ON reaching the door of the office in which the archives were kept, Gilbert perceived that a large heap of old papers was being burnt.
Unhappily, it is a general consequence that after having obtained a victory, the first desire the people have to gratify is that of destruction.
The archives of the Bastille had been invaded.
This office was a vast hall, heaped up with registry books and plans; the documents relating to all the prisoners who had been confined in the Bastille during the last hundred years were confusedly enclosed in it.
The people tore these papers to pieces with senseless rage; it doubtless appeared to them that, by destroying these registrations of imprisonment, they were legally bestowing freedom on the prisoners.
Gilbert went into the hall; seconded by Pitou, he began to examine the register books, which were still standing on the shelves; that of the current year was not to be found.
The doctor, a man who was always so cool and calm, turned pale, and stamped with impatience.
At that moment Pitou caught sight of one of those heroic urchins who are always to be found in popular triumphs, who was carrying off on his head, and running with it towards the fire, a volume similar in shape and binding to that which Dr. Gilbert had been examining.
He ran after him, and, with his long legs, speedily overtook him.
It was the register of the year 1789.
The negotiation did not occupy much time. Pitou was considered as one of the leaders of the conquerors, and explained to the boy that a prisoner had occasion to use that register, and the urchin yielded up his prey to him, consoling himself with the observation,—
“It is all the same to me; I can burn another.”
Pitou opened the book, turned over the leaves, hunted through it, and on the last page found the words:—
“This day, the 9th July, 1789, came in the Sieur G., a philosopher and political writer, a very dangerous person; to be kept in close and secret confinement.”
He carried the book to the doctor.
“Here, Monsieur Gilbert,” said he to him, “is not this what you are seeking for?”
“Oh!” cried the doctor, joyfully, and seizing hold of the book, “yes, that is it.”
And he read the words we have given above.
“And now,” said he, “let us see from whom the order emanated.”
“Necker!” he exclaimed; “the order for my arrest signed by Necker, my friend Necker! Oh, most assuredly there must have been some foul plot!”
“Necker is your friend?” cried the crowd with respect; for it will be remembered that this name had great influence with the people.
“Yes, yes, my friends,” said the doctor; “I am convinced that Monsieur Necker did not know that I was in prison. But I will at once go to him.”
“Go to him,—and where?” inquired Billot.
“Monsieur Necker is not at Versailles; Monsieur Necker is exiled.”
“Ah! I know nothing of her,” replied Billot.
“His daughter is at his country-house, at St. Ouen,” said a voice from the crowd.
“I am obliged to you,” replied Gilbert, not knowing even to whom his thanks were addressed.
Then, turning towards those who were occupied in burning the papers:—
“My friends,” he said, “in the name of history, which in these archives would find matter for the condemnation of tyrants, let me conjure you not to pursue this work of destruction; demolish the Bastille, stone by stone, that not a vestige, not a trace of it may remain, but respect the papers, respect the registers; the enlightenment of the future is contained in them.”
The crowd had scarcely heard these words, than, with its usual admirable intelligence, it duly weighed this reasoning.
“The doctor is right,” cried a hundred voices; “no more devastation of these papers. Let us remove all these papers to the Hôtel de Ville.”
A fireman who, with a number of his companions, had dragged an engine into the courtyard, on hearing the report that the governor was about to blow up the fortress, directed the pipe of his hose upon the burning pile, which, like to that of Alexandria, was about to destroy the archives of a world; in a few minutes it was extinguished.
“And at whose request were you arrested?” said Billot to Gilbert.
“Ah! that is precisely what I am endeavoring to discover and cannot ascertain,—the name is left in blank.”
Then, after a moment's reflection:—
“But I will find it out,” said he.
And tearing out the leaf on which the entry was made regarding him, he folded it up, and put it into his pocket. Then, addressing himself to Billot and Pitou:—
“My friends,” said he, “let us leave this place; we have nothing further to do here.”
