ALL THIS SCENE of M. de Choiseul menacing the man who spoke in the name of the Assembly passed without his even seeming to remark that he had but narrowly escaped death. He seemed also to be occupied by a far more powerful sentiment than that of fear. There was no mistaking the expression of his face. He had the bearing of the hunter who sees before him the lion and lioness who had devoured his young.
The word “prisoners,” however, had aroused De Choiseul, and the king had sprung to his feet.
“Prisoners! prisoners! in the name of the National Assembly. I do not understand you.”
“It is, however, easy to be understood,” said the man. “In spite of the oath you took not to leave France, you fled in the night, broke your word, betrayed the nation, and insulted the people. The nation has now appealed to arms, the people have risen, and through the mouth of one of the humblest, though not on that account the least powerful, says: 'Sire, in the name of the people and the National Assembly, you are my prisoner.'”
In the next room sounds of applause, accompanied by mad bravoes, were heard.
“Madame,” said De Choiseul, whispering to the queen, “you will not forget that you stopped me. Otherwise you would not be exposed to such an offence.”
“All this will be nothing,” said she, “if we can but avenge ourselves.”
“Yes,” said De Choiseul, “but if we do not?”
The queen uttered a sad and melancholy sigh.
The hand of Charny passed over De Choiseul's hand, and touched the queen's.
Marie Antoinette turned quickly round.
“Let that man do and say what he will. I will take charge of him.”
In the meantime the king, completely overcome with the new blow which had been dealt him, looked with amazement at the sombre personage who, in the name of the nation and the king, spoke so energetically to him. There was also some curiosity mingled with this feeling, for it seemed to Louis XVI., though he could not recall having seen him before, he knew that he had not met him for the first time.
“Sire, I wish that neither you nor your family should leave France.”
“And you have doubtless come with thousands of men to oppose my march?” said the king, who put on all his dignity.
“No, sire; but two have come—myself and the aide-de-camp of Lafayette; I am a mere peasant. The Assembly, however, has published a decree, and confided its execution to me. It will be executed.”
“Give me the decree,” said the king.
“It is not in my possession; my companion has been sent by Lafayette and the Assembly to have the orders of the king executed. I am sent by M. Bailly, and also have come, on my own account, to blow out the brains of my companion if he should quail at all.”
The queen, M. de Damas, and the others who were present, looked on with amazement. They had never seen the people, either oppressed or furious, except asking mercy when being murdered, and now for the first time saw it with folded arms, and heard it demand its rights.
Louis XVI. at once saw nothing was to be expected from a man of that temper, and wished to have done with him.
“Well!“ said he, “where is your companion?”
As he spoke, he threw open the door, behind which stood a young man in the uniform of an officer of the staff, leaning against a window.
He also seemed to suffer much; but he suffered from want of strength, not from want of mental power. He wept, and had a paper in his hands.
It was De Romoeuf, the young aide-de-camp of Lafayette, whom our readers will remember to have seen when Louis de Bouille arrived in Paris.
De Romoeuf, as may be deemed from the conversation he then had with the young royalist, was a true and sincere patriot; during the dictatorship, however, of Lafayette at the Tuileries, he had been assigned the care of the queen and the charge of her excursions. He had always treated her with a respectful delicacy which had often won the queen's thanks.
“Ah, sir!” said the queen, painfully surprised, “is it you?”
With that painful sigh, which indicated that a power almost invincible was falling, she said:
“Oh, I never would have believed it.”
“It is well,” said the other delegate. “It seems that I was right to come.”
De Romoeuf advanced slowly, with downcast eyes, holding his order in His hand. The king did not, however, permit the young man to present the decree; he advanced rapidly, and took it from his hands. Having read it, he said: “France now has no king!” The man who came in with De Romoeuf said: “I know that well enough.”
The king and the queen looked around, as if they would question him.
He said: “Here, madame, is the decree the National Assembly has dared to pass.”
