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Title: The Peasant and the Prince

Author: Harriet Martineau

Illustrator: Joseph Martin Kronheim

Release date: October 31, 2007 [eBook #23275]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEASANT AND THE PRINCE ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Peasant and the Prince, by Harriet Martineau.

________________________________________________________________________
This short novel describes in great detail the last months of the French
Royal family.  The book starts with four chapters describing the
apalling lives that some of the French nobility were forcing their
peasantry to live.  Every last bit of value was extorted from these
noblemen's estates, to finance their extravagant life styles, and the
poor people suffered greatly as a result.

There then follow fifteen chapters of harrowing detail, as the Royal
Family were treated with contempt and rudeness, interspersed with
episodes of great kindness.  There had been a revolution, and the cry
was for the nobility to be hanged or guillotined, but for the Royals the
process was a long drawn out period of torture and torment.

Particularly sad was the story of the last few months of the boy Louis,
the Prince of the title, who at one stage was left on his own for months
on end with no friendly face to comfort him, while he lay in a dirty and
unmade bed.  A kind tutor was ordered for him, and he was cleaned up and
comforted a little, but soon after died, having not been allowed to see
his relatives for years.

You can't help feeling that the French nobility had it coming, that
their fate was one of their own making. Their behaviour during the
eighteenth century made the Revolution inevitable.

________________________________________________________________________
THE PEASANT AND THE PRINCE, BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

THE LOVER IN THE WOOD.

One fine afternoon in April, 1770, there was a good deal of bustle in
the neighbourhood of the village of Saint Menehould, in the province of
Champagne, in France.  The bride of the Dauphin of France,--the lady who
was to be queen when the present elderly king should die--was on her
journey from Germany, and was to pass through Saint Menehould to Paris,
with her splendid train of nobles and gentry; and the whole country was
alive with preparations to greet her loyally as she passed.  The houses
of the village were cleaned and adorned; and gangs of labourers were at
work repairing the roads of the district;--not hired labourers, but
peasants, who were obliged by law to quit the work of their own fields
or kilns, when called upon, to repair the roads, for a certain number of
days.  These road-menders were not likely to be among the most hearty
welcomers of the Dauphiness; for they had been called off, some from
their field-work, just at the time when the loss of a few days would
probably cause great damage to the crops;--and others from the charcoal
works, when their families could ill spare the small wages they gained
at the kilns.  These forced labourers would willingly have given up
their sight of the Dauphiness, if she would have gone to Paris by
another route, so that this road-mending might have been left to a more
convenient season.

The peasants round Saint Menehould were not all out upon the roads,
however.  In the midst of a wood, a little to the north of the village,
the sound of a mallet might be heard by any traveller in the lane which
led to the ponds, outside the estate of the Count de D--.

The workman who was so busy with his mallet was not a charcoal-burner;
and the work he was doing was on his own account.  It was Charles
Bertrand, a young peasant well-known in the village, who had long been
the lover of Marie Randolphe, the pretty daughter of a tenant of the
Count de D--.  When they were first engaged, everybody who knew them was
glad, and said they would be a happy couple.  But their affairs did not
look more cheerful as time went on.  Charles toiled with all his might,
and tried so earnestly to save money, that he did not allow himself
sufficient food and rest, and was now almost as sallow and gaunt-looking
as his older neighbours; and yet he could never get nearer to his object
of obtaining a cottage and field to which he might take Marie home.
Marie grew somewhat paler, and her face less pretty; for, besides her
anxiety for her lover, she had hard living at home.  Her father and
mother had her two young brothers to maintain, as well as themselves;
and no toil, no efforts on the part of the family, could keep them above
want.  Their earnings were very small at the best; and these small gains
were so much lessened by the work her father was called out to do upon
the roads--and, of the money brought home, so much went to buy the
quantity of salt which they were compelled by law to purchase, that too
little remained to feed and clothe the family properly.

This story of the salt will scarcely be believed now; but it was found,
throughout France, about eighty years ago, to be only too true.  An
enormous tax was laid upon salt, as one of the articles which people
could not live without, and which therefore everybody must buy.  To make
this tax yield plenty of money to the king, there was a law which fixed
the price of salt enormously high, and which compelled every person in
France above eight years old to buy a certain quantity of salt, whether
it was wanted or not.  By the same law, people were forbidden to sell
salt to one another, though one poor person might be in want of it, and
his next-door neighbour have his full quantity, without any food to eat
it with.  Even in such a case as this, if a starving man ventured to
sell salt for a loaf of bread, he was subject to severe punishment.
Now, Marie's brothers were just ten and nine years old; and the
hardships of the family had been increased since these poor boys became
the cause of their father having to buy their portion of salt.  Just
able before to get on, the family were, by this additional tax, brought
down to a state of want; and Marie begged her father not to say a word
about giving her a single penny, to help her marriage with Charles; for
she saw well that he would never be able to do it.  Her poor father
could not contradict her.

As he could do nothing for her, he did not like to oppose the plan which
the young people were found at length to have talked over.  Charles knew
that, in cases of great poverty, huts had been built in a wood, or caves
scooped out in the side of the chalk-hills, where people lived who could
not hire, or buy, or build a house.  He told Marie that he would build a
hut in the wood, and that he would then marry, and live or starve
together, since there was no use in waiting longer, seeing, as they did,
that their prospect never could improve.  The lord of the chateau would
not object, he was sure; as the lords always got out of their peasantry
much more service than would pay for the stakes and twigs of a hut in
the wood.  Marie was easily persuaded, though her mother wept at the
idea of the cold of winter, and the damps of spring, and the ague of
autumn, that she knew caused terrible suffering to the poor, who lived
in the woods and caves.  The good woman tried to console herself with
taking great care of a pair of fowls, which were to be her wedding
present to her daughter.

So here was Charles, this day at work in the wood, with Marie's brothers
to help him.  One well-wisher had lent him an axe, and another a mallet;
and he cut and drove stakes, while Robin and Marc collected twigs from
the brushwood, moss from the roots of trees, and rushes from the margin
of the ponds.  They had chosen such a spot as they thought Marie would
like; for she would not be persuaded to come and choose for herself.
She only dropped that the hut ought to stand above the fogs of the
ponds; and she left the rest to Charles.  Charles had found a little
green recess among the trees, on a slightly rising ground; Robin and
Marc declared for it at once, when he showed them how he could cut away
the brushwood, so as to leave a pathway to the pond, and a pretty view
of it when it gleamed in the sun, as it did this afternoon.  The boys
clapped their hands: and Charles, feeling a glow at his heart, as if
Marie and he were going to be happy at last, began to sing, as he drove
his corner-stakes.

"You will have a pleasant life of it here in the woods," said Robin,
bringing as large a load of rushes as his two arms would hold.  "I
should like to live here, as you are going to do.  You have only to look
into that pond for three minutes to see more fine fish than you will
want for a month after."

"The fish will do us no good," said Charles.  "If a fishbone is found
within a furlong of where I live (here where nobody else lives), off I
am marched straight to jail.  And the Count's bailiff has surprisingly
sharp eyes."

"I would bury the fishbones in the night-time," observed Marc, coming up
with a faggot of twigs; "but I would have the fish, if I wanted them,
for all the bailiff."

"If you go to yonder jail," said Charles, "and ask the folk how they
came there, some of them will tell you it was trying to get fish, when
they were hungry, for all the bailiff.  Or, if not fish, something else
from the woods and warrens--a rabbit, perhaps, or a couple of doves."

