The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family. by Alexandre Dumas
CHAPTER XX.
MIRABEAU'S SUCCESSOR.
The royal carriage sadly travelled the Paris Road, watched by the twomoody men who had forced it to alter its direction. Between Epernay andDormans, Charny, from his stature and his high seat, could distinguish afour-in-hand coach approaching from the way of Paris.
He guessed that it brought grave news of some important character.
Indeed, it was hailed with cheers for the National Assembly, andcontained three officials. One was Hatour Maubourg, Lafayette's righthand man, Petion and Barnave, members of the House.
Of the three the oldest stepped up to the royal carriage, leaving hisown, and roughly opening the door, he said:
"I am Petion, and these Barnave and Latour, members of the Assembly,sent by it to serve you as escort and see that the wrath of the populacedoes not anticipate justice with its own hand. Close up there to makeroom for me."
The Queen darted on all three one of those disdainful glances which thehaughty daughter of Maria Theresa deigned to let fall from her pride.Latour was a gentleman of the old school, like Lafayette, and he couldnot support the glance. He declined to enter the carriage on the groundthat the occupants were too closely packed.
"I will get into the following one," he said.
"Get in where you like," said Petion; "my place is with the King and theQueen, and in I go."
He stepped in at the same time. He looked one after another at the King,the Queen and Lady Elizabeth, who occupied the back seat.
"Excuse me, madam," he said to the last, "but the place of honor belongsto me as representative of the Assembly. Be obliging enough to rise andtake the front seat."
"Whoever heard of such a thing?" muttered the Queen.
"Sir!" began the King.
"That is the way of it; so, rise, madam, and give your place to me."
Lady Elizabeth obeyed, with a sign of resignation to her brother andsister.
Latour had gone to the cab to ask the ladies to let him travel withthem. Member Barnave stood without, wavering about entering theconveyance where seven persons were.
"Are you not coming, Barnave?" asked Petion.
"Where am I to put myself?" inquired the somewhat embarrassed man.
"Would you like my place?" demanded the Queen tartly.
"I thank you, madam," rejoined Barnave, stung; "a seat in the front willdo for me."
It was made by Lady Elizabeth drawing the Princess Royal to her sidewhile the Queen took the Dauphin on her knee. Barnave was thus placedopposite the Queen.
"All ready," cried Petion, without asking the King, "on you go!"
The vehicle resumed the journey, to cheers for the National Assembly.
It was the people who stepped into the royal carriage with theirrepresentatives.
There was silence during which each studied the others except Petion whoseemed in his roughness to be indifferent to everything.
Jerome Petion, _alias_ Villeneuve, was about thirty-two; his featureswere sharply defined; his merit lay in the exaltation, clearness andstraightforwardness of his political opinions. Born at Chartres, he wasa lawyer when sent to Paris in 1789, as member of the Assembly. He wasfated to be Mayor of Paris, enjoy popularity effacing that of Baillyand Lafayette and die on the Bordeaux salt meadow wastes, devoured bywolves. His friends called him the Virtuous Petion. He and CamilleDesmoulins were republicans when nobody else in France knew the word.
Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave was born at Grenoble; he was hardlythirty; in the Assembly he had acquired both his reputation and greatpopularity, by struggling with Mirabeau as the latter waned. All thegreat orator's enemies were necessarily friends of Barnave and hadsustained him. He appeared but five-and-twenty, with bright blue eyes, alargish mouth, turned-up nose and sharp voice. But his form was elegant;a duelist and aggressive, he looked like a young military captain incitizen's dress. He was worth more than he seemed.
He belonged to the Constitutional Royalist party.
"Gentlemen," said the King as he took his seat, "I declare to you thatit never was my intention to quit the kingdom."
"That being so, the words will save France," replied Barnave, looking athim ere he sat down.
Thereupon something strange transpired between this scion of the countrymiddle class and the woman descended from the greatest throne of Europe.Each tried to read the other's heart, not like two political foes,hiding state secrets, but like a man and a woman seeking mysteries oflove.
Barnave aimed in all things to be the heir and successor of Mirabeau.In everybody's eyes Mirabeau passed for having enjoyed the King'sconfidence and the Queen's affection. We know what the truth was. It wasnot only the fashion then to spread libels but to believe in them.
Barnave's desire to be Mirabeau in all respects is what led him to beappointed one of the three Commissioners to bring back the Royal Family.
He came with the assurance of the man who knows that he has the power tomake himself hated if he cannot make himself loved.
The Queen divined this with her woman's eye if she did not perceive it.
She also observed Barnave's moodiness.
Half a dozen times in a quarter of an hour, Barnave turned to lookat the three Lifeguards on the box, examining them with scrupulousattention, and dropping his glance to the Queen more hard and hostilethan before.
