Читать книгу The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family - Alexandre Dumas - Страница 7

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All the realm had bound itself together in the girdle of Federation, one which preceded the United Europe of later utopists.

Mirabeau had favored the movement, thinking that the King would gain by the country people coming to Paris, where they might overpower the citizens. He deluded himself into the belief that the sight of royalty would result in an alliance which no plot could break.

Men of genius sometimes have these sublime but foolish ideas at which the tyros in politics may well laugh.

There was a great stir in the Congress when the proposition was brought forward for this Federation ceremony at Paris which the provinces demanded. It was disapproved by the two parties dividing the House, the Jacobins (So called from the old Monastery of Jacobins where they met) and the royalists. The former dreaded the union more than their foes from not knowing the effect Louis XVI. might have on the masses.

The King's-men feared that a great riot would destroy the royal family as one had destroyed the Bastile.

But there was no means to oppose the movement which had not its like since the Crusades.

The Assembly did its utmost to impede it, particularly by resolving that the delegates must come at their own expense; this was aimed at the distant provinces. But the politicians had no conception of the extent of the desire: all doors opened along the roads for these pilgrims of liberty and the guides of the long procession were all the discontented—soldiers and under-officers who had been kept down that aristocrats should have all the high offices; seamen who had won the Indies and were left poor: shattered waifs to whom the storms had left stranded. They found the strength of their youth to lead their friends to the capitol.

Hope marched before them.

All the pilgrims sang the same song: "It must go on!" that is, the Revolution. The Angel of Renovation had taught it to all as it hovered over the country.

To receive the five hundred thousand of the city and country, a gigantic area was required: the field of Mars did for that, while the surrounding hills would hold the spectators; but as it was flat it had to be excavated.

Fifteen thousand regular workmen, that is, of the kind who loudly complain that they have no work to do and under their breath thank heaven when they do not find it—started in on the task converting the flat into the pit of an amphitheatre. At the rate they worked they would be three months at it, while it was promised for the Fourteenth of July, the Anniversary of the Taking of the Bastile.

Thereupon a miracle occurred by which one may judge the enthusiasm of the masses.

Paris volunteered to work the night after the regular excavators had gone off. Each brought his own tools: some rolled casks of refreshing drink, others food; all ages and both sexes, all conditions from the scholar to the carter; children carried torches; musicians played all kinds of instruments to cheer the multitude, and from one hundred thousand workers sounded the song "It shall go on!"

Among the most enfevered toilers might be remarked two who had been among the first to arrive; they were in National Guards uniform. One was a gloomy-faced man of forty, with robust and thickset frame; the other a youth of twenty.

The former did not sing and spoke seldom.

The latter had blue eyes in a frank and open countenance, with white teeth and light hair; he stood solidly on long legs and large feet. With his full-sized hands he lifted heavy weights, rolling dirt carts and pulling hurdles without rest. He was always singing, while watching his comrade out of the corner of the eye, saying joking words to which he did not reply, bringing him a glass of wine which he refused, returning to his place with sorrow, but falling to work again like ten men, and singing like twenty.

These two men, newly elected Representatives by the Aisne District, ten miles from Paris, having heard that hands were wanted, ran in hot haste to offer one his silent co-operation, the other his merry and noisy assistance.

Their names were François Billet and Ange Pitou. The first was a wealthy farmer, whose land was owned by Dr. Gilbert, and the second a boy of the district who had been the schoolmate of Gilbert's son Sebastian.

Thanks to their help, with that of others as energetic and patriotically inspired, the enormous works were finished on the Thirteenth of July 1790.

To make sure of having places next day, many workers slept on the battlefield.

Billet and Pitou were to officiate in the ceremonies and they went to join their companions on the main street. Hotel-keepers had lowered their prices and many houses were open to their brothers from the country. The farther they came the more kindly they were treated, if any distinction was made.

On its part the Assembly had received a portion of the shock. A few days before, it had abolished hereditary nobility, on the motion of Marquis Lafayette.

Contrarily, the influence of Mirabeau was felt daily. A place was assigned in the Federation to him as Orator. Thanks to so mighty a champion, the court won partisans in the opposition ranks. The Assembly had voted liberal sums to the King for his civil list and for the Queen, so that they lost nothing by pensioning Mirabeau.

The fact was, he seemed quite right in appealing to the rustics; the Federalists whom the King welcomed seemed to bring love for royalty along with enthusiasm for the National Assembly.

Unhappily the King, dull and neither poetical nor chivalric, met the cheers coolly.

Unfortunately, also, the Queen, too much of a Lorrainer to love the French and too proud to greet common people, did not properly value these outbursts of the heart.

Besides, poor woman, she had a spot on her sun: one of those gloomy fits which clouded her mind.

