THUS pushing and thus pushed, but still following Monsieur de Beauvau's aide-de-camp, Gilbert, Billot, and Pitou at length reached the carriage in which the king, accompanied by Messieurs d'Estaing and de Villequier, was slowly advancing amid the crowd, which continually increased.
Extraordinary, unknown, unheard-of spectacle! for it was the first time that such a one had been seen. All those National Guards from the surrounding villages—impromptu soldiers suddenly sprung up—hastened with cries of joy to greet the king in his progress, saluting him with their benedictions, endeavoring to gain a look from him, and then, instead of returning to their homes, taking place in the procession, and accompanying their monarch towards Paris.
And why? No one could have given a reason for it. Were they obeying an instinct? They had seen, but they wished again to see, this well-beloved king.
For it must he acknowledged that at this period Louis XVI. was an adored king, to whom the French would have raised altars, had it not been for the profound contempt with which Voltaire had inspired them for all altars.
Louis XVI. therefore had no altars raised to him, but solely because the thinkers of that day had too high an esteem for him to inflict upon him such a humiliation.
Louis XVI.perceived Gilbert leaning upon the arm of Billot; behind them marched Pitou, still dragging after him his long sabre.
“Ah, Doctor,” cried the king, “what magnificent weather, and what a magnificent people!”
“You see, Sire,” replied Gilbert. Then, turning towards the king: “What did I promise your Majesty?”
“Yes, sir, yes; and you have worthily fulfilled your promise.”
The king raised his head, and with the intention of being heard:—
“We move but slowly,” said he; “and yet it appears to me that we advance but too rapidly for all that we have to see.”
“Sire,” said Monsieur de Beauvau, “and yet, at the pace your Majesty is going, you are travelling about one league in three hours. It would be difficult to go more slowly.”
In fact, the horses were stopped every moment; harangues and replies were interchanged; the National Guards fraternized—the word was only then invented—with the body-guards of his Majesty.
“Ah!” said Gilbert to himself, who contemplated this singular spectacle as a philosopher, “if they fraternize with the body-guards, it was because before being friends they had been enemies.”
“I say, Monsieur Gilbert,” said Billot, in a half-whisper, “I have had a good look at the king; I have listened to him with all my ears. Well, my opinion is that the king is an honest man!”
And the enthusiasm which animated Billot was so overpowering that he raised his voice in uttering these last words to such a pitch that the king and his staff heard him.
The officers laughed outright. The king smiled, and then, nodding his head:—
“That is praise which pleases me,” said he.
These words were spoken loud enough for Billot to hear them.
“Oh, you are right, Sire, for I do not give it to everybody,” replied Billot, entering at once into conversation with his king, as Michaud, the miller, did with Henry IV.
“And that flatters me so much the more,” rejoined the king, much embarrassed at not knowing how to maintain his dignity as a king, and speak graciously as a good patriot.
Alas! the poor prince was not yet accustomed to call himself King of the French.
He thought that he was still called the King of France.
Billot, beside himself with joy, did not give himself the trouble to reflect whether Louis, in a philosophical point of view, had abdicated the title of king to adopt the title of a man. Billot, who felt how much this language resembled rustic plainness,—Billot applauded himself for having comprehended the king, and for having been comprehended by him.
Therefore from that moment Billot became more and more enthusiastic. He drank from the king's looks, according to the Virgilian expression, deep draughts of love for constitutional royalty, and communicated it to Pitou, who, too full of his own love and the superfluity of Billot's, overflowed at first in stentorian shouts, then in more squeaking, and finally in less articulate ones of:—
“Long live the king! Long live the father of the people!”
This modification in the voice of Pitou was produced by degrees in proportion as he became more and more hoarse.
Pitou was as hoarse as a bull-frog when the procession reached the Point du Jour, where the Marquis de Lafayette, on his celebrated white charger, was keeping in order the undisciplined and agitated cohorts of the National Guard, who had from five o'clock that morning lined the road to receive the royal procession.
At this time it was nearly two o'clock.
The interview between the king and this new chief of armed France passed off in a manner that was satisfactory to all present.
The king, however, began to feel fatigued. He no longer spoke; he contented himself with merely smiling.
The general-in-chief of the Parisian militia could no longer utter a command; he only gesticulated.