With a voice trembling with indignation, he read the following words: “The National Assembly orders the Minister of the Interior to send out, at once, couriers to the different departments, with orders to all civil functionaries, and the officers of the National Guard, troops of the line, and the empire, to arrest anyone, whoever he may be, seeking to leave the kingdom, and to prevent all exportation of property, arms, munitions, gold, and silver. In case these couriers overtake the king, or any members of the royal family, or those who have contributed to their escape, the said National Guards and troops of the line are ordered to use every effort to prevent the said escape, and cause the fugitives to cease their journey, and return, to submit themselves to the Legislative Assembly.”
The queen heard all this with a kind of torpor: when he had finished, she shook her head, as if to arouse herself, and said, “Give it to me!” As she reached forth her hand to receive the fatal decree, she said, “Impossible!”
While this was going on, the companion of M. de Romoeuf, by a bitter smile, infused confidence into the National Guards and the patriots of Varennes.
The word “impossible,” pronounced by the queen, had made them uneasy, though they had heard every letter of the decree.
“Read, madame!” said the king, bitterly; “if you doubt me, read, for it is signed by the President of the National Assembly.”
“Who dared to write and sign such a document?”
“A noble, madame,” said the king, “the Marquis de Beauharnais.”
Is it not a strange thing, proving the mysterious union of the past with the present, that this decree, which arrested the flight of the king, queen, and royal family, emanated from a man who, until then obscure, was about to unite himself in the most brilliant manner to the history of the nineteenth century?
The queen took the decree, and with wrinkled brows and contracted lips read it again.
The king then took it and re-read it. Having done so, he threw it on the bed, where, insensible to all that was going on, slept the dauphin and Madame Royale. That document, however, was decisive of their fate.
When she saw them, the queen could not restrain herself, but sprang up, and crushing the paper, threw it from her. “Take care, sire!” said she, “I will not have this paper sully my children!”
A loud cry was heard in the ante-chamber, the National Guards sought to enter the room occupied by the royal fugitives. The aide-de-camp of Lafayette uttered a cry of terror—his companion one of rage.
“Oh!” said the latter between his teeth, “the National Assembly—the nation is insulted! This is well!” Turning towards the crowd, already excited to the very acme of strife, and who stood around, armed with guns, scythes, and sabres, he said: “Here, citizens! here!”
The latter, to enter the chamber, made a second movement which was but the completion of the first. God only knows what would have resulted from this contest had not Charny, who from the commencement of the scene had said only the few words we have recorded, rushed forward and seized the arm of the unknown National Guard, and said, just as the latter was about to place his hand on his sabre: “A word with you, M. Billot, if you please!”
“Very well! M. de Charny; I also would speak to you.”
Advancing towards the door, he said: “Citizens! go for a moment. I have something to say to this officer; be easy, though, for neither the wolf, dam, nor cubs will escape us—I will be answerable for them.”
As if this man, who was unknown to them, as he was—except to Charny—to king, queen, and all, had a right to give them orders, they withdrew, and left the room free.
Each one also was anxious to tell his companions what had taken place, and to advise them to be on their guard.
In the meantime Charny said, in a low tone, to the queen, “M. de Romoeuf, madame, is your friend. Do the best you can with him.” This he rendered the more easy, when he came to the next room, by shutting the door and keeping all, even Billot, from entering it. He stood with his back against it.
The two men, on finding themselves tete-a-tete, looked at each other a few moments; but the look of the gentleman could not make the democrat lower his eyes—nay, more, it was Billot who first began to speak.
“M. le Comte has done me the honour to announce that he has something to say to me. I will listen to anything he wishes to say.”
“Billot!” asked Charny, “how is it that I here find you charged with a mission of vengeance? I had thought you our friend—a friend to the other nobles, and, moreover, a good and faithful subject of the king's.”
“I have been a good and faithful subject of the king's, and I have been not your friend—for such an honour was not reserved for a poor farmer like me—but I have been your bumble servant.”
“Well, M. le Comte, you see I am no longer anything of the kind.”
“I do not understand you, Billot,” replied the count.
“Why do you wish to understand me, count? Do I ask you the cause of your fidelity to the king, and the reasons for your great devotion to the queen? No; I presume that you have your reasons for acting thus, and that you are an honest and a wise man—that your reasons are good, or at least according to your conscience. I have not your high position in society, M. le Comte; I have not either your knowledge, but yet you know me to be, or have known me to have been, an honest and prudent man, too. Suppose, then, that like you, I have my reasons, equally as good, and equally according to my conscience.”
