generosity, love, still existed, though the
gentry of Quercy, the Gontauts, and Marignacs, sat aloof. Life would
still hold sweets, though the grass should grow in the walnut avenue,
and my shield should never quarter the arms of St. Alais.
So I took courage, stood up, and moved to go out. But the moment I did
so, a dozen Members sprang to their feet also; and, as I walked down
one gangway towards the door, they crowded down another parallel with
it; offensively, openly, with the evident intention of intercepting me
before I could escape. The commotion was so great that the President
paused in his reading to watch the result; while the mass of Members
who kept their places, rose that they might have a better view. I saw
that I was to be publicly insulted, and a fierce joy took the place of
every other feeling. If I went slowly, it was not through fear; the
pent-up passions of the last hour inspired me, and I would not have
hastened the climax for the world. I reached the foot of the gangway,
in another moment we must have come into collision, when an abrupt
explosion of voices, a great roar in the street, that penetrated
through the closed windows, brought us to a halt. We paused, listening
and glaring, while the few who had not stood up before, rose
hurriedly, and the President, startled and suspicious, asked what it
was.
For answer the sound rose again--dull, prolonged, shaking the windows;
a hoarse shout of triumph. It fell--not ceasing, but passing away into
the distance--and then once more it swelled up. It was unlike any
shout I had ever heard.
Little by little articulate words grew out of it, or succeeded it;
until the air shook with the measured rhythm of one stern sentence.
"_A bas la Bastille! A bas la Bastille!_"
We were to hear many such cries in the time to come, and grow
accustomed to such alarms; to the hungry roar in the street, and the
loud knocking at the door that spelled fate. But they were a new thing
then, and the Assembly, as much outraged as alarmed by this second
trespass on its dignity, could only look at its President, and mutter
wrathful threats against the _canaille_. The _canaille_ that had
crouched for a century seemed in some unaccountable way to be changing
its posture!
One man cried out one thing, and one another; that the streets should
be cleared, the regiment sent for, or complaint made to the Intendant.
They were still speaking when the door opened and a Member came in. It
was Louis de St. Alais, and his face was aglow with excitement.
Commonly the most modest and quiet of men, he stood forward now, and
raised his hand imperatively for silence.
"Gentlemen," he said, in a loud, ringing voice, "there is strange
news! A courier with letters for my brother, M. de St. Alais, has
spoken in the street. He brings strange tidings."
"What?" two or three cried.
"The Bastille has fallen!"
No one understood--how should they?--but all were silent. Then, "What
do you mean, M. St. Alais?" the President asked, in bewilderment; and
he raised his hand that the silence might be preserved. "The Bastille
has fallen? How? What is it?"
"It was captured on Tuesday by the mob of Paris," Louis answered
distinctly, his eyes bright, "and M. de Launay, the Governor, murdered
in cold blood."
"The Bastille captured? By the mob?" the President exclaimed
incredulously. "It is impossible, Monsieur. You must have
misunderstood."
Louis shook his head. "It is true, I fear," he said.
"And M. de Launay?"
"That too, I fear, M. le President."
Then, indeed, men looked at one another; startled, pale-faced, asking
each mute questions of his fellows; while in the street outside the
hum of disorder and rejoicing grew moment by moment more steady and
continuous. Men looked at each other alarmed, and could not believe.
The Bastille which had stood so many centuries, captured? The Governor
killed? Impossible, they muttered, impossible. For what, in that case,
was the King doing? What the army? What the Governor of Paris?
Old M. de Gontaut put the thought into words. "But the King?" he said,
as soon as he could get a hearing. "Doubtless his Majesty has already
punished the wretches?"
The answer came from an unexpected quarter, in words as little
expected. M. de St. Alais, to whom Louis had handed a letter, rose
from his seat with an open paper in his hand. Doubtless, if he had
taken time to consider, he would have seen the imprudence of making
public all he knew; but the surprise and mortification of the news he
had received--news that gave the lie to his confident assurances, news
that made the most certain doubt the ground on which they stood, swept
away his discretion. He spoke.