The king had the satisfaction to find that the crowd as frequently cried: “Long live the king!” as “Long live Lafayette!” Unfortunately, this was the last time he was destined to enjoy this gratification of his self-love.
During this, Gilbert remained constantly at the door of the king's carriage, Billot near Gilbert, Pitou near Billot.
Gilbert, faithful to his promise, had found means, since his departure from Versailles, to despatch four couriers to the queen.
These couriers had each been the bearer of good news, for at every step of his journey the king had seen caps thrown up in the air as he passed, only on each of these caps shone the colors of the nation, a species of reproach addressed to the white cockade which the king's guards and the king himself wore in their hats.
In the midst of his joy and enthusiasm, this discrepancy in the cockades was the only thing which annoyed Billot.
Billot had on his cocked hat an enormous tricolored cockade.
The king had a white cockade in his hat; the tastes of the subject and the king were not therefore absolutely similar.
This idea so much perplexed him that he could not refrain from unburdening his mind upon the subject to Gilbert, at a moment when the latter was not conversing with the king.
“Monsieur Gilbert,” said he to him, “how is it that his Majesty does not wear the national cockade?”
“Because, my dear Billot, either the king does not know that there is a new cockade, or he considers that the cockade he wears ought to be the cockade of the nation.”
“Oh, no! oh, no! since his cockade is a white one, and our cockade—ours—is a tricolored one.”
“One moment,” said Gilbert, stopping Billot just as he was about to launch with heart and soul into the arguments advanced by the newspapers of the day; “the king's cockade is white, as the flag of France is white. The king is in no way to blame for this. Cockade and flag were white long before he came into the world. Moreover, my dear Billot, that flag has performed great feats, and so has the white cockade. There was a white cockade in the hat of Admiral de Suffren, when he reestablished our flag in the East Indies. There was a white cockade in the hat of Assas, and it was by that the Germans recognized him in the night, when he allowed himself to be killed rather than that they should take his soldiers by surprise. There was a white cockade in the hat of Marshal Saxe, when he defeated the English at Fontenoy. There was, in fine, a white cockade in the hat of the Prince de Condé, when he beat the Imperialists at Rocroi, at Fribourg, and at Lens. The white cockade has done all this, and a great many other things, my dear Billot; while the national cockade, which will perhaps make a tour round the world, as Lafayette has predicted, has not yet had time to accomplish anything, seeing that it has existed only for the last three days. I do not say that it will rest idle, do you understand; but, in short, having as yet done nothing, it gives the king full right to wait till it has done something.”
“How? the national cockade has as yet done nothing?” cried Billot. “Has it not taken the Bastille?”
“It has,” said Gilbert, sorrowfully; “you are right, Billot.”
“And that is why,” triumphantly rejoined the farmer,—“that is why the king ought to adopt it.”
Gilbert gave a furious nudge with his elbow into Billot's ribs, for he had perceived the king was listening, and then, in a low tone:—
“Are you mad, Billot?” said he; “and against whom was the Bastille taken, then? Against royalty, it seems to me. And now you would make the king wear the trophies of your triumph and the insignia of his own defeat. Madman! the king is all heart, all goodness, all candor, and you would wish him to show himself a hypocrite!”
“But,” said Billot, more humbly, without, however, giving up the argument altogether, “it was not precisely against the king that the Bastille was taken; it was against despotism.”
Gilbert shrugged up his shoulders, but with the delicacy of the superior man, who will not place his foot on his inferior, for fear that he should crush him.
“No,” said Billot, again becoming animated, “it is not against our good king that we have fought, but against his satellites.”
Now, in those days they said, speaking politically, satellites instead of saying soldiers, as they said in the theatres, courser instead of horse.
“Moreover,” continued Billot, and with some appearance of reason, “he disapproves them, since he comes thus in the midst of us; and if he disapproves them, he must approve us. It is for our happiness and his honor that we have worked,—we, the conquerors of the Bastille.”
“Alas! alas!” murmured Gilbert, who did not know how to reconcile the appearance of the king's features with that which he knew must be passing in his heart.
As to the king, he began, amid the confused murmurs of the march, to understand some few words of the conversation entered into by his side.
Gilbert, who perceived the attention which the king was paying to the discussion, made every effort to lead Billot on to less slippery ground than that on which he had ventured.