"I hope the bailiff won't put me into jail for my rabbits," said Marc,
"for I have not eaten them.  I have a pretty litter of rabbits for
Marie; and you will help me to make a hutch for them, behind the house.
I should say hereabouts."

"Do you know no better than that?" said Charles.  "Your father could
have told you in a minute, if you had asked him, that it is against the
law for anybody to keep rabbits and pigeons except the nobles."

"Pigeons!" exclaimed Robin.  "Why, that is too bad!  I have the
prettiest pair of doves, from this wood, that ever was seen.  I took
them from the nest, a month ago; and I tell Marie that their cooing will
set all the doves in the wood cooing, so that she will have music all
day long while you are away at work."

"No matter for all that," said Charles.  "It would be a pretty treat for
Marie; and it is a pretty thought of yours: but Marie must be content to
hear the Count's pigeons coo; for the first day the bailiff finds any
tame ones, he will wring their necks, and make her or you suffer for
having them.  I can't allow a rabbit or a pigeon here, boys, say what
you will.  They will be my ruin.  Ah!  I see you are vexed with me: but
I did not make the law, and have no more liking to it than you: but I
can tell you, quick as the bailiff's eyes are upon everybody, they are
most so upon people who live, as I am going to do, with fish, and
pigeons, and rabbits all close round about them, and oftentimes wanting
a meal, as I fear Marie and I shall do."

The boys declared that if Charles would not take home their presents,
they would keep them, and bear the risk themselves.  They might thus let
Marie have a rabbit or a bird to eat, now and then, if she could not
keep them in their live state, as a pleasure.

As the floor of the hut could not be too much trodden, in the absence of
planks and bricks, Charles and the boys gave it a first treading now, as
soon as the six biggest stakes were driven in.  Like all their peasant
neighbours who were not barefoot, they wore wooden clogs; and with these
all three stamped and tramped with might and main.

They were so busy at this work, that they did not perceive that any one
was approaching, till Robin, happening to turn round, exclaimed--

"Why, here is Marie!"

Charles bounded out of the enclosure, threw his arms round Marie, and
covered her cheek with kisses; so delighted was he with her for coming,
as he thought, to see how the work went on, without even waiting till he
went for her.

"Stay, stay, Charles!" exclaimed she, as soon as he would let her speak.
"Hear what I came for," she added, mournfully, and almost impatiently.
"You must give over this work for to-day; and perhaps for many days
more.  You must go away somewhere out of sight, till all the strangers
have left the place; or there is no saying what may happen.  Father says
so; and it was my mother that bade me come.  She could not come herself,
and so leave me among the soldiers."

"Soldiers!  What soldiers?" asked all at once.

"The soldiers are come that we were warned would come whenever the Count
should bring his family home, and the Dauphiness pass through: and there
are so many that there is not a house within two miles of the village
that has not some quartered in it.  We have three at home; and what we
are to do for them we don't know, nor how long they will stay.  The
first thing, however, Charles, is for you to keep out of sight.  Father
says if you don't, the Count's people will certainly be laying hold of
you for military service."

Charles struck his mallet against a tree, as if he wished to knock its
head off.  Between fear, anger, and disappointment, he was quite in a
passion.  He could not reasonably deny that all his and Marie's hopes
might depend on his hiding himself till the bustle was past; but it made
him wretched to think of skulking in idleness, when his protection and
assistance would be most wanted by Marie and her family.

"Now, don't do that, love," said Marie, gently holding his hand, as the
dull shock of his blows echoed through the wood.  "That noise will bring
somebody.  The Count himself, and his family, are not far off; and his
people are all about.  Do be quiet, Charles."

"Quiet, indeed!  And what are you to do with three soldiers, when you
have not enough for yourselves?"

"I don't know, indeed," said Marie, tearfully, as she remembered that
her mother's cherished pair of fowls were doomed already for supper.
She did not mention this; but said that the soldiers were calling for
fuel, as they liked a good fire in spring evenings; and that her
brothers must make haste home, each with a faggot, which would serve as
an excuse for having been so long in the wood, if the Count's people
should have their eyes upon them.  She herself must make haste back,
Marie said, as the soldiers wanted their linen washed by the next
morning.  Her mother was trying to borrow some wood-ashes, as they had
scarcely any soap; and it was time now that they were at the wash-tub.
She must be gone.

The boys were more eager than Marie to be home.  They were in fear for
their rabbits and doves.  They were heaping up their faggots with all
speed, when they heard noises from the lane which made them pause.
There was the sound of wheels, and the tramp of many horses, and the
voices of a large company.

"It is the Count and his family," said Marie, "coming to the chateau by
the shortest road.  No--do not go, boys," she entreated, as they left
their faggots, and began forcing their way through the brushwood towards
the pond, that they might see the sight in the lane.  "Robin, dear
Robin!--Marc,--come back!  Do come back, now!  You will see them much
better to-morrow.  They will make a much grander show to-morrow.
Charles, do make them stay here!"

Charles did not attempt this.  He was thinking of something else; for he
had observed Marie's colour change when the cavalcade was first heard in
the lane.  He fixed his eyes upon her as he said--

"Had you seen the Count and his train when you found us here?"

"Yes," she replied, looking in his face; "I had crossed the corner of
neighbour Thibaut's field, and was upon the stile when the party turned
into the cross-road; and I had to wait till they were all past."

"How many were there?"

"Oh, more than I can tell.  There was a coach full of ladies, and six
horses to it.  And some more ladies on horseback, and some gentlemen,
and many servants."

"Did any of them speak to you?"

"They gave me good-day.  But, Charles, I could hardly return it
dutifully to them."  She hid her face on her lover's shoulder as she
whispered, "It made my heart sink to nothing, and does now, to think
that I cannot be married without his consent,--that great Count's!  When
I saw his grandeur, I thought it never could be."

"Never fear," said Charles, relieved from some feeling of dread which he
hardly understood, but still with a heavy heart.  "If his grandeur be
all you are afraid of, never fear.  He will be too busy to attend to
such an affair, and will send us word through the bailiff, or the cure,
if we can get him to speak for us.  Or we can wait a few days, till they
are fairly gone with the Dauphiness, and then marry; and the thing done,
he will not take it amiss that we did not trouble him for his consent,
at such a busy time."

"See, what are the boys doing?" exclaimed Marie, who saw through the
trees that her brothers were making the humblest of their rustic bows
repeatedly, and with extraordinary earnestness.  "Come further back into
the wood," she whispered.  "Here, behind this thicket;--here no one can
see us from the lane.  Hark!  Can you hear what those voices are
saying."

No words could be distinguished; but the boys soon came running back,
and, to Marie's great relief, followed by no one.

Her brothers were full of what they had seen.  The cavalcade was very
grand.  The great coach looked quite full of ladies with their large
white hats, covered with feathers, and flowers, and ribbons.  Some more
ladies in light blue riding-habits rode the most beautiful sleek horses;
and so did the gentlemen.  One of the young gentlemen stopped, or tried
to stop; but his horse would not stand, but kept wheeling round and
round the whole time he was speaking to them.  He asked them whether
they did not live in this wood; and when they said, "No," he asked
whether somebody did not live in it.  Upon their saying that they knew
of no inhabitant, he further inquired whether, if he came bird-nesting,
or with his fishing-rod, they did not think he should find some sort of
habitation among the trees.  And then he asked whether they were not the
Count's peasantry; and what their names were, and how many there were in
the family; and whether the bailiff was kind to them.  By that time, the
gentleman's horse began to bolt across the lane, and all the party but
one groom were almost out of sight; so the gentleman took off his hat,
and bowed down to his saddle, looking very funny,--not mocking, but in
play, and galloped off; and the groom laughed and nodded, and galloped
after his master.