“Well, let us go,” replied Billot; “only it is a thing more easily said than done.”
And in fact the crowd, urged into the interior courtyards by curiosity, were so closely packed that egress was almost impossible. And, to add to the difficulty, the other liberated prisoners were standing close to the principal gate.
Eight prisoners, including Gilbert, had been liberated that morning.
Their names were: Jean Bechade, Bernard Laroche, Jean Lacaurège, Antoine Pujade, De White, Le Comte de Solage, and Tavernier.
The first four inspired but little interest. They were accused of having forged a bill of exchange, without any proof whatsoever being brought against them, and which led to the supposition that the charge against them was false; they had been only two years in the Bastille.
The Count de Solage was a man about thirty years of age, of joyous and expansive temperament; he embraced his liberators, congratulated them upon their victory, which he loudly extolled, and related to them the story of his captivity. He had been arrested in 1782, and imprisoned at Vincennes, his father having obtained a lettre de cachet against him, and was removed from that castle to the Bastille, where he had remained five years, without ever having seen a judge, or having been examined even once; his father had been dead two years, and no one had ever thought of him. If the Bastille had not been taken, it is probable that no one would have ever remembered that he was there.
De White was a man advanced in years, somewhere about sixty; he uttered strangely incoherent words, and with a foreign accent. To the questions which poured in upon him from all sides, he replied that he did not know how long he had been incarcerated, or what had been the cause of his arrest. He remembered that he was the cousin of Monsieur de Sartines, and that was all. One of the turnkeys, whose name was Guyon, said that he had seen Monsieur de Sartines, on one occasion, go into De White's cell, where he made him sign a power of attorney. But the prisoner had completely forgotten the circumstance.
Tavernier was the oldest of them all. He had been shut up for ten years in the Iles Ste. Marguerite; thirty years had he been immured in the Bastille. He was upwards of ninety years old, with white hair and long white beard; his eyes had become dimmed by remaining so long in a dark cell, and he saw everything as through a cloud. When the crowd broke open his door, he could not comprehend what they wanted with him; when they spoke to him of liberty, he shook his head; then afterwards, when they told him that the Bastille was taken:
“Ho! ho!” cried he, “ what will Louis XV., Madame de Pompadour, and the Duke de la Vrillière say to all this?”
Tavernier was not even mad, like De White; he had become an idiot.
The joy of these men was frightful to behold, for it cried aloud for vengeance, so much did it resemble terror. Two or three of them seemed almost expiring in the midst of the clamor raised by a hundred thousand voices. Poor men! they who, during the whole time of their confinement in the Bastille, had never heard two human voices speaking at the same moment,—they who were no longer accustomed to any noises but the low and mysterious one of wood, when warping with the damp, that of the spider, when, unperceived, he weaves his net with a ticking similar to that of an invisible pendulum, or of the affrighted rat, which gnaws and flies at the least stir.
At the moment that Gilbert made his appearance, the most enthusiastic among the crowd proposed that the prisoners should be carried in triumph,—a proposal which was unanimously adopted.
Gilbert would have much desired to avoid this species of ovation; but there were no means of escaping it; he had been at once recognized, as well as Billot and Pitou.
Cries of “To the Hôtel de Ville! to the Hôtel de Ville!” resounded on all sides, and Gilbert was raised in an instant on the shoulders of twenty persons.
In vain did the doctor resist, in vain did Billot and Pitou distribute among their victorious brethren the most vigorous fisticuffs; joy and enthusiasm had hardened the skins of the populace. These, and even blows given with pike-handles and the butt-ends of muskets, appeared only gentle caresses to the conquerors, and only served to redouble their delight.
Gilbert was therefore compelled to mount the triumphal car.
This car was formed of a square table, in the middle of which was stuck a lance, to serve as a support to the victor, and enable him to preserve his balance.
