The False Chevalier Part 47

Meanwhile, during the few minutes in which all this took place, Germain had opened the door of the Queen's drawing-room and said quietly to a lady of honour, "Save the Queen; they want to kill her." The ladies of honour bolted the drawing-room door, hurried to the Queen, hastily dressed her, opened a secret door in a panel near her bed, and hurried her by a pa.s.sage to the chamber of the King.

Miomandre, meanwhile, was attacked like Varicourt and du Repaire.

Knocked down from behind with the b.u.t.t of a musket, he would have been despatched but for the scramble of the Galley men to rob his body of his watch, and by the diversion of the rage of the crowd against his companions shut in the Great Hall.

While Ste Marie lay insensible, those in the Great Hall were actively piling up benches against the door and removing the stacks of arms to the Oeil de Boeuf, which adjoined it, and where they proposed to make their next stand in the way to the apartments of the King. The Count of Guiche and the Prince of Luxembourg worked like the rest, and just as the door crashed through the last of the weapons were brought into the Oeil de Boeuf and its entrance closed. The Hall of the Courtiers seemed to receive the unusual invasion with the inperturbability of a courtier.

One scene of bustling life appeared to suit it as well as another, even though death were so near to follow. The little reserve were drawn up in order, determined to fight it out there together.

And now a long, low sound was heard in the distance. It approached, and as it grew the shouts of rage in the Great Hall ceased, and a roar of scuttling feet was heard. Lafayette's National Guard were approaching, and as the serried lines, advancing at the double, reached the Court of Marble, their drum-beats suddenly burst into a thunderous roll, and the Court, the staircase, and the halls were cleared of the cowardly rabble.

Such was the glorious defence of the Bodyguard. And so the Queen was saved.

The Queen was saved; the King was saved; the household was saved--at least for the present--but the monarchy was lost.

His Majesty left Versailles at one o'clock. The Queen, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Monsieur, Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister and Madame de Tourzel, governess of the children of France, were in his Majesty's carriage.

A hundred deputies of the a.s.sembly in their carriages came next. The advance guard, which was formed of a detachment of the brigands, set out two hours earlier. In front of them Hache and Motte danced in triumph, carrying the pallid heads of Des Huttes and de Varicourt aloft on their pikes.

They stopped a moment at Sevres in front of the shop of an unfortunate hairdresser. They caught hold of the latter and forced him to dress the gory heads; a task which made the poor man a hopeless maniac the same evening.

The bulk of the Paris National Guard followed them closely. The King's carriage was preceded by Wife Gougeon and the fishwomen and a rabble of prost.i.tutes, the vile refuse of their s.e.x, all raving with fury and wine.

Several rode astride upon cannon, boasting in the most horrible songs of the crimes they had committed themselves or seen others commit. Those who were nearest the carriage sang ballads, the allusions in which, by means of their gestures, they applied to the Queen. In the paroxysms of their drunken merriment these women stopped pa.s.sengers, and pointing to the carriage, howled in their ears, "Cheer up, friends, we shall no longer be in want of bread; we bring the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy."

They pointed to waggons which followed, full of corn and flour, which had been brought into Versailles, and formed a train, escorted by Grenadiers and surrounded by women and bullies, some armed with pikes and some carrying long branches of poplar. This favourite part of the _cortege_ looked at some distance like a moving grove, amidst which shone pike-heads and gun-barrels. Above and in front of the motley procession which accompanied them, mounted high on one of the waggons, rode Death himself, so the spectators thought, grinning, triumphing, and directing the whole, in the shape of the skull-like countenance of the Admiral of the Galley-on-Land.

Behind his Majesty's carriage were the remnant of the Bodyguard, some on foot and some on horseback, most of them uncovered, all unarmed, and worn out with hunger and fatigue. The Dragoons, the Flanders regiment, the Hundred Swiss and the National Guards, preceded, accompanied, or followed the file of carriages.