She had long loved Count Charny, lieutenant of the Royal Lifeguards, but his loyalty to the King, who had treated him like a brother in times of danger, had rendered him invulnerable to the woman's wiles.

Marie Antoinette was no longer a young woman and sorrow had touched her head with her wing, which was making the threads of silver appear in the blonde tresses—but she was fair enough to bewitch a Mirabeau and might have enthralled George Charny.

But, married to save the Queen's reputation to a lady of the court, Andrea de Taverney, he was falling in love with her, she having loved him at first sight, and this love naturally fortified his tacit pledge never to wrong his sovereign.

Hence the Queen was miserable, and all the more as Charny had departed on some errand for the King of which he had not told her the nature.

Probably this was why she had played the flirt with Mirabeau. The genius had flattered her by kneeling at her feet. But she too soon compared the bloated, heavy, leonine man with Charny.

George Charny was elegance itself, the noble and the courtier and yet more a seaman, who had saved a war-ship by nailing the colors to the mast and bidding the crew fight on.

In his brilliant uniform he looked like a prince of battles, while Mirabeau, in his black suit, resembled a canon of the church.

The fourteenth of July came impassibly, draped in clouds and promising rain and a gale when it ought to have illumined a splendid day.

But the French laugh even on a rainy day.

Though drenched with rain and dying of hunger, the country delegates and National Guards, ranked along the main street, made merry and sang. But the population, while unable to keep the wet off them, were not going to let them starve. Food and drink were lowered by ropes out of the windows. Similar offerings were made in all the thoroughfares they passed through.

During their march, a hundred and fifty thousand people took places on the edges of the Field of Mars, and as many stood behind them. It was not possible to estimate the number on the surrounding hills.

Never had such a sight struck the eye of man.

The Field was changed in a twinkling of the plain into a pit, with the auditorium holding three hundred thousand.

In the midst was the Altar of the Country, to which led four staircases, corresponding with the faces of the obelisk which overtowered it.

At each corner smoked incense dishes—incense being decreed henceforth to be used only in offerings to God.

Inscriptions heralded that the French People were free, and invited all nations to the feast of Freedom.

One grand stand was reserved for the Queen, the court and the Assembly. It was draped with the Red, White and Blue which she abhorred, since she had seen it flaunt above her own, the Austrian black.

For this day only the King was appointed Commander-in-chief, but he had transferred his command to Lafayette who ruled six millions of armed men in the National Guards of France.

The tricolor surmounted everything—even to the distinctive banners of each body of delegates.

At the same time as the President of the Assembly took his seat, the King and the Queen took theirs.

Alas, poor Queen! her court was meager: her best friends had fled in fright: perhaps some would have returned if they knew what money Mirabeau had obtained for her; but they were ignorant.

She knew that Charny, whom she vainly looked for, would not be attracted by the power or by gold.

She looked for his younger brother, Isidore, wondering why all the Queen's defenders seemed absent from their post.

Nobody knew where he was. At this hour he was conducting his sweetheart, Catherine, daughter of the gloomy farmer Billet, to a house in Bellevue, Paris, for refuge from the contumely of her sisters in the village and the wrath of her father.

Who knows, though, but that the heiress to the throne of the Caesars would have consented to be an obscure peasant girl to be loved by George again as Isidore loved the farmer's daughter.

She was no doubt revolving such ideas when Mirabeau, who saw her with glances, half thunderous weather, half sunshine, and could not help exclaiming:

"Of what is the royal enchantress thinking?"

She was brooding over the absence of Charny and his love died out.

The mass was said by Talleyrand, the French "Vicar of Bray," who swore allegiance to all manner of Constitutions himself. It must have been of evil augury. The storm redoubled as though protesting against the false priest who burlesqued the service.

Here followed the ceremony of taking the oath. Lafayette was the first, binding the National Guards. The Assembly Speaker swore for France; and the King in his own name.

When the vows were made in deep silence, a hundred pieces of artillery burst into flame at once and bellowed the signal to the surrounding country.

From every fortified place an immense flame issued, followed by the menacing thunder invented by man and eclipsing that of heaven if superiority is to be measured by disasters. So the circle enlarged until the warning reached the frontier and surpassed it.

When the King rose to declare his purpose the clouds parted and the sun peered out like the Eye of God.

"I, King of the French," he said, "swear to employ all the power delegated to me by the Constitutional Law of the State to maintain the Constitution."

Why had he not eluded the solemn pledge as before; for his next step, flight from the kingdom, was to be the key to the enigma set that day. But, true or false, the cannon-fire none the less roared the oath to the confines. It took the warning to the monarchs:

"Take heed! France is afoot, wishing to be free, and she is ready like the Roman envoy to shake peace or war, as you like it, from the folds of her dress."