“Billot!” said Charny, who was ignorant completely of any motives of hatred the farmer could possibly have against nobility or royalty, “I have known you—and it is not so very long since—very different from what you are to-day.”
“Oh, certainly! I do not deny it!” said Billot, with a bitter smile. “Yes, you have known me very different from what I am now. I am about to tell you, M. le Comte, what I was—I was a true patriot, devoted thoroughly to two men and one thing. These two men were Doctor Gilbert and the king—this thing was my country. One day the agents of the king—and I confess to you,” said the farmer, shaking his head, “that that first began the quarrel betwixt the king and myself—one day the agents of the king came to my house, and half by force and half by surprise, carried off a casket from me, which had been trusted to my care by M. Gilbert. As soon as I was at liberty, I started for Paris. I arrived there on the evening of the 13th of July, right in the midst of the commotions about the busts of the Duke of Orleans and M. Necker—they carried these busts through the streets, crying, 'Vive the Duke of Orleans! vive M. Necker!' This was doing no great harm to the king, and yet all at once the soldiers of the king charged us. I saw poor devils who had committed no other crime than the crying long life to two men whom they probably did not know, fall around me, some with their heads cut through with the sabres, and others with their breasts pierced by balls. I saw M. de Lambesq, a friend of the king, pursue—even into the Tuileries—women and children who had never uttered a word, and trample down under his horse's feet an old man of at least seventy, This made me quarrel with the king still more. Next day I called at the school of little Sebastian, and I learned from the poor child that his father had been sent to the Bastille by an order of the king's, obtained from his majesty by a lady of the court; and I continued to say to myself that the king, who they pretended was so good, had, in the midst of this goodness, many moments of error, ignorance, and forgetfulness; and to correct, as far as in me lay, one of these faults that the king had committed in those moments of forgetfulness, ignorance, or error, I contributed all in my power to take the Bastille. We arrived there; it was not without trouble. The soldiers of the king fired at us, and killed nearly two hundred men amongst us, and this gave me a fresh reason for not being of the opinion of all the world about this great goodness of the king. But at length the Bastille was taken, and in one of the cells I found M. Gilbert, for whom I had risked my life twenty times, and the joy of finding him again made me forget all these things. Besides, M. Gilbert told me amongst the first that the king was good, that he was ignorant of a great many of the shameful things that were done in his name, and that it was not to him they ought to be attributed, but to his ministers. And all that M. Gilbert told me at this time was like Gospel—I believed M. Gilbert: and seeing the Bastille taken, M. Gilbert free, and Pitou and I safe and sound, I forgot the firing in the Rue Saint Honore, the charging into the Tuileries, the hundred and fifty or two hundred men killed by the musketry of M. le Prince de Saxe, and the imprisonment of M. Gilbert on the simple asking of a lady of the court. But pardon, M. le Comte,” said Billot, interrupting himself, “all this does not concern you, and you have not asked to speak with me alone to listen merely to the thoughts of a peasant without education—you who are at the same time a great lord and a wise and learned man.” And Billot made a movement in order to put his hand on the lock and enter into the king's chamber again; but Charny stopped him.
Charny had two reasons for stopping him. The first was to learn the causes of this enmity of Billot, which, in such a situation, was not without its importance; the second was that he might gain time. “No,” said he, “tell me all, my dear Billot; you know the friendship that my poor brothers and I bore you; and that which you have already told me has interested me in the highest degree.”
At the words “my poor brothers,” Billot smiled bitterly.
“Well, then!” he replied, “I will tell you all, M. de Charny. I especially regret that 'your poor brothers,' above all one—M. Isidor—are not here to hear what I say.”
Billot had pronounced the words “above all M. Isidor,” with such a singular expression, that Charny understood the emotions of grief that the name of his dearly loved brother awoke in his soul; and without answering anything to Billot, who was evidently ignorant of the misfortune which had happened to this brother of Charny, whose presence he desired, he made him a sign to continue.