Charles now turned away, and with desperate tugs pulled up the stakes he
had driven with so much satisfaction, and threw them into the thicket.
He filled the holes, scratched up with brambles the ground he and the
boys had trodden, and strewed it over with green twigs, so that no token
of his late labour was left to attract the eye of the passer-by.  The
boys looked ruefully on his proceedings; and Marie appeared to forget
that her mother wanted her, as she gazed.  She soon, however, observed
that the lane was empty now, and they must be gone.  Sending her
brothers on before, she stayed one moment to entreat Charles to be
patient under the separation and delay of a few days, and proposed to
him that he should be found, that day week, at a certain cave in the
chalk-hill, two miles off, where she would send to let him know when the
danger was over, and he might appear again.

Charles made no promises,--spoke no word of any kind.  He kissed her
fervently, and would scarcely let her go: and when she looked back from
the verge of the wood, she saw him leaning his forehead against a tree.
She feared he was weeping very bitterly.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TWO.

COMPANY TO SUPPER.

Marie's mother received her with a look almost of reproach; so
overpowered was the poor woman with the business of providing lodging,
food, fire, and washing for three strangers, when she had no money, and
few other means of making them comfortable.  The men seemed to behave
well.  One of them was absent, helping his host to bring in his share of
the forage, to be provided by the village, for the cavalry now awaiting
the arrival of the Dauphiness.  The other two guests were sitting before
the door, one smoking, and the other every now and then looking in, and
addressing some civil word to the hostess, who was plucking her fowls
with a heavy heart.

"I thought you were lost," said she to her children as they entered.
"Robin, fill the boiler; and Marc, blow the fire under it.  Your sister
and I shall have to be at the wash-tub and ironing-board all night."

The soldiers were very sorry this trouble should be caused by them.  Was
there no one in the village who could relieve them of this part of their
work?  That the linen should be ready by the morning was indeed
indispensable, as the Dauphiness might arrive at any hour of the next
day: but to stand at the wash-tub at midnight!--it was terrible to think
of.  However terrible, there was no help for it.  Every housewife in
Saint Menehould had soldiers quartered upon her house, and her hands
therefore full, instead of being able to wash for another.  Besides
this, the Randolphes could not pay for such service.  Moreover, the
family had to give up their beds (which were but poor cribs in the wall)
to the strangers; and as they had to be up, they had better be employed
than idle.

As soon as Robin and Marc had done all they could for their sister in
the washing-shed, they hastened to the soldiers, and made the
acquaintance which boys like to make with strangers who have travelled
and seen wonderful things.  First they found out that one soldier was
called Jerome, and that the other, who never ceased smoking, pretended
to have so many names, that they saw he either meant to make a joke of
them, or did not choose to say what his real name was.  Then the boys
told their own names and ages, and those of all the family: but they did
not mention Charles, having learned that much prudence from the distress
they saw in the faces of their sister and mother.  Then it appeared that
the soldiers could tell a great deal about the Dauphiness.

"Will she be here to-morrow?" asked Marc.

"That depends upon where she is to-night," replied Jerome.  "The last I
heard of her was at Strasburg.  You know she is a German, and comes from
Germany."

The boys had never heard of Germany, near as they were to it, and did
not know where Strasburg was.  So they asked about something that they
could understand; what the great lady's name was, and how old she
looked.

"Her name is Marie-Antoinette-Joseph-Jeanne de Lorraine: and her age
is--Let us see.  Comrade, how old is she, exactly?  I heard tell, I
think, that she is fifteen."

"Oh, that can't be!" exclaimed the boys.  "Married at fifteen!  And our
Marie is--"

Here Robin remembered that he must not allude to Charles, and stopped.

"She was born on the day of the great earthquake at Lisbon--"

"Is that where she lives?"

"No, I think not.  Whether Lisbon is in Germany, I am not certain; but I
don't think she and her mother were in the earthquake; but I know that
it happened the day she was born, and that it hurts her spirits to think
of it.  She takes it for a sign that she will live unhappy, or die in
some dreadful way."

"You have not served out of France," observed Randolphe, as he came up,
with the third soldier, and seated himself on the bench.  "You have not
seen either Lisbon or Germany, I suppose; for I can tell you that Lisbon
is a good way off from any place where this princess has been.  Well, I
am sorry to hear anything hurts her spirits; but, to be sure, the great
earthquake was an awful thing."

"I am thinking," said Jerome, "that a good many thousand people must
have been born that same day; I hope they are not all troubled with bad
spirits.  It would be a curious sight to see so many people of fifteen
all low about the manner of their lives and deaths."

"She is very low sometimes, however," observed his comrade.  "When she
was leaving the city she lived in, she wept so that nothing was ever
seen like it.  She covered her eyes sometimes with her handkerchief, and
sometimes with her hands; and looked out many times from the
coach-window, to see her mother's palace once more."

Everyone thought there was no great wonder in this.  A young girl
leaving her own country for ever, to be the wife of a foreign prince
whom she had never seen, and could not tell whether she should like,
might well be in tears, Randolphe said.  Had she cheered up yet?

"Yes, indeed," said Jerome, "that she has.  When she saw the fine
pavilion on the frontier, she was pleased enough."

The boys wanted to hear about the pavilion.

"It was there," said Jerome, "that she was to be made a French princess
of.  It was a very grand sort of tent, that cost more money than I can
reckon."

Randolphe sighed.

"There were three rooms," continued Jerome; "a large one in the middle,
and a smaller one at each end.  In one of these smaller rooms she left
everything she had worn, even to her very stockings, and all her German
attendants; and then she went through to the other, where she found her
French attendants, and her fine French wardrobe."

"And shall we see her in some of her new clothes?" asked Marc.

"Certainly."  And Jerome went on describing the princess's dress, and
told all he had heard of her jewels, and furs, and laces, till the
soldiers observed that their host had sighed very often.  One of the
soldiers then said that it was enough to make poor men like themselves
sad to hear of such luxury, when they were hungry in the long summer
days, and cold all the long winter nights.

"What need you care?" said the host, somewhat bitterly.  "You are
provided for by law, when we country people are ground down by it.  You
come upon us, and must be served with the best, when we have not enough
for ourselves."

The third soldier declared that he thought this a very uncivil speech.
Jerome said that he, for his part, could dispense with civility in such
a case, when he happened to know where the truth lay.  He assured
Randolphe that soldiers like himself were as little pleased with the
state of things as any countryman.  They themselves were the sons of
peasants; and many had led a cottage life, and knew how to pity it.  But
he must say, a soldier's life was very little better.  The army could
not get its pay.  Glad enough would soldiers be to save trouble to their
hosts, if they had a little money in their pockets; but pay was not to
be got, in these days, by soldiers, any more than if none was due to
them.

His smoking comrade thought there must be an earthquake somewhere in
France, swallowing up all the money: for nobody could tell where it all
went to.

"How can you say that," said Randolphe, "when you think of the numbers
of idle people that are feeding upon those who work?--I hear you, wife,"
he said, in answer to a warning cough from his wife within.  "It is no
treason to say that in this land there are swarms of idle folk, living
upon the toil of us who work."

The guests declared that they were men of honour, who would be ashamed
to repay hospitality by reporting the conversation of their host.
Besides, nobody in France could question the feet.  To say nothing of
the old king, languishing in the midst of costly pleasures, so vicious
that by every indulgence he purchased the curses of virtuous families,
and the hatred of the poor,--besides all the extravagances in that
quarter, there were the nobility, sitting heavy upon the people
throughout the land, like the nightmare upon the sleep of a wearied man.
These nobles must all be rich,--must all be pampered in luxury, though
not one of them would work with his head or hands.  If a nobleman had
five sons, they must all be pampered alike; and the sons of five hundred
peasants must be oppressed, to supply the means.

