THE circumstances we have just related have been recounted in a hundred different ways; for they were certainly the most interesting which occurred in the great period between 1789 and 1795, and which is called the French Revolution.
They will be related in a hundred various ways still; but we can affirm beforehand that no one will relate them with more impartiality than we have done.
After all these narratives, our own not excepted, there will still remain as much to tell; for history is never perfect. Each of a hundred thousand witnesses has his version; each of a hundred thousand details has its interest and its romance, and for the very reason that they are all different.
But of what service will all these narratives be, however true they are? Did ever a political lesson prove instructive to a political man?
The tears, the mournful stories, and the blood of kings, have they ever had the effect of the drop of water which hollows the rock?
No! queens have wept; no! kings have been murdered; and yet their successors have never profited by the cruel lesson which fate had given them.
Faithful subjects have been prodigal of their devotedness, without those whom fatality had destined to misfortune having derived any advantage from it.
Alas! we have seen the queen almost stumble over the body of one of those men whom kings, when they depart, leave bleeding upon the road which they have traversed in their fall.
A few hours after the cry of terror which the queen had uttered, and at the moment when, with the king and her children, she was about to leave Versailles, where she was never to return, the following scene took place in an interior courtyard, damp from the rain, and which a sharp autumnal wind had begun to dry.
A man dressed in black was leaning over a dead body.
A man dressed in the uniform of the royal guards was kneeling on the opposite side of this body.
At three paces from them a third person was standing, with clasped hands and fixed eyes, gazing intently at them.
The dead body was that of a young man of from twenty-two to twenty-three years of age, the whole of whose blood appeared to have escaped through large wounds in his head and chest.
His chest was scarred with frightful gashes; the skin surrounding them was of a livid white; it appeared still to heave with the disdainful breathing of a hopeless defence.
His half-opened mouth, his head thrown back with an expression of pain and anger, recalled to the mind the beautiful statue of the dying gladiator.
“And life with a long groan fled to the abode of shadows.”
The man dressed in black was Gilbert.
The officer on his knees was the Count de Charny.
The man standing near them was Billot.
The corpse was that of the Baron George de Charny.
Gilbert, leaning over the body, gazed at it with that sublime intentness which with the dying retains life when about to escape, and with the dead almost recalls the soul which has taken flight.
“Cold, stiff; he is dead,—positively dead!” said he at length.
The Count de Charny uttered a hoarse groan, and pressing in his arms the insensible body, burst into sobs so heart-rending that the doctor shuddered, and Billot ran to hide his head in a corner of the small courtyard.
Then suddenly the count raised the body, placed it against the wall, and slowly withdrew, still looking at it as if he expected that his dead brother would become reanimated and follow him.
Gilbert remained still kneeling on one knee, his head reclining on his hand, pensive and motionless.
Billot then left his dark corner and went up to Gilbert; he no longer heard the count's sobs, which had torn his heart.
“Alas! alas! Monsieur Gilbert,” said he, “this, then, is really what we have to expect in civil war, and that which you predicted to me is now happening; only it is happening sooner than I expected, and even sooner than you yourself expected. I saw these villains murdering unworthy people; and now I see these villains murdering honest people. I saw them massacre Flesselles; I saw them massacre Monsieur de Launay; I saw Foulon massacred; I saw Berthier massacred. I then shuddered in every limb, and I felt a horror for all men.
“And yet the men they were then killing were miserable wretches.
“It was then, Monsieur Gilbert, that you predicted the time would come when they would kill worthy people.
“They have killed the Baron de Charny. I no longer shudder,—I weep; I have no longer a horror of others,—I fear I may resemble them.”
But without listening, Billot continued:—
“Here is a young man whom they have assassinated, Monsieur Gilbert. He was a mere boy; he was fairly combating; he was not assassinating, but he has been assassinated.”
Billot heaved a sigh, which seemed to issue from the bottom of his heart.
“Ah, the unhappy youth!” he cried. “I knew him when he was a child. I have seen him pass by when he was going from Boursonne to Villers-Cotterets on his little gray pony; he was carrying bread to the poor from his mother.
“He was a beautiful boy, with a fair, rosy complexion and large blue eyes; he was always smiling. Well! it is very extraordinary, since I saw him stretched out there, bloody and disfigured, it is not a corpse that I behold in him, but always the smiling child of former days, carrying a basket in his left hand and a purse in his right.
“Ah, Monsieur Gilbert, in truth I believe I have now had enough of it, and do not desire to see anything more; for you predicted this to me. The time will come when I shall also see you die, and then—”
Gilbert gently shook his head.
“Billot,” said he, “be calm; my hour has not yet come.”
“Be it so; but mine has come, Doctor. I have a harvest down yonder which has rotted, fields that are lying fallow, a family whom I love ten times more dearly on seeing this dead body, whose family are weeping for him.”