“So,” said he, “when the king was on the way to Paris, I saw but a father returning to the midst of his children. I marched with M. Gilbert, near to the royal carriage, making a rampart about those who were in it with my body, and crying at the very top of my voice, 'Long live the king!' That was the first journey of the king, that was! Blessings and flowers were showered around him, before, behind, on the road, under the feet of the horses, on the wheels of his carriage. On arriving at the Place of the Hotel de Ville, the people perceived that he wore no longer the white cockade, and that he had not as yet the tricoloured one. They cried out, 'The cockade! the cockade!' I took the one that was in my hat, and gave it him; he thanked me, and put it on his own, with great acclamation on the part of the people. I was drunk with joy at seeing my cockade on the hat of this good king, and I cried, 'Long live the king!' more loudly than ever. I was so enthusiastic about this good king, that I remained in Paris. My harvest was on hand, and required my presence, but bah! what did I care about my harvest? I was sufficiently rich to lose one season, and if my presence was useful in any way to this good king, to this father of the people, to the restorer of French liberty, as, like ninnies, we called him at this time, it was better that I should remain at Paris than return to Pipelen. My harvest, that I had entrusted to the care of Catherine, was nearly lost. Catherine had, as it appeared, something else to attend to besides the harvest.
“Let us not speak any more of that. Yet they said that the king did not so very frankly accept the revolution; that he was constrained and compelled; that it was not the tricoloured cockade that he would have liked to have worn in his hat, but the white one. Those who said this were calumniators, as was sufficiently well proved at the banquet of the body-guards, where the queen wore neither the tricoloured cockade, nor the white cockade, nor the national cockade, nor the French cockade, but simply the cockade of her brother, Joseph II.—the Austrian cockade, the black cockade.
“Ah! I confess it, this time my doubts recommenced, but as M. Gilbert had said to me, 'Billot, it is not the king who has done that, it is the queen, and the queen is a woman, and towards women we ought to be indulgent!”—I believe it so well, that when they came from Paris to attack the chateau, although I discovered at the bottom of my heart that those who came to attack the chateau were not altogether wrong, I ranged myself on the side of those who defended it, so that it was I who went to wake M. de Lafayette, who slept, poor dear man, which was a blessing, and who brought him to the castle just in time to save the king.
“Ah! on that day I saw Madame Elizabeth press M. de Lafayette in her arms, I saw the queen give her hand for him to kiss, I heard the king call him his friend, and I said to myself, 'Upon my word, it seems M. Gilbert was right after all. Certainly it cannot be from fear that a king, a queen, and a royal princess make such demonstrations as these, and if they do not share the opinions of this man, of what use can he be to them at this time; three personages like these would not condescend to lie.' This time again I pitied the poor queen, who was only imprudent, and the poor king, who was only weak. I left them to return to Paris without me. I was engaged at Versailles—you know in what, M. de Charny.”
“They said,” continued Billot, “that this second voyage was not quite so gay as the first; they said that instead of blessings there were curses; that instead of vivats there were cries for death; that instead of bouquets of flowers being thrown under the feet of the horses, and on to the wheels of the carriage, there were heads stuck on pikes! I knew nothing of all that—I was not there. I remained at Versailles. I still left the farm without a master. Bah! I was sufficiently rich, after having lost the harvest of 1789, to lose that of 1790 too. But one fine morning Pitou arrived, and told me that I was on the point of losing a thing which a father is never sufficiently rich to lose—this was my daughter!”