Randolphe said he had little thought to see the day when he should hear
soldiers say these things openly at his own door.  His face brightened
as he declared this, though his wife again coughed more than once.

Jerome replied that it was a common thing now to hear these things told;
for the oppressed do get to speak out, sooner or later.  The story of
the king's meeting a coffin was in everybody's mouth.  No one here had
heard it: so Jerome told that the king was fond of asking questions of
strangers, and particularly about disease, death, and churchyards;
because he thought his gay attendants did not like to hear of such
things.  One day, he was hunting in the forest of Senard, when he met a
man on horseback, carrying a coffin.

"Where are you carrying that coffin?" asked the king.

"To the village yonder."

"Is it for a man or a woman?"

"For a man."

"What did he die of?"

"Of hunger."

The king clapped spurs to his horse, and rode away.

"He might find the same thing happening in many other villages," said
Randolphe, stroking the thin cheeks of his boy Robin.  "Look here!"
showing the boy's arm.  "Is this an arm that can work or fight as a
Frenchman's should do, when my boy is a man?"

"Things may be different when that boy is a man," said the smoker,
between two whiffs of his pipe.

"How?  Where?  When?  Why?  Is anything going to be done for the poor?"
asked Randolphe and his family, within and without doors.

"I don't know when and how: but I think you need not ask why, if you
live some days of the week upon boiled nettles, as many of your
neighbours do.  Those that have looked into the matter say that the
country people (they who really do the work of the land) possess only
one-third of the country, and yet pay three-fourths of the taxes.  One
does not see why this should go on, when once they choose that it shall
not: and many think that they won't choose it much longer."

"And then something will be done for the poor?" said the hostess, coming
to the door.

"Certainly; unless the rich do something for the poor first; which would
be their wisest way."

"But if the rich should not choose to do anything for us?" said Robin.

"Then they must look to themselves."

"And what will happen to them?  What will happen to the Dauphiness?"

"Oh, poor lady!  There is no saying that.  She knows little of what the
French people are suffering, and nothing of what they are thinking.  How
should she?  What notion should she have of poverty and the poor, when
she is now buying, out of her allowance, a pair of ear-rings that cost
360,000 francs?"

[Note: This is fact; but it happened a little later in her history,
immediately after she became queen: 360,000 francs are about 15,000
pounds.]

"You are joking, comrade."

"No, it is true.  She thinks there is no harm in it, because she will
pay the whole out of her own allowance, year by year; and the diamonds
are so rare and wonderful that she thinks she has a good bargain.  What
should she know of poverty and the poor?"

"God bless her!" said the hostess, "and may she never know what it is to
eat boiled nettles, for want of anything better!"

"I wish she would have done with throwing away our money in diamonds at
that rate," said Randolphe, gloomily.  "The people will not love her if
she does.  We all know it is what we pay for this cursed salt, and our
poll-tax, and all our grinding taxes, that go to pay for such freaks as
these."

"Well, love," said his wife, "she is young, and may learn.  Don't let us
be grudging to her as a stranger."

"Not I, love; I would grudge her nothing, if only I could give my family
food that would make them plump and rosy, as I hope to see this lady
to-morrow, and if I could but apprentice my boys to some trade that
would give them a chance of a better living than their father had before
them, and take them a little from under the Count's hand, for that is
very heavy upon us.  If my boys have nothing better before them than to
divide my poor field, and live as peasants under the Count, I don't know
that I should cry to lay them in their graves before I lie down myself."

"And cannot you apprentice one of them, at least?" inquired Jerome.

"How can I?  Besides the transaction between the artisan and me, there
is a great sum to be paid to the king upon the indenture, and another
and a larger before the lad begins his trade.  What can a poor peasant
do with his boys but make them poorer peasants than himself, if that is
possible?  But it is not possible.  Is there coarser woollen than this
that I wear?  Is there a tougher leather than my belt is made of?  And
is there anything for the feet poorer than our wooden clogs?  And as for
food, we are as far from health and strength on the one hand, as we are
from the grave on the other--just half-way.  So my boys will be poor
peasants, like their father, if they can make his field yield double;
and if not, they will be in their graves."

The boys trembled, and would have cried if they dared.  Their mother
wept outright: and the good-natured Jerome could only shake his head and
sigh, and mutter that he feared that was the plight of millions more in
France.  His smoking comrade again gave out, between two puffs, that
before these boys were men, everything might be changed, and the nobles
might chance to find their mouths stuffed with boiled nettles, for once,
just to show what they were like.  This speech made the boys laugh.
Their mother wiped her eyes, and gave notice that supper, such as it
was, was ready.  She knew there was nothing that could satisfy three
men, if they happened to be very hungry; she could only say that here
was all she had.

Her guests answered her with a civil nod, and sat down at her board with
alacrity, saying that the fowls looked savoury, and the bowl of milk
good for a thirsty man after a march.  Some of their comrades in the
village had wine, they knew: but nothing was said about it; for the
soldiers' pockets were empty, like those of their host.

It was growing dark.  Randolphe made what blaze he could by throwing
light wood upon the fire.  By law, he was bound to furnish candles to
his guests; and some soldiers whom he had entertained had required this
of him; but his present guests felt no disposition to do so, after what
they had heard.  They cut up their fowls by firelight: then, before
beginning to eat, they exchanged glances, the consequence of which was
that the boys were called, made to sit down, each between two soldiers,
and treated with some mouthfuls of savoury fowl.  Can it be wondered at
that they forgot, till afterwards, that they were eating poor Marie's
fowls, which they had hoped to see pecking about in the wood?

The lively talk that was going on round the table was soon interrupted
by a loud rap upon the door, made by a heavy staff, such as the Count's
followers usually carried when they went on messages.  Randolphe was not
fond of receiving visits from the Count's people, and he now desired
Robin to go to the door, and see what was wanted.  The message was heard
by those within, for the bearer shouted it aloud from door to door of
all the peasantry of the Count's estate.  Randolphe and another were
wanted to-night, to flog the ponds.

"I will go myself, because I must," observed Randolphe: "but how to find
another I don't know, so I shall just let that alone."

"They won't forgive you for not taking a second," remarked his wife.
"You will have to pay dear, one way or another: and yet I can't ask you
to take one of the boys.--It is bad enough for you, a poor rest between
two days' labour, to stand flogging the ponds till field time in the
morning."

"Have you often to do this night-work, neighbour?" asked Jerome.

"Only when the family are at the chateau.  They are so used to live in
Paris, away from country noises, that they cannot sleep in the country
for the noise of the frogs, unless the ponds are flogged; so, when they
come, we have that work to do."

"Cannot you poison the frogs?" asked Jerome.

"O, yes, father!" cried Marc.  "You poison rats: cannot you poison the
frogs, and have done with them?"

The smoker here muttered something which made his comrade jog his elbow,
and the host say, "Hush!  Hush!"  What he was muttering was, that if
they wanted to get rid of a nuisance, the aristocrats were fewer than
the frogs.

Randolphe was evidently anxious to be gone after he had heard this
speech.  He would not say another word on his own grievances, or those
of his neighbours.  He fetched his woollen cap, and stood only undecided
as to what he should do about furnishing a second, to work with him that
night.  He glanced from one boy to the other: but both looked too pale
to stand in the damps through an April night.  He repeated that he would
take no second: but while he said so, there were images in his mind of
fine or compensation, bringing increased hardships on the morrow.  At
this moment a voice from the darkness without called his name, and said
he need not look any further for a comrade.