Suddenly the procession stopped; it had arrived at the Cours la Reine, at the gate formerly called La Conférence, in the Champs Élysées.
There a deputation of electors and aldermen, presided over by the new mayor, Bailly, had drawn themselves up in fine array, with a guard of three hundred men, commanded by a colonel, besides at least three hundred members of the National Assembly, taken, as it will be readily imagined, from the ranks of the Tiers État.
Two of the electors united their strength and their address to hold in equilibrium a vast salver of gilt plate, upon which were lying two enormous keys,—the keys of the city of Paris during the days of Henry IV.
This imposing spectacle at once put a stop to all individual conversations; and every one, whether in the crowd or in the ranks, immediately directed their attention to the speeches about to be pronounced on the occasion.
Bailly, the worthy man of science, the admirable astronomer, who had been made a deputy in defiance to his own will, a mayor in spite of his objections, an orator notwithstanding his unwillingness, had prepared a long speech. This speech had for its exordium, according to the strictest laws of rhetoric, a laudatory encomium on the king, from the coming into power of Monsieur Turgot down to the taking of the Bastille. Little was wanting, such privilege has eloquence, to attribute to the king the initiative in the measures which the people had been compelled unwillingly to adopt.
Bailly was delighted with the speech he had prepared, when an incident (it is Bailly himself who relates this incident in his Memoirs) furnished him with a new exordium, very much more picturesque than the one he had prepared,—the only one, moreover, which remained engraved on the minds of the people, always ready to seize upon good and, above all, fine-sounding phrases, when founded upon a material fact.
While walking towards the place of meeting, with the aldermen and the electors, Bailly was alarmed at the weight of the keys which he was about to present to the king.
“Do you believe,” said he, laughingly, “that after having shown these to the king, I will undergo the fatigue of carrying them back to Paris?”
“What will you do with them, then?” asked one of the electors.
“What will I do with them?” said Bailly. Why, I will give them to you, or I will throw them into some ditch at the foot of a tree.”
“Take good care not to do that!” cried the elector, completely horrified. “Do you not know that these keys re the same which the city of Paris offered to Henry IV. after the siege? They are very precious; they are inestimable antiquities.”
“You are right,” rejoined Bailly; “the keys offered to Henry IV., the conqueror of Paris, and which are now to be offered to Louis XVI., heh? Why, I declare, now,” said the worthy mayor to himself, “this would be a capital antithesis in my speech.”
And instantly he took a pencil and wrote above the speech he had prepared the following exordium:—
“Sire, I present to your Majesty the keys of the good city of Paris. They are the same which were offered to Henry IV. He had re-conquered his people; to-day the people have re-conquered their king.”
The phrase was well turned, and it was also true. It implanted itself in the memories of the Parisians; and all the speeches, all the works of Bailly, this only survived.
As to Louis XVI., he approved it by an affirmative d, but coloring deeply at the same time; for he felt epigrammatic irony which it conveyed, although concealed beneath a semblance of respect and oratorical flourishes.
“Oh! Marie Antoinette,” murmured Louis XVI. to self, “would not allow herself to be deceived by this tended veneration of Monsieur Bailly, and would reply a very different manner from that which I am about to do to the untoward astronomer.”
And these reflections were the cause why Louis XVI., who had paid too much attention to the commencement of the speech, did not listen at all to the conclusion of it, nor to that of the president of the electors, Monsieur Delavigne, of which he heard neither the beginning nor the end.
However, the addresses being concluded, the king, fearing not to appear sufficiently delighted with their efforts to say that which was agreeable to him, replied in a very noble tone, and without making any allusion to what the orators had said, that the homage of the city of Paris and of the electors was exceedingly gratifying to him.
After which he gave orders for the procession to move on towards the Hôtel de Ville.
But before it recommended its march, he dismissed his body-guard, wishing to respond by a gracious confidence to the half-politeness which had been evinced to him by the municipality through their organs, the president of the electors and Monsieur Bailly.
Being thus alone, amid the enormous mass of National Guards and spectators, the carriage advanced more rapidly.
Gilbert and his companion Billot still retained their posts on the right of the carriage.
At the moment when they were crossing the Place Louis XV., the report of a gun was heard, fired from the opposite side of the Seine; and a white smoke arose, like a veil of incense, towards the blue sky, where it as suddenly vanished.