Billot looked kindly at Charny, and continued:
“It is necessary to tell you, M. le Comte, there is close by us, at Boursonnes, a noble family, a family of great lords, a family powerful and rich. This family consisted of three brothers. When they were children, and they came from Boursonnes to Villers-Cotterets, the youngest of these three brothers almost always did me the honour to stop at my farm; they said they had never tasted such good milk as the milk of my cows, and never such bread as the bread of my wife, and from time to time they added—I believed, poor simple ninny that I was, that it was in return for my hospitality—that they had never seen such a beautiful child as my daughter Catherine. And I!—I thanked them for drinking my milk, for eating my bread, and for discovering my daughter Catherine to be beautiful! What would you? I trusted in the king, who is half German by his mother. I could easily, then, trust to them. Also, when the cadet, who had quitted the country for a long time, and who was called Georges, was killed at Versailles at the door of the queen, while bravely doing his duty, during the night of the 5th of October, God only knows how much I was wounded by the blow that killed him! Ah, M. le Comte! his brother has seen me, his eldest brother, he who did not come to the house—not because he was too proud, but because he had left the country at an earlier age even than his brother Georges—he has seen me on my knees before the body, shedding as many tears as it had shed drops of blood!... at the bottom of a little green and humid court, where I had carried him in my arms. I believed him still alive, for, poor young man! he was not mutilated, as his companions, MM. de Varicourt and Deshuttes, had been; I had as much of his blood on my clothes as there was on yours, M. le Comte! Oh! it was the fine fellow whom I always saw going to the college of Villers-Cotterets on his little grey horse, with his satchel in his hand... and it is true, that in thinking of that time, if I could think of him, I should weep even now as you weep, M. le Comte. But I think of another,” added Billot, “and I cannot weep.”
“Of another? and will you say then—?” asked Charny.
“Wait,” said Billot, “we shall arrive at that. Pitou had come to Paris, and he spoke two words that proved to me that it was no longer my harvest that was being risked, but my child—that it was not my fortune that was being destroyed, but my happiness! I left the king, then, at Paris, although it was in good faith, from what M. Gilbert had told me, that everything would go well, whether I was in Paris or not, and so I returned to the farm. I believed at first that Catherine was only in danger of death; she had the brain fever, was delirious—what could I know? I! The state in which I found her rendered me very uneasy, and I became more so when told by the doctor I must not enter her chamber until she was cured. Not enter her chamber! Poor father!—I believed that I might listen at her door, and I listened! Then I learned that she had nearly died, that she had the brain fever, that she was nearly mad, because her lover had gone away. A year before I had gone away too, and instead of becoming crazed because her father left her, she smiled at my departure. But my leaving her left her free to see her lover. Catherine recovered her health, but not her joy, her spirits. One month, two, three, six months passed, without a single smile lighting up her countenance, on which my eyes were always fixed: one morning I saw her smile, and I trembled; her lover was about to return, since she could smile. In fact, next day a shepherd, who had seen him pass, announced to me that he had returned that very morning! I doubted not but that that very evening he would come to see me, or rather Catherine; so, when evening came, I loaded my gun, and laid myself in ambush—”
“Billot, Billot!” cried Charny, “did you do that?”
“Why not?” said Billot. “I put myself in ambush to kill the wild boar that comes to turn up my potatoes, the wolf that would feed on my flocks, the fox that would devour my fowls, and why should I not lay in ambush to kill the man who comes to steal my happiness—the lover who comes to dishonour my child?”
“But arrived there, your heart failed you, did it not, Billot?” asked the count, quickly.
“No,” said Billot, “not the heart, but both eye and hand; a trace of blood, however, showed me that I had not quite failed. Only, you understand well,” added Billot, with bitterness, “between a lover and a father my daughter did not hesitate. When I entered Catherine's room, Catherine had disappeared.”
“And you have not seen her since?” asked Charny.
“No!” replied Billot, “but why should I see her? She knows well that if I did see her I should kill her!”
Charny made a motion which expressed both terror and admiration of the powerful nature thus exhibited before him.
“I went back,” said Billot, “to my agricultural labors—what cared I for domestic troubles, if France were happy? Was not the king treading in the footsteps of the revolution? Did he not participate in the festival of the federation? Did I not see again the good king to whom I had given my cockade on the 16th of July, and the life of whom I had nearly saved on the 6th of October? How he would rejoice to see all France collected at the Champ de Mars, swearing like one man to the unity of the country. For a moment I forgot all, even Catherine. No, no! I never forgot her. He too swore. I thought he took the oath with a bad grace, and that he swore from the throne instead of the altar of the country. Bah, though, he swore, and that was all that was essential; for an oath is an oath, without regard to locality, and honest men always keep them. The king then said, 'I will keep my oath.' True, when I returned to Villers-Cotterets, as I had no longer anything to occupy me, my child being gone, I heard that the king wished to escape through M. de Favras, but that the affair was a failure; that the king wished to escape with his aunts, but in that he failed; that he wished to go to St. Cloud, and thence to Rouen. The people, however, opposed it. I heard all this, but I did not believe it. Had I not with my own eyes seen the king at the Champ de Mars reach forth his hand—had I not with my own ears heard him take his oath to the nation! Could I not believe that a king who in the face of three hundred thousand citizens had taken an oath would keep it? Was it not probable? When, therefore, I went to the market of Meaux, I was amazed. I must tell you I had slept at the post-house with one of my friends, to whom I had brought a heavy load of grain. I was awaked while the horses were being put to the carriage to see the king, queen, and dauphin. I could not have been mistaken, for I had been used to see him in a carriage since the 16th of July, when I accompanied him from Versailles to Paris. Then I heard those gentlemen in yellow say, 'To Chalons.' I looked, and saw whom? The man who had carried Catherine away, a nobleman who played the lackey, by preceding the king's carriage.”
