Taking the Bastile (50 page)

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with sobriety and order; the.officers, full of respect for the uniform they wore, at first conversed in an undertone, and drank moderately; during the first half -hour, the programme which had been agreed upon was strictly adhered to.

The second course was put on the table.

Monsieur de Lusignan, the colonel of the Flanders regiment, rose and proposed four toasts. They were to the health of the king, the queen, the dauphin, and the royal family.

Four shouts of applause re-echoed from the vaulted roofs, and struck the ears of the sorrowful spectators outside the palace.

An officer rose a man sincerely attached to that royal family to whom he had just drank so noisily.

This man comprehended that among these toasts there was one which was omitted, which probably might present itself to their attention. He therefore proposed this toast, ‘The Nation.’ A long murmur preceded a long shout. ‘No, no,’ cried every person present except the proposer of the toast. And the toast to the nation was contemptuously rejected. It has been said, and it is still repeated, that the person who proposed tliis toast was but an instigator of an opposing manifestation. However this might be, his words produced an untoward effect. To forget the nation rrlight have been but a trifle, but to insult it was too much. It avenged itself. From this moment disci pline became but a chimerical modesty; the dragoons, the grenadiers, the ‘hundred Swiss’ were sent for, and even all the private soldiers in the palace. The wine was pushed round quickly; ten times were the glasses filled : when the dessert was brought in, it was absolutely pillaged. Intoxication became general, the soldiers forgot that they were drinking with their officers; it was in reality a fraternal festival.

From all parts were heard shouts of ‘Long live the king ! long live the queen 1’ So many lights, illuminating the brilliantly gilded arches, so many loyal lightnings darting from the eyes of these brave men, was a spectacle which would have been grateful to the eyes of the queen, and reassuring to those of the king. Thus so unfortunate king, this so sorrowful queen, why were they not pretent at such a festival ? Some officious partisans withdrew from the dining-room, and ran to Marie Antoinette’s apartments, and related, exaggerated to her, what they

33 o TAKING THE BASTILLE

had seen. Than the sorrowing eyes of the queen become reanimated, and she rises from her chair. There is therefore something stili to hope I At the doors were soon assembled a crowd of courtiers; they entreat, they conjure the queen to pay a visit, merely to show herself for a moment in the festive hall, where two thousand enthusiastic subjects are consecrating, by their hurrahs, the religion of monarchical principles.

‘ The king is absent, ‘ she sorrowfully replied, ‘ I cannot go there alone.’

‘But with xnonseigneur the dauphin said some imprudent persons who still insisted on her going.

‘Madame 1 madame I’ whispered a voice into her ear, ‘remain here; I conjure you to remain.’

The queen turned round it was the Count de Charny.

‘What I’ cried she; are you not below with ail those gentlemen?’

‘I was there, madame, but have returned. The excitement down yonder is so great, that it may prejudice your majesty’s interests more than may be imagined.’

Marie Antoinette was in one of her sullen, her capricious days, with regard to Charny. It pleased her on that day to do precisely the contrary of everything that might have been agreeable to the count.

She darted at him a disdainful look, and was about to address some disobliging words to him, when, preventing her by a gesture : ‘For mercy’s sake, madame,’ added he, ‘at least await the king’s advice.’

He thought by this to gain time.

‘The king I the king I’ exclaimed several voices; ‘the king has just returned from hunting.’

And this was the fact. Marie Antoinette rises and runs to meet the king, who, still booted and covered with dust, entered the room.

