ON TO VERSAILLES.
Madame Gosner had done the true work of her lifetime when she saw her
husband set free from the Bastille. Then if all the sweet womanhood of
her nature had not been embittered by the radical fury of the times, her
own reward would have been assured. But, instead of a wife suffering and
toiling for a beloved husband’s freedom, this woman had become an
avenger—a patriot—that most loathsome thing, a female demagogue. It was
painful but not strange that the husband for whom she had toiled,
suffered, and almost died, should have failed to recognize in this woman
the sweet young wife he had left in that vineyard home.
Marguerite was to him now what the wife had been then. His tortured
memory could neither associate this amazon with his wife, or the lovely
girl with the child he had left with her. He knew that each represented
the other, but could not feel it. To him Marguerite was the Therese of
his memory; the little child haunted him like a dream, nothing more. As
for the woman, he was afraid of her. In her enthusiasm she had become
his persecutor. It was she who forced him into crowds, and turned the
fierce eyes of a clamorous mob upon him. It was she who called down a
storm of curses on the sovereigns of France whenever his white hair was
seen. It was she who filled their humble apartments day and night with
red-capped men and hideous women, who swarmed around the sensitive old
man like birds of prey. So oppressive and terrible did this become at
last, that the old man crept from his home with cautious stealth, and
sometimes remained away for hours, no human creature knowing where he
went. More than once he remained out for days, and search the streets as
they might, no one could find him.
Madame Gosner was baffled and defeated in her wild ambition. Neither her
husband or daughter entered into her projects or her hatred of the royal
family. The life this perverted woman led bore with equal force upon her
daughter Marguerite, who gladly escaped from the confusion in her own
home, to the sad quiet of Dame Doudel’s apartments. This kind old
benefactress gave her in all tenderness the love and protection which
springs so naturally out of mutual sorrow.
But the time came at last when both Marguerite and her helpless father
were forced to appear among the insurgents.
Months had swept by swiftly, as time goes when nations plunge onward to
rebellion. Paris was once more in open revolt. Her people, with one of
those popular impulses that shake the foundations of a government, had
resolved to besiege the Assembly in its halls and the king in his
palace.
The Court and the Assembly were at Versailles, wrangling together. The
people all this time had been busy hunting down the king. Now they were
marching upon him in one huge mob which left the lanes and streets of
Paris empty, and its vast market places silent as tombs. The rain was
pouring down in torrents, the mud was ankle deep; yet that vast
concourse of people kept steadily on, wheeling cannon through the
mud—throwing out banners to be soaked by the rain, shouting, grumbling,
hurling curses on the king, the queen, and the court.
In the midst of the rioters Madame Gosner was conspicuous, riding a
heavy cart horse and carrying a spear in her hand. Close by her on a
smaller and more gentle animal rode the prisoner of the Bastille, with a
red cap upon his head, which hung limp and dripping over his white
locks.
Whenever this man appeared, shouts long and loud, followed him, at which
his brow would contract gloomily and his eye gleam underneath them. In
the crowd, mounted on horseback like her mother, but with no emblems of
rebellion, came Marguerite, pale, dejected, and forced sorely against
her will into the heart of the mob, as her father had been.
About midway between Paris and Versailles, the crowd halted at a village
where it was thought bread for the hungry crowd might be obtained. In
the confusion which followed this movement, the old prisoner tore off
his red cap, flung it into the mud, and in its place drew the hood of a
friar’s cloak, which some priest had cast over him when the rain came
down most violently—then he turned his horse and pushed his way out of
the crowd unnoticed. In half an hour he left that vast crowd behind him
and made the best of his way to Paris, which was still and deserted like
a city of the dead.
In the suburbs, the old man dismounted and turned his horse loose. He
was weary and very feeble; the mud clung to his feet, and the rain
poured upon him with cruel steadiness; but he moved on, and at last
turned into the ruined court of the Bastille, crossed the draw-bridge,
and went out of sight among the unshapely heap of stones beyond it.
When the army of women went back to Paris, Madame Gosner was among those
who conducted the royal captives to the very entrance of the Tuileries.
Now her triumph seemed almost complete, her enemies were trampled almost
into the dust. Her name was received with shouts wherever she turned.
She forgot the husband who had disappeared in the crowd, and the child
whom she had with despotic force urged into an act of open rebellion.
The madness of ambition was upon her. She had begun now to rival
Theroigne and the coarsest of her sex in a struggle for popularity. So
she went into the thickest of the mob, while Marguerite sought her home
with a heavy heart, hoping with terrible misgivings that she might find
her father there.
The rooms were empty. No human soul was there to meet or comfort her. No
sign of the hunted man met her in the building.
Where could she go? In what place had that helpless man hid himself? Two
nights he had already been absent; had he perished in the street, or
wandered off into some village of the open country?
All at once a thought struck the girl. The Bastille had some weird
fascination which carried that lonely man back to his dungeon, as birds
return to the cages from which they have been set free, feeling the
broad, blue dome of the sky too vast for the trial of their worn and
crippled wings. This thought was scarcely more rapid than the action
that followed it.