The doctor, therefore, was raised above this sea of heads, which undulated from the Bastille to the Arcade St. Jean, a tempestuous sea, whose waves were bearing, in the midst of pikes and bayonets, and arms of every description, of every form, and of every age, the triumphant prisoners.
But at the same time this terrible and irresistible ocean was rolling on another group, so compact and closely formed that it appeared an island. This group was the one which was leading away De Launay as a prisoner.
Around this group arose cries not less tumultuous nor less enthusiastic than those which accompanied the prisoners; but they were not shouts of triumph, they were threats of death.
Gilbert, from his elevated position, did not lose a single detail of this frightful spectacle.
He was the only one among all the prisoners who had been restored to liberty, who was in the enjoyment of all his faculties. Five days of captivity were merely a dark spot in his life. His eyes had not been weakened or rendered dim by his short sojourn in the Bastille.
A combat, generally, does not have the effect of rendering the combatants pitiless excepting during the time that it continues. Men, generally, when issuing from a struggle in which they have risked their lives, without receiving injury, are full of kindly feelings towards their enemies.
But in great popular commotions, such as those of which France has seen so many from the times of the Jacquerie down to our own days, the masses whom fear has withheld from aiding in the fight, whom noise has irritated, the masses, at once ferocious and cowardly, endeavor, after the victory has been gained, to claim their share of the triumph which they had not dared to accelerate. They take their share in the vengeance.
From the moment of his leaving the Bastille, the procession was the commencement of the governor's execution.
Elie, who had taken the governor's life under his own responsibility, marched at the head of the group, protected by his uniform and by the admiration of the people, who had seen him one of the first to advance amid the enemy's fire. He carried his sword above his head, on the point of which was the note which Monsieur de Launay had caused to be handed to the people through one of the loop-holes of the Bastille, and which had been brought by Maillard.
After him came the guard of the royal taxes, holding in his hand the keys of the fortress; then Maillard, bearing the standard; and after him a young man carrying the regulations of the Bastille on his bayonet,—an odious rescript by means of which so many bitter tears had flowed.
The governor walked next, protected by Hullin and two or three others, but disappeared amid the throng of threatening fists, of waving sabres, and of quivering lances.
By the side of this group, and rolling onward in an almost parallel line with it in the great artery of the Rue St. Antoine, which leads from the Boulevard to the river, another could be distinguished, not less threatening, not less terrible than the first. It was that which was dragging forward Major de Losme, whom we have seen for a moment combating the will of the governor, and who had at length been compelled to bow down his head before the determination which De Launay had taken to defend himself.
Major de Losme was a worthy, brave, and excellent young man. Since he had been in the Bastille he had alleviated the sorrows of many of the prisoners by his kind treatment of them. But the people were ignorant of this. The people, from his brilliant uniform, imagined that he was the governor. Whereas the governor, thanks to his gray coat, on which there was no embroidery whatsoever, and from which he had torn the ribbon of the order of St. Louis, was surrounded as it were by a protecting doubt which could be dispelled by those only who were acquainted with his person.
Such was the spectacle which offered itself to the grieved eyes of Doctor Gilbert. His face, even in the midst of dangers, bore always a calm and observing expression,—a quality which was inherent in his powerful organization.
Hullin, on leaving the Bastille, had called around him his most trusty and devoted friends, the most valiant of the popular soldiers of that day, and four or five had responded to his call, and endeavored to second him in his generous design of protecting the governor. Among them are three men of whom impartial history has consecrated the memory; their names were Arné, Chollat, and De Lépine.
These men, preceded as we have said by Hullin and Maillard, were therefore endeavoring to defend the life of one for whose death a hundred thousand men were clamorously calling.
Around them had ranged themselves some grenadiers of the French Guard, whose uniform, having become popular during the last two days, was an object of veneration to the people.
Monsieur de Launay had escaped receiving any blow as long as the arms of his generous defenders were able to ward them off; but he had not escaped insulting language and threats.