‘Sire,’ cried she, ‘there is below a spectacle worthy of the King of France 1 Come with me come with me 1’

And she took the king’s arm and dragged him away without looking at Charny, who dug his nails with anger into his breast. Leading her son with her left hand, she descended the staircase. A whole flood of courtiers preceded or urged her on. She reaches the door of the theatre at the moment when, for the twentieth time, the glasses were being emptied with shouts of ‘Long live the king ! long live the queen 1*

THE BANQUET GIVEN BY THE GUARDS 331 CHAPTER XLI

THE BANQUET GIVEN BY THE GUARDS

AT the moment when the queen appeared with the king and their son on the stage of the opera, an immense acclamation, as sudden and as load as the explosion of a mine, was heard from the banqueting table and boxes. The inebriated soldiers, the officers delirious with wine and enthusiasm, waving their hats and sabres above their heads, shouted, ‘Long live the king ! long live the queen 1 long live the dauphin 1’

The bands immediately played, ‘Oh, Richard I ok, my king I ‘ The allusion of this air had become so apparent, it so well expressed the thoughts of all present, that all, as soon as the air began, immediately sang the words. The queen, in her enthusiasm, forgot that she was in the midst of inebriated men; and the king, though surprised, felt, with kis accustomed sound sense, that it was no place for him; but weak, and flattered at once more finding a popularity and zeal which he was no longer habituated to meet from his people, he, by degrees, allowed himself to be carried away by the general hilarity.

Charny, who during the whole festival had drank nothing but water, followed the king and queen; he had hoped that all would have terminated without their being present, and then it would have been but of slight importance; they might have disavowed, have denied everything; but he turned pale at the thought that the presence of the king and queen would become an historical fact. But his terror was increased greatly when he saw his brother George approach the queen, and, encouraged by her smile, address some words to her, evidently making some request. To this request the queen made a sign of assent; and suddenly taking from her cap the cockade she wore upon it, gave it to the young man. Charny shuddered. It was not even the white cockade, the French cockade, which the queen presented to her imprudent knight; it was the black cockade, th Austrian cockade which was so hateful to French eyes. What the the queen then did was no longer a mere tmprudenc*; it was an act of absolute treason. And yet afl these poor fanatics, whom God had doomed to ruin, were so insensate

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that, when George Charny presented to them this black cockade, those who wore the white cockade threw it from *hem; those who had the tricoloured one trampled it beneath their feet. And then the excitement became so great, that, unless they had wished to be stifled with their kisses, or to trample under foot those who threw themselves on their knees before them, the august hosts of the Flanders regiment felt obliged to retreat towards their apartments.

All this might have been considered as a sample of French folly, if these orgies had not gone beyond the point of enthusiasm; but they soon went much further. The king, the queen, and the dauphin had scarcely withdrawn from the theatre when, exciting each other, the boon companions metamorphosed the banqueting-room into a town taken by assault. Upon a signal given by M. Perseval, aide-de-camp to the count d’Estaing, the trumpets sounded a charge. A charge, and against whom ? Against the absent enemy. Against the people. A charge I music so enchanting to French ears that it had the effect of transforming the stage of the opera-house at Versailles into a battlefield, and the lovely ladies who were gazing from the boxes at the brilliant spectacle were the enemy. The cry ‘To the assault I’ was uttered by a hundred voices, and the escalade of the boxes immediately commenced. It is true that the besiegers were in a humour which inspired so little terror, that the besieged held out their hands to them. And ail this was done under the Austrian colours, with loud vociferations against the national cockade.

Here and there some hollow and sinister sounds were uttered. But, drowned by the howling of the singers, by the hurrahs of the besiegers, by the inspiring sounds of the trumpets, these noises were borne with threatening import to the ears of the people, who were, in the first place, astonished, and then became indignant. It was soon acnown outside the palace, in the square, and afterwards in the streets, that the black cockade had been substituted for the white one, and that the tricoloured cockade had been trampled under foot. It was also known that a brave officer of the National Guard, who had, in spite of threats, retained his tricoloured cockade, had been seriously wounded even in the king’s apartments. Then, it was vaguely rumoured that one officer alone had remained motionless, sorrowful, and standing at the

THE BANQUET GIVEN BY THE GUARDS 333

entrance of that immense banqueting-room converted into a circus, and had looked on, listened to, and had shown himself, loyal and intrepid soldier as he was, submissive to tte all-powerful will of the majority, taking upon himself the faults of others, accepting the responsibility of all the excesses committed by the army, represented on that fatal day by the officers of the Flanders regiment; but the name of this man, wise and alone amid so many madmen, was not even pronounced; and had it been, it would never have been believed that the Count de Charny, the queen’s favourite, was the man, who, although ready to die for her, had suffered more painfully than any other from the errors she had committed.