“What do you mean to say, my dear Billot Do you believe, perchance, that I am going to afflict myself about you?”
“Oh, no!” replied Billot, ingenuously; “but as I suffer, I complain; and as complaining leads to nothing, I calculate on alleviating my own sufferings in my own way.”
“It means that I desire to return to my farm, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“Ah, Monsieur Gilbert, there is a voice down yonder which is calling for me.”
“Take care, Billot; that voice is advising you to desert.”
“I am not a soldier, and therefore there is no desertion, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“What you are wishing to do would be a desertion far more culpable than that of a soldier.”
“How! you have come to Paris to demolish; and you would fly as soon as the building is falling.”
“Yes, that I may not crush my friends.”
“Or rather that you may not be crushed yourself.”
“Why, why!” replied Billot, “it is not forbidden that a man should think a little of himself.”
“Ah! that is a magnificent calculation, indeed; as if stones did not roll; as if in rolling they did not crush, and even at a distance, the timid men who would fly from them.”
“Oh, you are well aware that I am not a timid man, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“Then you will remain, Billot; I have occasion for you here.”
“My family also stands in need of me down yonder.”
“Billot! Billot! I thought that you had agreed with me that a man who loves his country has no family.”
“I should like to know whether you would use the same language if Sebastien lay there, as that young man lies.”
And he pointed to the dead body.
“Billot,” replied Gilbert, in a hollow tone, “the day will arrive when my son shall see me as I now see that body.”
“So much the worse for him, Doctor, if on that day he should be as calm as you are now.”
“I hope that he will be a better man than I am, Billot, and that he will be firmer still, and precisely because I shall have given him an example of firmness.”
“Then you would have the child accustom himself to see blood flowing around him, that he should in his youthful years become inured to great conflagrations, to gibbets and riots, attacks in the dark; that he should see kings threatened, queens insulted; and then, when he has become as hard as his sword-blade, and quite as cold, you would still expect that he should love, that he should respect you?”
“No, I would not have him see all that, Billot; and that is the reason for my sending him back to Villers-Cotterets, and I now almost regret having done so.”
“Because he would this day have seen exemplified the axiom of the lion and the rat, which to him is but a fable.”
“What do you mean to say, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“I say that he would have seen a poor farmer, whom chance has brought to Paris, a brave and honest man, who can neither read nor write, who never could have believed that his life could influence, either for good or evil the high destinies which he scarcely dared to raise his eyes to; I say that he would have seen this man who had already at one time wished to leave Paris, as he again wishes it,—I say that he would have seen this man contribute efficaciously to save the life of a king, a queen, and two royal children.”
Billot stared at Gilbert with astonished eyes.
“And how so, Monsieur Gilbert?” said he.
“How so! you sublimely ignorant fellow! I will tell you how. By waking at the first noise that was made; by guessing that this noise was a tempest ready to burst upon Versailles; by running to wake up Monsieur de Lafayette,—for Monsieur de Lafayette was asleep.”
“Zounds! that was perfectly natural, for he had been twelve hours on horseback, and for twenty-four hours he had not been in bed.”
“By leading him to the palace,” continued Gilbert, “and by bringing him at once into the midst of the assassins, and crying: 'Stop, wretches, here is the avenger!'“
“Well, now, that is really true; I did all that.”
“Well, then, Billot, you see that this is a great compensation. If you did not prevent this young man being assassinated, you have perhaps prevented the assassination of the king, the queen, and the two children. Ungrateful man! and you ask to leave the service of the country at the very moment when the country recompenses you.”
“But who will ever know what I have done, since I myself even had no idea of it?”
“You and I, Billot; and is not that enough?”
Billot reflected for a moment, then, holding out his rough hand to the doctor:—
“I declare you are right, Monsieur Gilbert,” said he; “but you know that a man is but a weak, egotistical, inconstant creature. There is but you, Monsieur Gilbert, who are firm, generous, and constant. What is it that has made you so?”
“Misfortune,” said Gilbert, with a smile, in which there was more sorrow than in a sob.
“That is singular,” said Billot; “I had thought that misfortune made men wicked.”
“Then if I should be unfortunate, I should become wicked.”
“You may perhaps be unfortunate; but you will never become wicked, Billot.”
“In that case—” said Billot, sighing.
“In that case—” repeated Gilbert.
“Why, I will remain with you; but more than once I know I shall again be vacillating.”
“And every time it happens, Billot, I shall be near you to sustain your firmness.”
“Well, again I say, so be it,” sighed the farmer.
Then, casting a last look on the body of the Baron George de Charny, which the servants were about to remove on a bier:—
“It matters not!” said Billot; “he was a handsome boy, that little George de Charny, on his little gray pony, with a basket on his left arm and his purse in his right hand.”