As he spoke, Billot looked anxiously at the count to see if he knew that he spoke of his brother Isidor. Charny, however, wiped away the sweat which stood on his brow, and was silent.
“I wished to follow him; he was already far ahead, he had a good horse, was armed, I was not. One moment I ground my teeth at the idea of the king, who would escape from France, and the ravisher who had escaped from me. But all at once I caught an idea. 'Hold!' said I, 'I also will take the oath to the nation, and now the king has broken his, shall I keep mine? My word! Yes, keep it! I am only ten leagues from Paris. It is three o'clock in the morning; on a good horse, it is a matter of two hours. I will talk this over with M. Bailly, who appears to me to be of the party of those who keep their oaths instead of those who do not keep them!' This point determined, in order not to lose time, I begged my friend, the post-agent at Meaux—without, be it understood, telling him what I wanted to do—to lend me his uniform of the National Guard, his sabre and pistols. I took the best horse in his stable, and instead of setting out for Villers-Cotterets, I went to Paris. I came just in time, for they had just heard of the flight of the king, and did not know whither he had gone. M. de Romoeuf had been sent out by Lafayette towards Valenciennes. See, though, what chance effects. He had been arrested at the barrier, and had obtained permission to be sent back to the National Assembly, whither he came just as M. Bailly, who had been informed by me, described his majesty's itinerary, with all the particulars. There was then only an order to write, and the route to change. The thing was done in an instant. M. de Romoeuf set out to Chalons, and I was directed to accompany him, a mission which, as you see, I have fulfilled. Now,” said Billot with a moody air, “I have overtaken the king, who deceived me as a Frenchman, and I am easy; he will not, however, escape me now. I have now, count, to meet him who deceived me as a father, and I swear he shall not escape me.”
“Alas, dear Billot!” said Charny with a sigh, “you are mistaken now.”
“The unfortunate man of whom you speak, has escaped you.”
“Has he fled?” said Billot, with an expression of intense rage.
“No,” said Charny, “he is dead!”
“Dead!” said Billot, trembling, and wiping away the sweat from his brow.
“He is dead. This blood which you see, and which you just now compared to that which covered you at Versailles, is his. If you doubt me, go below, and you will see his body in a little court-yard, like the one at Versailles in which you saw another who died for the same cause.”
Billot looked at Charny, who spoke to him in the mildest voice, while two great tears stole down his haggard cheeks. He then exclaimed:
“Ah! then, that is the justice of God,” and he rushed from the room saying, “Count, I believe your words, but I wish to see for myself if justice be done or not.”
Charny saw him go, and, stopping a sigh, wiped away a tear. Then, seeing that not a moment was to be lost, he rushed to the queen and said:
“So much the better, for nothing is to be expected from the other person.”
“Gain time until De Bouille conies.”
“Oh!” said she, “the streets are full; you are known, and will not be able to pass. They will kill you. Olivier! Olivier!”
Charny did not answer, but with a smile opened the window, which looked into the garden, bade the queen a last adieu, and sprang to the ground.
The height was fifteen feet, and the queen uttered a cry of terror, hiding her face in her hands. The young men ran to the window, and replied to the queen's alarm by a cry of joy. Charny had leaped over the garden wall, and was hidden by it.
It was high time, for Billot just then appeared at the door of the room.