As to the queen, she had returned to her own apartments, completely giddy from the magic of the scene. She was soon assailed by a throng of courtiers and flatterers.

‘See,’ said they to her, ‘what is the real feeling of your troops; judge from this, whether the popular fury for anarchical ideas, which has been so much spoken of, could withstand the ferocious ardour of Frencn soldiers for monarchical ideas.’ And as all these words corresponded with the secret desires of the queen, she allowed herself to be led away by these chimeras, not perceiving that Charny had remained at a distance from her.

By degrees, however, the noises ceased. The king, besides, paid a visit to the queen at the moment she was about to retire, and let fall these words, ‘We shall see to-morrow.’

The imprudent man 1 by this saying, which to any other person but the one to whom it was addressed, would have been a warning and sage counsel, he had revivified in the queen’s mind feelings of provocation and resistance which had almost subsided.

‘In fact,’ murmured she, when the king had left her t ‘this flame, which was confined to the palace this evening, will spread itself in Versailles during the night, and to-morrow will produce a general conflagration throughout France. All these soldiers, all these officers who have this evening given me such fervent pledges of their devotedness, will be called traitors, rebels to the nation, murderers of their country. They will call the chiefs of these aristocrats, the subalterns of the stipendaries of Pitt and Cobourg, satellites of the barbarous powers of the savages of the north. Each of these heads which has

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worn the black cockade will be doomed to be fixed to the lamp-post on the Place de Greve. Each of those breasts from which so loyally escaped those shouts of ” Long live the Queen I ” will, on the first popular commotion, be pierced with ignoble knives and infamous pikes. And it i* I, again I, always I. who have been the cause of all this I I shall have condemned to death ail these brave aad faithful servants I, the inviolable sovereign. They are hypocritically left unassailed when near me, but when away from me will be insulted from hatred. Oh 1 no; rather than be ungrateful to such a degree as that, towards my only, my last friends rather than be so cowardly and so heartless, I will take the fault upon my-self. It is for me that all this has been done; upon me let all their anger fall. We shall see up to which step of my throne the impure tide will dare to ascend.’ And to the queen, animated by these thoughts, which drove sleep from her pillow, the result of the events of the next day was no longer doubtful.

On that day the National Guards, to whom the queen had presented their colours, came to the palace with heads cast down and averted eyes, to thank her majesty. It was easy to divine, from the attitude of these men, that they did not approve what had occurred. They had formed part of the procession, and had gone out to form part of the Flanders regiment; they had received invitations to the banquet, and had accepted them. Only, being more citizens than soldiers, it was they who during ‘the debauch had uttered those disapproving groans which had not been heeded.

When they came to the palace to thank the queen, they were escorted by a great crowd, and the ceremony became an imposing one. The parties on both sides were about to discover with whom they would have to deal. On their side, all these soldiers and officers who had so compromised themselves the evening before, were anxious to ascertain bow far they would be supported by the queen, and had placed themselves before that people whom they had insulted, that they might hear the first official words which should be uttered from the palace.

The weight of the whole counter-revolution was then hanging suspended over the head of the queen. It was, however, Btul within her power to have withdrawn from this responsibility. But she, proud as the proudest of her

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race, with great firmness cast her clear and penetrating gaza all around her, and addressing herself in a sonorous voice to the officers of the National Guards,

‘Gentlemen,’ said she, ‘I am much pleased at having presented you with your colours. The nation and the army ought to love the king as we love the nation and the army. teat delighted with tke events of yesterday.’

Upon these words which she emphasised in her firmest tone of voice, a murmur arose from the crowd, and loud applause re-echoed from the military ranks.