At the corner of the Rue de Jouy, of the five grenadiers of the French Guards who had joined the procession on leaving the Bastille, not one remained. They had one after the other been carried off on the way, by the enthusiasm of the crowd, and perhaps also by the calculation of assassins, and Gilbert had seen them disappear one after the other, like beads from a rosary of which the cord had been broken.
From that moment he had foreseen that the victory which had been gained was about to be tarnished by a sanguinary sacrifice; he had attempted to jump from the table which served him as a triumphal car, but arms of iron had riveted him to it. In his powerless position, he had directed Billot and Pitou to rush forward to defend the governor, and both of them, obedient to his voice, had made every effort to cleave through the human waves and get near to Monsieur de Launay.
And in fact the little group of his, defenders stood in great need of a reinforcement. Chollat, who had not tasted food since the previous evening, had felt his strength giving way, and at length had fainted; it was with great difficulty that he had been raised and saved from being trampled under foot.
But this was a breach made in the wall, a falling-in of the dyke.
A man rushed through this breach, and whirling the butt of his gun over his head, aimed a deadly blow at the uncovered head of the governor.
But De Lépine, who saw the terrific blow descending, had time enough to throw himself with outstretched arms between the governor and his assailant, and received on his forehead the blow intended for the governor.
Stunned by the shock, blinded with his own blood, which streamed into his eyes, he staggered, and covered his face with his hands, and when he could again see, the governor was twenty paces from him.
It was at this moment that Billot, dragging Pitou after him through the crowd, came up to him.
He perceived that what exposed Monsieur de Launay, above all, to observation, was his being the only man in the crowd who was bareheaded.
Billot took his hat, stretched out his arm, and placed it on the governor's head.
De Launay turned round and recognized Billot.
“I thank you,” he said; “but whatever you may do, you will not save me.”
“Let us only reach the Hôtel de Ville,” said Hullin, “and I will answer for your safety.”
“Yes,” replied De Launay, “but shall we reach it?”
“With the help of God, we will attempt it,” rejoined Hullin.
And in fact there was some hope of succeeding, for they were just entering the square before the Hôtel de Ville; but this square was thronged with men with naked arms, brandishing pikes and sabres. The report, which had flown from street to street, had announced to them that the governor and the major of the Bastille were being brought to them; and like a pack of hungry hounds eager to be loosed upon their prey, they awaited, grinding their teeth and impatient for their approach.
As soon as they saw the procession approach they rushed towards the governor.
Hullin saw that this was the moment of extreme danger, of the last struggle; if he could only get the governor to the front steps, and get him to rush up the staircase, De Launay was saved.
“To me, Elie!—to me, Maillard!—to me, all men with hearts,” cried he: “our honor is at stake.”
Elie and Maillard heard the appeal; they made a rush into the centre of the mob, and the people seconded them but too well; they made way for them to pass, but closed in behind them.
In this manner Elie and Maillard were separated from the principal group, and were prevented returning to it.
The crowd saw the advantage it had gained, and made a furious effort. Like an enormous boa, it entwined its gigantic folds around the group. Billot was lifted off his feet and dragged away; Pitou, who thought only of Billot, allowed himself to be forced away in the same throng. Hullin, being hurried on by the crowd, stumbled against the first step of the Hôtel de Ville, and fell. He got up, but it was to fall again almost immediately, and this time De Launay fell with him.
The governor was constant to the last; up to the final moment, he uttered not a single complaint; he did not ask for mercy, but he cried out in a loud, shrill tone,—
“Tigers that you are, at all events do not allow me to remain thus in suspense; kill me at once!”
Never was order more promptly executed than this reproachful request of the poor governor. In an instant around the fallen De Launay every head was bowed down towards him. For a moment nothing could be seen but upraised and threatening hands, grasping poniards which as suddenly disappeared then was seen a head severed from the body, and which was raised, still streaming with blood, upon the end of a pike; the features had retained their livid and contemptuous smile.