All the family knew that this was Charles's voice; but even the little
boys had learned so much caution from hardship, that they did not speak,
but only looked at each other.  Jerome observed that it told well for
his host that he had a neighbour ready, without asking, to help him in
so irksome a service.

The soldiers contrived to make room for the boys to sleep, thinking it
quite enough that the law obliged Randolphe to flog the ponds, and his
wife and daughter to toil in the shed all night, without the addition of
the two half-fed lads having to lie down on the clay floor, or not at
all.  So each boy had a share of the crib, and a corner of the rug.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THREE.

A HOLIDAY MORNING.

The boys were wakened in the morning by a rap on the door, like that of
the preceding evening.  When they had rubbed their eyes and got up, they
found that their mother was speaking with no less a person than the
bailiff from the chateau.  It took little time to slip on the only day
garment each had: and then, as their mother stood in the doorway, one
looked out under each of her arms, to see what was going on.

"Ah!  You little fellows," said the bailiff, "I have some business with
you.  What have you to do with pigeons, when you know 'tis against the
law for you to keep them?  Come, no excuses; I saw a brood of pigeons on
the ridge of the roof, as I came."

"How are we to help the Count's pigeons lighting on our ridge, if they
choose, please sir!" said Marc.

"Nay, Marc, no tricks!" said his mother.  "The pigeons are theirs, sir;
got from the wood, and a present for their sister: but you see, sir, how
trickery and falsehood come.  If there were no reasons why my boys
should not do such an innocent thing as bring up a brood of pigeons, the
thought of an untruth would not enter their heads; but you see what you
tempt them to, by driving them so very hard about almost the only
pleasure they have."

"It is not I, good woman," said the bailiff.  "Do not say I drive them
hard--I did not make the laws; but it is my business to see that the
laws are regarded between the Count and his people, that is all.  Come!
While your daughter puts on her gayest ribbon, I will go round, and see
about these pigeons."

Marie had no gay ribbon to put on, though she must go immediately with
her father before the Count.  It was the bailiffs errand to say this.
While she made herself as neat as she could, and her father was called
in from the field (to which he had gone straight from the ponds, because
he knew there was no meal ready for him at home), the bailiff examined
the premises, followed at a distance by the boys, in terror for their
rabbit-hutch.  Of course, the rabbits were found; and of course, they
were carried off.  Robin rolled upon the ground in his grief, and Marc
looked as if his heart was bursting.  The bailiff was so sorry for what
he felt it his duty to do, that against all rule he offered the boys one
young rabbit and one young pigeon to keep.  At first, these were
accepted; but Robin was sure that Marc's rabbit would pine alone; and
Marc was certain Robin's pigeon could never live solitary; and they gave
up these last remains of their treasures.  To do it with a good grace
was more than they were equal to; and when Marie and her father set off
for the chateau, they left the boys crying bitterly.

It did not make Marie the more easy to see her lover skulking at a
distance, all the way they went.  The bailiff was close at hand; and she
believed that his quick eyes would note all Charles's doings.  Every
time he spoke, which he did frequently and civilly, she dreaded his
asking what business that man had, watching them from under the shade of
the wood; but each time she was relieved by hearing some question or
remark about the reception of the Dauphiness in the village.  She had to
say all that must be said to the bailiff; for her father was busy
thinking.  He was glad when they were left alone, so that he could tell
Marie what was in his mind.  There was time enough to do this.  When the
great iron gates of the avenue closed behind them, the bailiff told them
to go straight on by the broad road.  He was going by a side path, but
would meet them farther on, and take them to the Count.

This was the opportunity Randolphe wanted, to tell his daughter that he
thought it best now to ask the Count's consent to her marriage with
Charles, formally and properly.  Marie trembled, and grew sick at heart
as she heard this, and implored her father not to mention Charles,--so
sure was she that her marriage would be prevented if Charles were spoken
of.  Her father declared, however, that he knew the Count and his ways,
and was certain that, his notice being attracted, nothing could now
prevent his becoming acquainted with the minutest of their family
circumstances; and that the most politic course would be to appear to
desire his consent, and only to have waited his arrival at the chateau
to request it.  Randolphe had decided upon his plan, and Marie had only
to submit.

The bailiff met them at the head of the avenue, and led them to the
morning apartment of the Count, which he entered first, after being
announced, leaving his companions in the hall.  The door was presently
opened, and he beckoned them in.

The Count was sitting in his morning gown beside a table, on which stood
a small silver tray, with his coffee-cup upon it.  His valet was
dressing his hair.  Two of his sons were in the room; one playing with
his dogs in a recess of the window, and the other reading the newspaper.

"Come closer," said the Count, in answer to Randolphe's bow.  "Nearer--
come close up to the table."

The truth was, he could not otherwise see them well while his hair was
in the hands of his valet.

"Is it possible?" he said, as if to himself, while he looked at the
peasant and his daughter.  "Are you Randolphe?  I had heard your name
for so long and so often, among my people, that I had imagined you one
of the principal of them.  But you appear wretchedly poor, eh?" he
continued, looking into the sallow, unshaven face before him.  "I am
afraid you are very poor, eh?"

"Well-nigh heart-broken with poverty, my lord."

"There is some mistake," resumed the Count.  "How is this?" said he,
looking towards the bailiff; and then, calling to his son in the window,
"Casimir, how is this?"

The bailiff answered first:--

"Randolphe is wretchedly poor, my lord, as you say; but there is no one
of your people hereabouts who is less so."

The youth's reply was, that in the question of arrangements for
receiving the Dauphiness, he supposed the principal peasants belonging
to the chateau would be spoken to; and he had mentioned Randolphe,
understanding him to be one of them.

Marie saw that this youth was the one who had stared her out of
countenance at the stile, the afternoon before: the same who had talked
with her brothers on the verge of the wood.

The Count was for dismissing his visitors at once, saying that they
would not answer his purpose for the arrangements of which he had meant
to speak with them.  They were not, however, let off so easily as they
had now begun to hope.  The young man asked some questions from the
window, which put it into the Count's head to ask more, till Randolphe
thought it prudent not to keep back his story, but to request the
Count's consent to Marie's marriage, as if that had been his own part of
his errand this morning.

The Count evidently cared nothing about the matter, and would have given
his consent as a matter of course, if his son Casimir had been anywhere
but in the room.  As it was, there were so many questions, the inquiries
about Charles were so minute, that Marie grew vexed and angry, and by a
look invited her father to say something about the Count's time and be
gone.  The youth who was reading certainly pitied her, for he said,
without raising his eyes from his newspaper,--

"Be quiet, Casimir.  Casimir, how can you?  Do leave these poor people
to make themselves happy their own way.  It is no concern of yours."

"It is my father's concern that his people should not live on his land
when they cannot do service for it.  Why, it appears they have not
anything like a cottage to go to.  My father cannot look to them for
anything.  You see, sir, you can depend upon them for nothing, in their
present circumstances: and I do not see how you can consent to their
marrying yet.  If this fellow Charles, now, would do his duty, and serve
for three years, there would be some chance for their settling
comfortably afterwards.  They would lose nothing by waiting, if they
settled comfortably at last."

"Please your lordship," said Randolphe, in a hoarse voice, "they have
waited so very long already, and there is no prospect--"

He glanced at Marie to see how she bore this.  She seemed to be just
falling; and he drew her arm within his, to keep her up.

"We will take care that there is a prospect," said Casimir.  "We do not
intend to lose sight of you.  We may do some kind things for Marie."