As if the report of this musket-shot had found an echo within his breast, Gilbert had felt himself struck, as by a violent blow. For a second his breath failed him, and he hastily pressed his hand to his heart, where he felt a sudden and severe pain.
At the same instant a cry of distress was heard around the royal carriage; a woman had fallen to the ground, shot through the right shoulder.
One of the buttons of Gilbert's coat, a large steel button, cut diamond-fashion, as they were worn at the period, had just been struck diagonally by that same ball.
It had performed the office of a breastplate, and the ball had glanced off from it; this had caused the painful shock which Gilbert had experienced.
Part of his waistcoat and his frill had been torn off by the ball.
This ball, on glancing from the button, had killed the unfortunate woman, who was instantly removed from the spot, bleeding profusely.
The king had heard the shot, but had seen nothing.
He leaned towards Gilbert, and smiling, said:—
“They are burning gunpowder yonder, to do me honor.”
But he was careful not to mention to his Majesty the nature of the ovation which they were offering to aim.
In his own mind, however, he acknowledged that the queen had some reason for the apprehensions she had expressed, since, but for him standing immediately before, and closing the carriage-door, as it were, hermetically, that ball, which had glanced off from his steel button, would have gone straight to the king's breast.
And now from what hand had proceeded this so well-aimed shot?
No one then wished to inquire, so that it will never now be known.
Billot, pale from what he had just seen, his eyes incessantly attracted to the rent made in Gilbert's coat, waistcoat, and frill, excited Pitou to shout as loudly as he could, “Long live the Father of the French!“
The event of the day was so great that this episode was quickly forgotten.
At last Louis XVI. arrived in front of the Hôtel de Ville, after having been saluted on the Pont Neuf by a discharge of cannon, which, at all events, were not loaded with ball.
Upon the facade of the Hôtel de Ville was an inscription, in large letters, black in the daylight, but which, when it was dark, were to form a brilliant transparency. This inscription was the result of the ingenious lucubrations of the municipal authorities.
The inscription was as follows:—
TO LOUIS XVI., FATHER OF THE FRENCH, AND KING OF A FREE PEOPLE.
Another antithesis, much more important than the one contained in Monsieur Bailly's speech, and which elicited shouts of admiration from all the Parisians assembled in the square.
The inscription attracted the attention of Billot.
But as Billot could not read, he made Pitou read the inscription to him.
Billot made him read it a second time, as if he had not understood it perfectly at first.
Then, when Pitou had repeated the phrase, without varying in a single word:—
“Is it that?” cried he,—“is it that?”
“The municipality has written that the king is a king of a free people?”
“Well, then,” exclaimed Billot, “since the nation is free, it has the right to offer its cockade to the king.”
And with one bound, rushing before the king, who was then alighting from his carriage at the front steps of the Hôtel de Ville:—
“Sire,” said he, “you saw on the Pont Neuf that the Henry IV. in bronze wore the national cockade.”
“Well, Sire, if Henry IV. wears the national cockade, you can wear it too.”
“Certainly,” said Louis XVI. much embarrassed; “and if I had one—”
“Well,” cried Billot, in a louder tone, and raising his hand, “in the name of the people I offer you this one in the place of yours; accept it.”
The king was pale. He began to see the progressive encroachment. He looked at Bailly as if to ask his opinion.
“Sire,” said the latter, “it is the distinctive sign of every Frenchman.”
“In that case I accept it,” said the king, taking the cockade from Billot's hands.
And putting aside his own white cockade, he placed the tricolored one in his hat.
An immense triumphant hurrah was echoed from the great crowd upon the square.
Gilbert turned away his head, much grieved.
He considered that the people were encroaching too rapidly, and that the king did not resist sufficiently.
“Long live the king!” cried Billot, who thus gave the signal for a second round of applause.
“The king is dead,” murmured Gilbert; “there is no longer a king in France.”
An arch of steel had been formed, by a thousand swords held up, from the place at which the king had alighted from his carriage, to the door of the hall in which the municipal authorities were waiting to receive him.
He passed beneath this arch, and disappeared in the gloomy passages of the Hôtel de Ville.
“That is not a triumphal arch,” said Gilbert, “but the Caudine Forks.”
