IN THE MORNING.
The early sunbeams shone on two horsemen riding at a walking pace along
the deserted water-side by the Tuileries. They were Colonel Mandat and
his aid.
At one A. M. he was summoned to the City Hall, and refused to
go; but on the order being renewed more peremptorily at two, Attorney
Roederer said to him:
"Mark, colonel, that under the law the commander of the National Guard
is to obey the City Government."
He decided to go, ignorant of two things.
In the first place, forty-seven sections of the forty-eight had joined
to the town rulers each three commissioners, with orders to work with
the officials and "save the country." Mandat expected to see the old
board as before, and not at all to behold a hundred and forty-one fresh
faces. Again, he had no idea of the order from this same board to
clear the New Bridge of cannon and vacate St. John's Arcade, an order
so important that Danton and Manuel personally had superintended its
execution.
Consequently, on reaching the Pont Neuf, Mandat was stupefied to find
it utterly deserted. He stopped and sent his aid to scout. In ten
minutes this officer returned with the word that he saw no guns or
National Guards, while the neighborhood was as lonesome as the bridge.
Mandat continued his way, though he perhaps ought to have gone back
to the palace; but men, like things, must wend whither their destiny
impels.
Proportionably to his approach to the City Hall, he seemed to enter
into liveliness. In the same way as the blood in some organizations
leaves the extremities cold and pale on rushing back to fortify the
heart, so all the movement and heat--the Revolution, in short--was
around the City Hall, the seat of popular life, the heart of that great
body, Paris.
He stopped to send his officer to the Arcade; but the National Guard
had been withdrawn from there, too. He wanted to retrace his steps; but
the crowd had packed in behind him, and he was carried, like a waif on
the wave, up the Hall steps.
"Stay here," he said to his follower, "and if evil befalls me, run and
tell them at the palace."
Mandat yielded to the mob, and was floated into the grand hall, where
he met strange and stern faces. It was the insurrection complete,
demanding an account of the conduct of this man, who had not only tried
to crush it in its development, but to strangle it in its birth.
One of the members of the Commune, the dread body which was to stifle
the Assembly and struggle with the Convention, advanced and in the
general's name asked:
"By whose order did you double the palace guard?"
"The Mayor of Paris'."
"Show that order."
"I left it at the Tuileries, so that it might be carried out during my
absence."
"Why did you order out the cannon?"
"Because I set the battalion on the march, and the field-pieces move
with the regiment."
"Where is Petion?"
"He was at the palace when I last saw him."
"A prisoner?"
"No; he was strolling about the gardens."
The interrogation was interrupted here by a new member bringing an
unsealed letter, of which he asked leave to make communication. Mandat
had no need to do more than cast a glance on this note to acknowledge
that he was lost; he recognized his own writing. It was his order
to the commanding officer at St. John's Arcade, sent at one in the
morning, for him to attack in the rear the mob making for the palace,
while the battalion on New Bridge attacked it in flank. This order had
fallen into the Commune's hands after the dismissal of the soldiers.
The examination was over; for what could be more damning than this
letter in any admissions of the accused?
The council decided that Mandat should be imprisoned in the abbey.
The tale goes that the chairman of the board, in saying, "Remove the
prisoner," made a sweep of the hand, edge downward, like chopping with
an ax. As the guillotine was not in use then, it must have been an
arranged sign--perhaps by the Invisibles, whose Grand Copt had divined
that instrument.
At all events, the result showed that the sign was taken to imply death.
Hardly had Mandat gone down three of the City Hall steps before a
pistol-shot shattered his skull, at the very instant when his son ran
toward him. Three years before, the same reception had met Flesselles.
Mandat was only wounded, but as he rose, he fell again with a score of
pike-wounds. The boy held out his hands and wailed for his father, but
none paid any heed to him. Presently, in the bloody ring, where bare
arms plunged amid flashing pikes and swords, a head was seen to surge
up, detached from the trunk.
The boy swooned.
The aid-de-camp galloped back to the Tuileries to report what he had
witnessed.
The murderers went off in two gangs: one took the body to the river, to
throw it in, the other carried the head through the streets.
This was going on at four in the morning.
Let us precede the aid to the Tuileries, and see what was happening.
Having confessed, and made easy about matters since his conscience was
tranquilized, the king, unable to resist the cravings of nature, went
to bed. But we must say that he lay down dressed.