Marie tried to speak; but before she could utter a sentence, the Count
discovered that the valet had arrived at the last bow of the pig-tail,
and that he must make a decision, and conclude this interview.  He
therefore pronounced that Charles should be sent on military service for
three years, and gave orders to the bailiff to see that the young man
was brought in for the purpose, in the course of the morning.  He then
bade good-day to his peasant dependent, and hoped he would see better
times, and do the best he could for the young people before their
wedding-day, as he would now have a considerable interval in which to
meditate his duty as a parent to so pretty a daughter.

While the Count was saying this, Casimir slipped round towards the door,
and, as Marie passed near him, thrust a piece of gold into her hand.
Marie had never had a piece of gold in her hand before, and she did not
like it now.  She looked at Casimir with such a look as he had never
before met from human eyes, and threw his gift between his two dogs in
the window.

The Count did not see nor heed this.  Randolphe thought his graver son
did; for there was a sudden crackle of the newspaper, and the reader's
face was crimson to the temples.

"We have one friend there, I fancy," muttered the unhappy father, as he
went out.  "But for that, I think you and I had better drown ourselves
in the ponds between this and home."

"Charles!" gasped Marie in his ear.  "Send Charles away!  I can get home
alone."

Her father took the hint.  They parted in the shade of the avenue, as
soon as they could suppose themselves unwatched from the chateau.
Randolphe cut across into the wood where he had seen Charles half an
hour before, while Marie went homewards with tottering steps, looking
away from the ponds, from a feeling that her state of mind was too
desperate for her to trust herself on the brink of deep waters.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER FOUR.

HOLIDAY INDEED.

It was a comfort to Marie, on reaching home, to find that no soldiers
were there.  The guests of the preceding night had been summoned to
their duty, as the royal train might be certainly expected in the course
of the morning.  The good-natured Jerome's heart had been touched by the
lamentations of the boys for their lost favourites; and he had told them
that, if they would leave off crying, so as to make their faces fit to
be seen by the train of nobles, they might look out for him on the
roadside, and he would try to place them where they might see the
Dauphiness.  They had made every effort to look cheerful, and were
thinking more about the Princess than of pigeons and rabbits when their
sister returned; but when they witnessed her burst of weeping on her
mother's bosom--when they heard that Charles was to be carried off for a
soldier for three years, and that there was to be no hut in the wood,
and no new brother-in-law for them, they cried more bitterly than ever.

In the midst of this scene, Jerome came by on horseback.  He could not
stop; but he called out that the band had been heard already, and
pointed to the place where the boys should go and take their stand.
They did not now care anything about the procession, or the coach with
six horses, or the handsome ladies, or the noble gentlemen that Jerome
had promised they should see.  Their mother wished that they should not
miss such a sight: but they did not move as she said so.  When, however,
Marie turned her face towards them, and said, "Go, dears: pray do," they
took their caps, and walked away; they thought it so kind of Marie to
care for their pleasure at such a time.

Jerome passed again, after they had gone a few yards, and nodded and
beckoned.  They ran and kept up with his horse, till he stopped opposite
the post-house.  He told them hastily that he was to be stationed here;
and he was glad of it, as it was expected that the party would halt at
the post-house.  He desired the boys to keep close behind, at his
horse's tail, where nobody would meddle with them.  They must not notice
him till spoken to, and must take care of his horse's tread: all the
rest they might leave to him.  There was presently an opportunity for
him to speak a few words more to them; and he could not help saying how
sorry he was to see how they had been crying since he had left their
cottage.  Of course, this brought out the story of Charles, and the new
misfortune threatened to the family.  Jerome was not the only one who
heard the tale.  His smoking comrade was by his side: and it was exactly
the kind of story to which his ears were most open.  The two soldiers
conversed together in a low voice for a minute or two, and then sat bolt
upright and silent, as if they had been made of stone, and had not each
carried a pitying heart under his stiff uniform and steady countenance.
When the military music was heard coming nearer and nearer, and distant
cheers were borne on the breeze, the commanding officer rode by, and saw
nothing in the demeanour of these two soldiers to distinguish them from
all the rest of the line, who were thinking only of themselves or the
Dauphiness.

She came, preceded by so many attendants on horseback, and inferior
carriages, which passed without taking any notice of the post-house,
that Robin and Marc heard the people about them lamenting that there
would be no halt, and that they should barely see the Princess after
all.  They were mistaken, however.  It was one of the plans of the
journey that the royal carriage should stop for a few moments at every
post-house, whether fresh horses were wanted or not, in order that the
loyal feeling of the people should be cherished by a sight of her who
was to be their queen, and whose appearance was indeed likely to
captivate all eyes and hearts.

The six bay horses were checked precisely at the right spot: and all
which preceded the royal carriage halted at the same moment.  The air
was rent by a cheer, such a cheer as convinced the Count and his family
how faint in comparison their welcome had been, when they had appeared
from the by-road to the chateau half an hour before.  When his train had
taken their station at the entrance of Saint Menehould, there had been a
few cries of "Long live the Count our lord!" but they were a mere
whisper compared with the acclamation which greeted the Dauphiness.

The royal carriage was open almost all round, so that the Princess was
conspicuously visible.  She was full as beautiful as any of the gazers
had expected.  Her complexion was fresh and fair, her countenance
smiling, and her blue eyes full of spirit and feeling; and though she
looked no more than fifteen (her actual age), all thought, as she moved
her stately head in answer to their greeting, that they had never seen
so dignified a lady.

In about two minutes from the halting of her carriage, Jerome turned his
head round with a hasty smile to the boys; and before they knew what it
meant, his and his comrade's horses began scrambling and sliding.
Jerome's opened a way for the boys to escape into the road from the
danger of a kick; and as soon as they were safe there, the horses began
to prance, and make yet more confusion.  The Dauphiness looked that way,
as Jerome intended that she should; and when her attention was fairly
fixed, he called to the boys to come back to their places.

As Jerome had hoped, their doleful faces, all swollen with crying,
attracted the notice of the Princess, who had hitherto met only smiling
countenances wherever she turned, since she had entered her new country.
These traces of tears carried back her thoughts to her own weeping,
some days before, on leaving Vienna; and she suddenly beckoned to the
children.  In a moment a hundred voices bade them go forward to the
carriage; a hundred hands pointed and pushed, so that they were
presently within hearing of the kind questions of the young Princess.

She asked what made them so unhappy on this day, when every one else
looked pleased and joyful.  They could scarcely help crying again at the
question; but they were old enough to know that everything might depend
on their behaviour at this moment; and they strove to speak, and to
speak plainly.  Had they been ill?  The Princess asked, observing to her
ladies that they looked sadly thin.  No, they had not been ill, they
replied; they were only very unhappy to-day.

The bailiff, who was in attendance on the Count's family, now put
himself forward to explain, not to the Dauphiness herself (that would
have been too bold), but to one of her ladies, on the other side of the
carriage, about his having taken away the boys' rabbits and pigeons
according to law.

"'Tis not that," cried Marc, indignantly, as he heard this.  "We left
off crying about the rabbits and pigeons long ago: did not we, Robin?
It is about Charles and Marie."

"Tell me about Charles and Marie," said the Princess, in broken French,
"and then all about your pigeons."

"Charles and our sister were just going to be married, and we had begun
a house in the wood for them; and we have had to pull it to pieces
again; and this morning the Count says Charles must go for a soldier for
three years; and Marie is crying at home so--"

Marc could not go on for his own tears.

The Count's sons had, by this time, made their way through the closing
crowd, to hear what was going on.