Barnave knew that one of the trio was Charny, but which he was ignorantof: and public rumor accredited Charny as the Queen's paramour. He wasjealous, though it is hard to explain such a feeling in him; but theQueen guessed that, too.
From that moment she was stronger; she knew the flaw in the adversary'sbreastplate and she could strike true.
"Did you hear what that man who was conducting the carriage said aboutthe Count of Charny?" she asked of Louis XVI.
Barnave gave a start which did not escape the Queen, whose knees wastouching his.
"He declared, did he not, that he was responsible for the count's life?"rejoined the sovereign.
"Exactly, and that he answered for his life to his wife."
Barnave half closed his eyes but he did not lose a syllable.
"Now the countess is my old friend Andrea Taverney. Do you think, on ourreturn to Paris, that it will be handsome to give him leave to go andcheer his wife. He has run great risks, and his brother has been killedon our behalf. I think that to claim his continued service beside uswould be to act cruelly to the happy couple."
Barnave breathed again and opened his eyes fully.
"You are right, though I doubt that the count will accept it," returnedthe King.
"In that case we shall both have done our duty--we in proposing it andthe count in refusing."
By magnetic sympathy she felt that Barnave's irritation was softening.At the same time that his generous heart understood that he had beenunfair to her his shame sprang up.
He had borne himself with a high head like a judge, and now she suddenlyspoke the very words which determined her innocence of the charge whichshe could not have foreseen, or her repentance. Why not innocence?
"We would stand in the better position," continued the Queen, "fromour not having taken Count Charny with us, and from my thinking, on mypart, that he was in Paris when he suddenly appeared by the side of ourcarriage."
"It is so," proceeded the monarch; "but it only proves that the counthas no need of stimulant when his duty is in question."
There was no longer any doubt that she was guiltless.
How was Barnave to obtain the Queen's forgiveness for having wronged heras a woman? He did not dare address her, and was he to wait till shespoke the first? She said nothing at all as she was satisfied with theeffect she had produced.
He had become gentle, almost humble; he implored her with a look, butshe did not appear to pay him any heed.
He was in one of those moods when to rouse a woman from inattention hewould have undertaken the twelve labors of Hercules, at the risk of thefirst being too much for him.
He was beseechin
"God bless your Majesty!"
It was a long time since the crowd had a chance of flying into anger.Nothing had presented itself since the hapless Knight of St. Louis,whose head was still following on the pike-point. This occasion waseagerly embraced.
The mob replied to the reverence with a roar: they threw themselves onthe priest in a twinkling, and he was flung down and would have beenflayed alive before Barnave broke from his abstraction had not thefrightened Queen appealed to him.
"Oh, sir, do you not see what is going on?"
He raised his head, plunged a rapid look into the ocean which submergedthe priest, and rolled in growling and tumultuous waves up to thecarriage; he burst the door with such violence that he would have fallenout if the Princess Elizabeth had not caught him by the coat.
"You villains!" he shouted. "Tigers, who cannot be French men! orFrance, the home of the brave, has become a den of assassins!"
This apostrophe may appear bombastic to us but it was in the style ofthe period. Besides, the denunciator belonged to the National Assemblyand supreme power spoke by his voice. The crowd recoiled and the old manwas saved.
He rose and said:
"You did well to save an old man, young sir--he will ever pray for you."
He made the sign of the cross, and went his way, the throng opening tohim, dominated by the voice and attitude of Barnave, who seemed thestatue of Command. When the victim was gone from sight, the young deputysimply and naturally retook his seat, as if he were not aware he hadsaved a human life.
"I thank you, sir," said the Queen.
These few words set him quivering over all his frame. In all the longperiod during which we have accompanied Marie Antoinette, though she hadbeen more lovely, never had she been more touching.
He was contemplating so much motherly grace when the prince uttered acry of pain at the moment when Barnave was inclined to fall at the kneesof dying Majesty. The boy had played some roguish trick on the virtuousPetion, who had deemed it proper to pull his ears. The King reddenedwith anger, the Queen turned pale with shame. She held out her arms andpulled the boy from between Petion's knees, so that Barnave received himbetween his. She still wished to draw him to her but he resisted,saying:
"I am comfortable here."
Through motherly playfulness or womanly seductiveness, she allowed theboy to stay. It is impossible to tell what passed in Barnave's heart: hewas both proud and happy. The prince set to playing with the buttons ofthe member's coat, which bore the motto: "Live Free or Die."
"What does that mean?" he wanted to know.
As Barnave was silent, Petion interpreted.
"My little man, that means that the French have sworn never to knowmasters more, if you can understand that? Explain it otherwise, Barnave,if you can."
The other was hushed: the motto, which he had thought sublime, seemedalmost cruel at present. But he took the boy's hand and respectfullykissed it. The Queen wiped away a tear, risen from her heart.
The carriage, moving theatre of this little episode, continued to rollforward through the hooting of the mob, bearing to death six of theeight passengers.