Lecour, weak with the night's anxiety and the frightful disappointment of the day, had scarcely strength to drag himself along between two Grenadiers, who from time to time supported him, and one of whose great hairy caps he wore as a token of fraternity. All at once h.e.l.l seemed to have risen about him. He heard a united yell from many savage throats, and saw a ring of red-capped brutes lunging and striking at himself, and a little woman-fiend sprang at his breast and buried something sharp in it.

The last thing of which he was conscious was the satanic revengefulness of her eyes.

CHAPTER XLVIII

SISTERS DEATH AND TRUTH

At a second-story window, in an unpretentious part of the Rue St.

Honore--known just then as the Rue Honore, for the saints had been abolished, together with the terrestrial aristocracy--a young woman was sitting one late July afternoon employed in sewing. She was pale, thin, and poorly clad. Her fingers were very nervous as she hurried on with her work.

For three years the surges of the Revolutionary deluge had succeeded one another with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last threatened to swallow the entire inhabitants of the city. "The generation which saw the monarchical _regime_ will always regret it," Robespierre was crying, "therefore every individual who was more than fifteen years old in 1789 should have his throat cut." "Away with the n.o.bles!" was shouting another vicious leader, "and if there are any good ones so much the worse for them. Let the guillotine work incessantly through the whole Republic. France has nineteen millions too many inhabitants, she will have enough with five." "Milk is the nourishment of infants," announced another; "blood is that of the children of liberty."

The new doctrine was not merely being shouted; it was being carried into practice as fast as the executioner could work, and sometimes in a single afternoon the life-stream of two hundred hearts gushed out through two hundred severed necks on the Place de la Revolution. The King, and at last the Queen, were among the slaughtered. None knew but that his or her turn, or that of his dearest ones might come next. A too respectable dress, a thoughtless expression, the malice of an extortionate workman, or the offending of a servant, meant death. Even the wickedest were betrayed by their a.s.sociates to the G.o.ddess of Blood, and citizens, as they hurried along the deserted and filthy streets, looked at each other with suspicious eyes. On the throne of France's ancient sovereigns sat a shadowy monarch from h.e.l.l, and all recognised his name and reign--The Reign of Terror.

In the midst of that thunder-fraught atmosphere sat this poor girl, mechanically glancing down the street from time to time at the silent houses, each with the legal paper affixed stating the names of the inmates, for the information of the revolutionary committees.

Her bearing, though humble, announced her as one of the hated cla.s.s, and by scrutinising her thin features we see that she is "the Citizeness Montmorency, heretofore Baroness."

She was absorbed in thought. Recollections, one by one, of the changes which had made her an old woman in experience at the age when most maidens become brides, were crossing her mind. She recalled the alarming news brought to the Hotel de Noailles of the march of the viragoes on Versailles, and with that news her suspense for the safety of Germain; the entry of General Lafayette (who was married to a Noailles) into the hotel towards morning, smilingly a.s.suring the family that all was well; her agony upon word of the attack on the royal apartments; the deadly illness of Germain at the Hotel-Dieu Hospital, whither some National Guards had taken him; the pauper bed and gown in which the Sisters of the Hospital kept him hidden from the roused populace who searched the wards for him; her own a.s.sumption of the humble dress of a servitor to nurse him; his pretended death and burial by subst.i.tute; his long delirium, her joy at his return to life; his grat.i.tude and convalescence; the forced dispersal of the Sisters, and with it her removal of her charge to the half-deserted Hotel de Poix; the mob sacking mansion after mansion around them and their inexplicable exemption; an anonymous warning at length to flee, and the subterfuges of Dominique to cover their removal to the present house.

She thought also of the faithfulness of Germain to the King throughout his misfortunes, and how in order to be ready for service in case of a royalist opportunity, he had refused even her own entreaties to flee.

And sewing on and looking with habitual apprehension down the street, she thought of the blanks in the old circle--sadly, but without tears, for she had grown beyond tears over memories, so often had she been called to shed them for events.