"Casimir," said his brother, "your bad work of this morning must be
undone, you see.  Do your part with a good grace.  Bring my father to
receive the commands of the Dauphiness."

Casimir yielded.  While he was gone, his brother explained to the
Princess the rights which the Count had over this family, as over the
other peasants of the neighbourhood.  He ventured to answer for his
father, that he would see the hardship of this particular case, and
would permit some arrangement to be made, by which Charles might be
spared the threatened misfortune, and restored to his hopes of a speedy
marriage.

"Where is this Charles?" asked the Princess.  "I will not ask to see the
tearful Marie before so many eyes."

Robin had seen Charles, just before, near the spot; for Charles was
desperate, and would neither hide nor attempt to escape.  He roamed
about, half-mad with the suffering of his mind, among the holiday groups
of Saint Menehould; and when called, was not long in presenting himself.

"Alas!  Is this the bridegroom?" asked the Princess, shrugging her
shoulders, with an expression of pity.

"He looks better than that sometimes, when he plays with us," said Marc,
zealous for his friend Charles.

"But his dress!" said a lady, who had seldom before seen a peasant, and
was not familiarised with the coarse woollen garment and leathern belt,
so common among the country people.

"It is just what father wears, and everybody," maintained Marc.

By this time the Count was waiting the pleasure of the Princess, ready
to assure her of his patronage of any persons she might please to
favour.  The Dauphiness asked whether such poverty as she witnessed was
not a thing hitherto unheard of,--whether such misery could be common in
the country she had just entered?  The bridling of some of her ladies,
and the annoyance in the faces of some gentlemen of her suite, showed
her that she had asked an imprudent question.  Yet she was only fifteen,
and was to be hereafter the queen of this country; and if she had never
done worse things than asking such questions, she might have lived
beloved, and died lamented, in a good old age.

She saw another thing in the countenances of her attendants,--that it
was time to be gone.  She therefore requested of the Count, as a favour
to herself, that he would settle Charles advantageously on his lands;
and smiling at the young man, she declared that she would answer for
Charles's fidelity to his lord.  Charles was on his knees at the word,
too much overpowered to speak, but promising all by his clasped hands
and heaving breast.  The Count declared he should have a cottage and a
field that very day, and his hearty consent to take Marie home as soon
as the priest could marry them.

The Dauphiness asked one of her attendant gentlemen for her purse, and
gave the boys gold for Marie.  They were to tell her to make her cottage
comfortable with it.

"As for yourselves," said she, "what did I hear just now that you
wanted?  Canary-birds, was it?"

"Pigeons,"--"rabbits," said the boys; "but never mind them now."

"O, but I do mind; you shall have some money for that too."

The bailiff explained that it was not poverty, but the law which
interfered with the boys' pleasures.  Pigeons abounded in the wood, and
could feed themselves; but it was against the law for any under the rank
of a noble to keep them.  The Dauphiness supposed this was all as it
should be; for she was apt, through life, to believe that the nobles
were by nature entitled to all things, and might give only such leavings
as they did not wish for, to inferior people: yet she was pleased, and
repaid the bailiff with a gracious smile, when he said that all laws
melted away before the wishes of a royal bride, and that these peasant
boys should have their rabbit-hutch and dove-cot henceforth, by special
permission.

None waved their caps more vehemently, none shouted "Long live the
Dauphiness!" more vigorously, as the cavalcade set forth again, than
Robin and Marc.  When the last horseman vanished in the dust of the
road, the attention of the crowd turned upon the favoured family of
Randolphe.  The poor man himself had retired overpowered, and no one
could tell where he was.  Charles was with Marie already.  But the boys
remained in the road; they were hoisted on the shoulders of their
neighbours, having first delivered the precious gold pieces into the
hands of the curd, lest they should lose Marie's treasure in the bustle.
Robin would not be carried a step towards home till he had been allowed
to speak to Jerome.  He threw his arms round the neck of the
good-natured soldier, and said that it was he who had made Marie's
fortune.  Then Jerome had to shake hands with every person in the crowd;
and every man who had a house or cottage begged Jerome to be his guest.
Jerome laughed, and said, that among so many he should not have known
what to reply, and how to choose his host; but that he and his comrades
were at Saint Menehould only for the occasion which was now passed, and
before night they would be twenty miles off.

Before sunset, accordingly, Jerome and the smoker were riding side by
side on the road to fresh quarters, each with a fine bouquet of spring
flowers at his breast, sent by Marie.  They were talking of the events
of the morning, of the sudden rescue of a worthy family from the depths
of misery.  The smoker could not be cheered even by what he had
witnessed; and he spoke as gloomily and sententiously as if the pipe
were now between his lips, and his words coming forth in a cloud of
smoke.  Jerome could not but own, however, that there was much truth in
what he said, when he declared, "It is all very well, and I am glad this
one family is saved.  But it is only one of many hundred thousand
miserable families.  What is to become of all the rest, who may not have
the luck to see a royal bride pass their way?  It is not a few royal
smiles and gold pieces, here and there, that will save the royal, or the
noble, or the poor, while the law and the customs of the great oppress
and destroy a hundred to pamper one.  If this young Dauphiness were to
do this deed over again every hour of the year, she could not do more
than put off for a little while the storm that will burst upon her and
all of us, when the poor can endure no more."



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ONE.

ROYALTY.

It is a common belief, among those who have not learned to be wiser,
that to be a king, or one of the king's family, is the same thing as to
be perfectly happy.  It is probable that all persons living in a country
where there is a royal family have thought so at some time of their
lives.  The poor man who lives under the harsh orders of some superior,
fancies the king with his crown on his head, ordering all things as he
likes.  Hard-working servant-girls think of the queen as driving about
in her carriage all the morning, and going to the play every evening.
Children, when tired of their lessons, or sent from some favourite book
on an errand to the cellar, or a walk in the cold, imagine the royal
princes and princesses doing what they like, and putting upon others
whatever is disagreeable.  Unless some circumstance should bring home to
their minds the truth that royalty does not exempt from sickness and
death, and from the troubles of the heart and mind, such persons may go
on for the greater part of their lives envying royal personages who,
perhaps, would gladly be peasants, or in any rank but the highest, the
evils of which many a sovereign has found to be more than could be
borne.

The poor people of France, at the time of the story you have just read,
were as ignorant as I have described about royalty and its privileges.
There was also something worse than ignorance in their minds about the
inhabitants of the splendid royal palaces of Paris and Versailles.  It
has been shown how poor and how oppressed some of the country people
were; this poverty and oppression, accompanied with ignorance, caused,
in some parts of the kingdom, and especially in Paris, passions of fear
and hatred which were then terrible to witness, and are now, after
seventy years, dreadful to think of.  One anecdote will show the mind
and temper of some of the people of Paris about the time when the
Dauphiness entered France.

The old king, Louis the Fifteenth, had ruined his health, as well as
made himself detested, by his vices.  At one time, when he was very ill,
Paris was crowded with hungry wretches who had come up from the country,
in hopes of finding a living in the capital.  The police had orders to
clear the city, every now and then, of these beggars, and send them back
to their native places.  On one occasion the police carried off some
children of respectable persons, in hopes of getting large sums of money
for ransom.  The mothers of these children, seeking them in the streets
and squares, and weeping as they went, attracted crowds; and a report
was spread, and believed at once, that the physicians of the king had
ordered for his cure baths of children's blood!  Those who believed this
nonsense rose in a riot, before it was found that the missing children
were alive and safe; and several of the poor misled rioters were hanged.