"I do not know what the King was doing," he said, in mocking accents,
"at Versailles; but I can tell you how the army was employed in Paris.
The Garde Francaise were foremost in the attack. Besenval, with such
troops as have not deserted, has withdrawn. The city is in the hands
of the mob. They have shot Flesselles, the Provost, and elected
Bailly, Mayor. They have raised a Militia and armed it. They have
appointed Lafayette, General. They have adopted a badge. They
have----"
"But, _mon Dieu!_" the President cried aghast. "This is a revolt!"
"Precisely, Monsieur," St. Alais answered.
"And what does the King?"
"He is so good--that he has done nothing," was the bitter answer.
"And the States General?--the National Assembly at Versailles?"
"Oh, they? They too have done nothing."
"It is Paris, then?" the President said.
"Yes, Monsieur, it is Paris," the Marquis answered. "But Paris?" the
President exclaimed helplessly. "Paris has been quiet so many years."
To this, however, the thought in every one's mind, there seemed to be
no answer. St. Alais sat down again, and, for a moment, the Assembly
remained stunned by astonishment, prostrate under these new, these
marvellous facts. No better comment on the discussions in which it had
been engaged a few minutes before could have been found. Its Members
had been dreaming of their rights, their privileges, their exemptions;
they awoke to find Paris in flames, the army in revolt, order and law
in the utmost peril.
But St. Alais was not the man to be long wanting to his part, nor one
to abdicate of his free will a leadership which vigour and audacity
had secured for him. He sprang to his feet again, and in an
impassioned harangue called upon the Assembly to remember the Fronde.
"As Paris was then, Paris is now!" he cried. "Fickle and seditious, to
be won by no gifts, but always to be overcome by famine. Best assured
that the fat bourgeois will not long do without the white bread of
Gonesse, nor the tippler without the white wine of Arbois! Cut these
off, the mad will grow sane, and the traitor loyal. Their National
Guards, and their Badges, and their Mayors, and their General? Do you
think that these will long avail against the forces of order, of
loyalty, against the King, the nobility, the clergy, against France?
No, gentlemen, it is impossible," he continued, looking round him with
warmth. "Paris would have deposed the great Henry and exiled Mazarin;
but in the result it licked their shoes. It will be so again, only we
must stand together, we must be firm. We must see that these disorders
spread no farther. It is the King's to govern, and the people's to
obey. It has been so, and it will be so to the end!"
His words were not many, but they were timely and vigorous; and they
served to reassure the Assembly. All that large majority, which in
every gathering of men has no more imagination than serves to paint
the future in the colours of the past, found his arguments perfectly
convincing; while the few who saw more clearly, and by the light of
instinct, or cold reason, discerned that the state of France had no
precedent in its history, felt, nevertheless, the infection of his
confidence. A universal shout of applause greeted his last sentence,
and, amid tumultuous cries, the concourse, which had remained on its
feet, poured into the gangways, and made for the door; a desire to see
and hear what was going forward moving all to get out as quickly as
possible, though it was not likely that more could be learned than was
already known.
I shared this feeling myself, and, forgetting in the excitement of the
moment my part in the day's debate, I pressed to the door. The
Bastille fallen? The Governor killed? Paris in the hands of the mob?
Such tidings were enough to set the brain in a whirl, and breed
forgetfulness of nearer matters. Others, in the preoccupation of the
moment, seemed to be equally oblivious, and I forced my way out with
the rest.
But in the doorway I happened, by a little clumsiness, to touch one of
the Harincourts. He turned his head, saw who it was had touched him,
and tried to stop. The pressure was too great, however, and he was
borne on in front of me, struggling and muttering something I could
not hear. I guessed what it was, however, by the manner in which
others, abreast of him, and as helpless, turned their heads and
sneered at me; and I was considering how I could best encounter what
was to come, when the sight which met our gaze, as we at last issued
from the narrow passage and faced the market-place--two steps below
us--drove their existence for a moment from my mind.