Gilbert, from his elevated position, could see all that was passing; Gilbert had once more attempted to spring to the assistance of the governor, but two hundred arms prevented him.
He turned his head from the disgusting spectacle and sighed.
This head, with its staring eyes, was raised immediately in front, and as if to salute him with a last look, of the window in which De Flesselles was standing, surrounded and protected by the electors.
It would have been difficult to decide whether the face of the living or that of the dead man was the most pale and livid.
Suddenly an immense uproar arose from the spot on which was lying the mutilated body of De Launay. His pockets had been searched by his assassins, and in his breast-pocket had been found the note which the Provost of the Merchants had addressed to him, and which he had shown to De Losme.
This note, our readers may remember, was couched in the following terms:—
Hold firm!—I amuse the Parisians with cockades and promises. Before the close of the day Monsieur de Besenval will send you a reinforcement.
DE FLESSELLES.
The most blasphemous imprecations rose from the pavement of the square to the window of the Hôtel de Ville in which De Flesselles was standing.
Without guessing the cause of this new tumult, he fully comprehended the threat, and hastily drew back from the window; but he had been seen; every one knew that he was there; the crowd rushed up the staircase, and this time the movement was so universal that the men who had been carrying Doctor Gilbert abandoned him to follow the living tide which in a tempest of passion was overflowing the great staircase.
Gilbert would also have gone into the Hotel de Ville, not to threaten but to protect Flesselles. He had already ascended three or four of the front steps, when he felt himself violently pulled back. He turned round to disengage himself from this new obstruction, but he recognized Billot and Pitou.
“Oh!” exclaimed Gilbert, who from his commanding position could glance over the whole square, “what can they be doing yonder?”
And he pointed with his convulsively clinched hand to the corner of the Rue de la Tixéranderie.
“Come with us, Doctor, come!” simultaneously cried Billot and Pitou.
“Oh, the assassins!” cried the doctor, “the assassins!”
And indeed at that moment Major de Losme fell, killed by a desperate blow from a hatchet,—the people confounding in their rage the egotistical and barbarous governor, who had been the persecutor of his prisoners, with the generous man who had been their friend and reliever.
“Oh, yes, yes,” said he, “let us be gone, for I begin to be ashamed of having been liberated by such men.”
“Doctor,” said Billot, “be not uneasy on that score. The men who fought down yonder are not the same men who are committing these horrid massacres.”
But at the moment when the doctor was about to descend the steps which he had gone up, to hasten to the assistance of Flesselles, the flood which had poured into the building was again vomited forth. Amid this torrent of men was one who was struggling furiously as they dragged him forward.
“To the Palais Royal! to the Palais Royal!” cried the crowd.
“Yes, my friends—yes, my good friends—to the Palais Royal!” repeated the man.
And they went towards the river, as if this human inundation had wished, not to bear him towards the Palais Royal, but to drag him towards the Seine.
“Oh!” cried Gilbert, “here is another they are about to murder!—let us endeavor to save him at least.” But scarcely had he pronounced these words when a pistol-shot was heard, and De Flesselles disappeared amid the smoke.
Gilbert covered his eyes with both his hands, with a gesture of excessive anger; he cursed the people who, after having shown themselves so great, had not the firmness to remain pure, and had sullied the victory they had gained by a triple assassination.
Then, when he removed his hands from his eyes, he saw three heads raised above the crowd, on three pikes.
The first was that of De Flesselles, the second that of De Losme, the third that of De Launay.
The one rose above the front steps of the Hôtel de Ville, the other from the middle of the Rue de la Tixéranderie, the third on the Quai Pelletier.
From their relative positions they assumed the form of a triangle.
“Oh, Balsamo! Balsamo!” murmured the doctor, with a sigh; “is it then such a triangle as this that is to be symbolical of liberty!”
And he ran along the Rue de la Vannerie, Billot and Pitou accompanying him.