With sorrowful recollection she saw again her good friend, Helene de Merecourt, and her own sister Jeanne, disappear out of life.

There was that terrible day when the King was beheaded, and that other when the Queen followed him; Bellecour, d'Amoreau, the Canoness, Vaudreuil, the Guiches, the Polignacs, were in exile. Others were concealed, scattered, outlawed, some perhaps included in the ma.s.sacres; some perhaps lost among the immense number crowded into the seventy prisons of the City. When would _her_ turn arrive? When Germain's?

A distant sound made her lips part in alarm. It was the too well-known surging murmur of a mob approaching. She hastily rose and closed the window. The Rue Honore was one of the highways particularly exposed to persecution, for its chief portion was lined with mansions where dwelt many of the "aristocrats." The great _porte cochere_ and street wall of one were in full view of her window, coated with insulting placards and painted in huge letters, "NATIONAL PROPERTY--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." How far the property had become national may be inferred from the fact that the patriot commissioner who took its chattels into his charge, and whose name was signed with a mark at the bottom of the placard, was--Gougeon.

In this quiet part of the street, however, the smaller houses usually pa.s.sed unscathed, and the neighbourhood had the advantage of its residents not being so prying as in quarters still poorer. So that by aid of some bribery of patriots of the section, discreetly done by Dominique, their slender stores of money had thus far seemed to suffice to obtain them immunity. We say seemed to suffice, because there was something very remarkable, after all, in the escape of a Montmorency, and particularly one so intimate with the obnoxious Marechale de Noailles.

The mob of women and red-capped men swarmed up the street, led by a drum, and singing "ca ira"--

"Ah, on it goes, and on it goes, and on it goes!-- The aristocrats to the lantern!

Ah, on it goes, and on it goes, and on it goes!-- The aristocrats, we'll hang them."

In front of the confiscated hotel the _Sans-culottes_ stopped, and, joining hands in a circle, whirled around in the wild Revolutionary dance, "the Carmagnole," singing the words--

"Madame Veto had pledged her word, _Madame Veto had pledged her word_ To put all Paris to the sword, _To put all Paris to the sword_, But we all missed our biers Thanks to our canoneers.

Dance, dance the Carmagnole, Hurrah for the sound, _Hurrah for the sound_, Dance, dance the Carmagnole, Hurrah for the sound of the cannon!"

She watched the dancers, involuntarily fascinated. All at once an object tapped against the window, and she noticed many eyes turned up to her in malicious amus.e.m.e.nt. The object was pushed up to her on a long pole and again tapped on the window; she dropped her sewing and sprang back with a scream. It was a human hand. A shout of coa.r.s.e laughter met her ears, and the hand was withdrawn. She sank back in her chair and burst into tears.

"Wretches!" cried a woman, darting forward from behind her and shaking a fist at the window.

"Oh, be careful," Cyrene gasped, pulling back the arm. "Have they seen you?"

"I fear so," was the answer, as dismayed as her question; and a number of blows and thrusts sounded against the door below. But it was only a momentary diversion; the crowd had work cut out for it somewhere else and the drum drew them onwards.

"Oh, Germain," she said hysterically, "why do you risk your life so?"

"Because it is worthless," replied the apparent woman, pulling off his hood and throwing aside the rest of his disguise. But I am a fool to endanger you that way. Oh my darling, you who saved my life, is it not rather to comfort you at times like this that I live?" and he knelt and kissed her hand.

"Dearest," she answered softly, "you make my life happy in the very midst of horrors."

"I am unworthy of your love," he returned mournfully, rising to his feet.

"You say that too often; but have not the old reasons lost their force?

Even here we could make a home. Let us defer our marriage no longer."

"We cannot marry," he said slowly.

She thought he spoke of the prohibition of Christian rites by the law, and said--"But Dominique knows of a priest, who is hidden in a cellar at his cousin's."

He shook his head and she read a soul of infinite sorrow in his eyes as they rested on her face.