On the alarm-bells ringing more loudly, and the roll of the drums
beating the reveille, he was roused.
Colonel Chesnaye, to whom Mandat had left his powers, awoke the monarch
to have him address the National Guards, and by his presence and some
timely words revive their enthusiasm.
The king rose, but half awake, dull and staggering. He was wearing a
powdered wig, and he had flattened all the side he had lain upon. The
hair-dresser could not be found, so he had to go out with the wig out
of trim.
Notified that the king was going to show himself to the defenders, the
queen ran out from the council hall where she was.
In contrast with the poor sovereign, whose dim sight sought no
one's glance, whose mouth-muscles were flabby and palpitating with
involuntary twitches, while his violet coat suggested he was wearing
mourning for majesty, the queen was burning with fever, although pale.
Her eyes were red, though dry.
She kept close to this phantom of monarchy, who came out in the day
instead of midnight, with owlish, blinking eyes. She hoped to inspire
him with her overflow of life, strength, and courage.
All went well enough while this exhibition was in the rooms, though the
National Guards, mixed in with the noblemen, seeing their ruler close
to this poor, flaccid, heavy man, who had so badly failed on a similar
occasion at Varennes, wondered if this really was the monarch whose
poetical legend the women and the priests were already beginning to
weave.
This was not the one they had expected to see.
The aged Duke of Mailly--with one of those good intentions destined to
be another paving-stone for down below--drew his rapier, and sinking
down at the foot of the king, vowed in a quavering voice to die, he
and the old nobility which he represented, for the grandson of Henry
IV. Here were two blunders: the National Guards had no great sympathy
for the old nobility, and they were not here to defend the descendant
of Henry IV., but the constitutional king.
So, in reply to a few shouts of "Hail to the king!" cheers for the
nation burst forth on all sides.
Something to make up for this coolness was sought. The king was urged
to go down into the royal yard. Alas! the poor potentate had no will
of his own. Disturbed at his meals, and cheated, with only one hour's
sleep instead of seven, he was but an automaton, receiving impetus from
outside its material nature.
Who gave this impetus? The queen, a woman of nerve, who had neither
slept nor eaten.
Some unhappy characters fail in all they undertake, when circumstances
are beyond their level. Instead of attracting dissenters, Louis XVI.,
in going up to them, seemed expressly made to show how little glamour
majesty can lend a man who has no genius or strength of mind.
Here, as in the rooms, when the Royalists managed to get up a shout of
"Long live the king!" an immense hurrah for the nation replied to them.
The Royalists being dull enough to persist, the patriots overwhelmed
them with "No, no, no; no other ruler than the nation!"
And the king, almost supplicating, added: "Yes, my sons, the nation and
the monarch make but one henceforward."
"Bring the prince," whispered Marie Antoinette to Princess Elizabeth;
"perhaps the sight of a child may touch them."
While they were looking for the dauphin, the king continued the sad
review. The bad idea struck him to appeal to the artillerists, who
were mainly Republicans. If the king had the gift of speech-making,
he might have forced the men to listen to him, though their belief led
them astray, for it would have been a daring step, and it might have
helped him to face the cannon; but there was nothing exhilarating in
his words or gesture; he stammered.
The Royalists tried to cover his stammerings with the luckless hail of
"Long live the king!" already twice a failure, and it nearly brought
about a collision.
Some cannoniers left their places and rushed over to the king,
threatening him with their fists, and saying:
"Do you think that we will shoot down our brothers to defend a traitor
like you?"
The queen drew the king back.
"Here comes the dauphin!" called out voices. "Long live the hope of the
realm!"
Nobody took up the cry. The poor boy had come in at the wrong time; as
theatrical language says, he had missed his cue.
The king went back into the palace, a downright retreat--almost a
flight. When he got to his private rooms he dropped, puffing and
blowing, into an easy-chair.
Stopping by the door, the queen looked around for some support. She
spied Charny standing up by the door of her own rooms, and she went
over to him.
"Ah, all is lost!" she moaned.
"I am afraid so, my lady," replied the Life Guardsman.
"Can we not still flee?"
"It is too late."
"What is left for us to do, then?"
"We can but die," responded Charny, bowing.
The queen heaved a sigh, and went into her own rooms.