This story proves more than the ignorance of the suffering people.  It
shows how the royal family and their attendants were regarded,--how
tyrannical and cruel, how selfish and how powerful, they were thought.
The royal family was from this time forward greatly wronged by the
people; but it was because the people had already been much more wronged
by the rich and powerful.  They had been so ground down into poverty and
wretchedness, that they felt the fiercest envy, the most brutal rage,
towards all the wealthy and noble, believing them born to be unboundedly
happy, and to make everybody below them as miserable as they pleased.
Never, perhaps, were the absurd notions of the privileges of royalty
held in such exaggeration as by the common people of France at this
time; and never, perhaps, was a more intense hatred shown among men than
by those who abolished this royalty.  The story of the young king Louis
the Seventeenth, which is now to be told, is a standing lesson to all
who may imagine that to be a prince is to be happier than other people.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

ROYAL WAYS.

Louis the Seventeenth was born in 1785.  He was the second son of the
princess who passed through Saint Menehould from Vienna, after her
marriage.  From being Dauphiness she had since become queen, and her
eldest boy was now the Dauphin.  This second son, whose history we are
to follow, was called the Duke of Normandy; and as he was never likely
to be anything more, there was less pomp and fuss about him than was
made about his brother, the heir to the throne.  Yet, from the day of
his birth, he had an establishment of his own; and while a little
unconscious baby, not knowing one person from another, and wanting
nothing but to eat and sleep, he was called the master of several
ladies, waiting-women, gentlemen, and footmen, who were appointed to
attend upon him.

We happen to have full accounts of the way of living of this royal
family in the days of their prosperity, as well as of their adventures
when adversity overtook them.  Up to the time when the Duke of Normandy
was four years old, life in the palace was as follows.

The oldest members of the royal family were the king's aunts,--the great
aunts of the Duke of Normandy.  There were four sisters, all unmarried.
One of them had gone into a convent, and found herself very happy there.
After the dulness of her life at home, she quite enjoyed taking her
turn with the other nuns in helping to cook in the kitchen, and in
looking after the linen in the wash-house.  Her three sisters led
dreadfully dull lives.  They had each spacious apartments, with ladies
and gentlemen ushers to wait on them,--a reader to read aloud so many
hours a day, and money to buy whatever they liked.  But they had nothing
to do,--and nobody to love very dearly.  They were without husbands and
children, and even intimate friends; for all about them of their own age
and way of thinking were of a rank too far below their own to be made
intimate friends of.  These ladies duly attended divine service in the
royal chapel; and they did a great deal of embroidery and tapestry-work.
When the proper hour came for paying their respects to their niece the
queen, they tied on their large hooped petticoats, and other articles of
court-dress, had their trains borne by their pages, and went to the
queen's apartment to make their courtesies, and sit down for a little
while, chiefly to show that they had a right to sit down unasked in the
royal presence.  In a few minutes they went back to their apartments,
slipped off their hooped petticoats and long trains, and sat down to
their work again.  They would have liked to take walks about Paris and
into the country, as they saw from their windows that other ladies did;
but it was not to be thought of,--it would have been too undignified: so
they were obliged to be contented with a formal, slow, daily drive, each
in her own carriage, each attended by her lady-in-waiting, and with her
footmen mounted behind.  They were fond of plants, and longed above
everything to be allowed to rear flowers with their own hands, in a
garden: but this too was thought out of the question: and they were
obliged to be content with such flowers as would grow in boxes on their
window-sills in the palace.  Madame Louise, the one who became a nun,
employed a young lady to read to her while she yet lived in the palace.
Sometimes the poor girl read aloud for five hours together; and when her
failing voice showed that she was quite exhausted, Madame Louise
prepared a glass of _eau sucree_ (sugared water) and placed it beside
her, saying that she was sorry to cause so much fatigue; but that she
was anxious to finish a course of reading which she had laid out.  It
does not seem to have occurred to Madame Louise to take the book
herself, or ask some one else to relieve her tired reader.

The king, Louis the Sixteenth, would probably have been a dull man in
any situation in life.  His mind was dull.  But his tastes showed that
he might have been better and happier in many places than in his own
palace.  Till he fell into misfortune, and showed a somewhat patient and
forgiving temper, he seems not to have attached anybody to him.  He was
very silent, though now and then giving way to strange bursts of
rudeness, which made his children and servants afraid of him.  For many
years after he married, his wife was not sure whether he cared at all
about her.  There must always be some doubt of this, for a time, in the
case of royal marriages which take place, as his did, without the
parties having ever met, or being able to tell whether they shall like
one another.  The king's manners were such that it was difficult to say
whether he cared about anybody,--except, indeed, one person; and that
person was not the queen, nor his aunts, nor his children, but--a
locksmith of the name of Gamin.

There were three employments that the king was so fond of, that he
seemed to have no interest left for anything else: first, of
lock-making; secondly, of hunting; thirdly, of studying geography.  As
long as he could spend his hours with his huntsmen, with Gamin, or
marking his copper globe, or colouring maps, he seemed to care little
how his ministers managed his kingdom, or how his wife spent her time,
and formed her friendships.

A person who had the opportunity of examining his apartments gives an
account of them which shows how little the king liked the common course
of royal life, and how differently he employed his hours in private from
what his people supposed.  On the staircase which led from one to
another of his small private apartments, hung six pictures of the king's
hunts, with exact tables of the game he had killed,--the quantity, the
kind of game, and the dates of the occasions, divided into the months,
the seasons, and the years of his reign.  In a splendid room below
stairs hung the engravings which had been dedicated to him, and designs
of canals and other public works.  The room above this contained the
king's collection of maps, spheres, and globes.  Here were found numbers
of maps drawn and coloured by the king,--some finished, and many only
half done.  Above this was a workshop, with a turning-lathe, and all
necessary instruments for working in wood.  Here, while no one knew
where the king was, did he spend hours with a footman, named Duret, in
cleaning and polishing his tools.  Higher up was a library, containing
the books the king valued most, and some private papers relating to the
history of the royal families of Hanover, England, Austria, and Russia.
In the room over this, however, did his majesty most delight to spend
his mornings.  It contained a forge, two anvils, and every tool used in
lock-making.  Here he took lessons of Gamin, who was smuggled up the
back stairs by Duret; and here the king and the locksmith hammered away
for hours together; while all about the room might be seen common locks,
finished in the most perfect manner, secret locks, and locks of copper
splendidly gilt.  Gamin was a vulgar-minded man; and he treated the king
ill, both at this time, and after adversity had overtaken the royal
family.  In these early days, he felt that the king was in his power, so
afraid was his majesty of the queen and court knowing about his
lock-making, and Gamin having it in his power to tell, any day.  He
spoke gruffly to the king, and ordered him about as if he had been an
apprentice; to which the king always submitted.  He not only endured
this treatment, but entrusted Gamin with various secret commissions,
which were sometimes of great importance.  The account which Gamin gave
of the king was that he was kind and forbearing, timid, inquisitive, and
_very_ apt to go to sleep.

There was one more apartment, a sort of observatory, on the leads, in
which was an immense telescope.  Duret was always at hand, either
sharpening tools, or cleaning the anvil, or pasting maps; and the king
employed him to fix the lens of the telescope so as to suit his
majesty's eye; and there, in an arm-chair at the end of the telescope,
sat the king, for hours together, spying at the people who thronged the
palace courts, or who went to and fro in the avenue.

While his majesty was thus pursuing all this child's play in private,
his people were starving by thousands, and preparing by millions to
rebel; the government was deep in debt, the ministers perplexed, and the
wisest of them in despair, because they never could get his majesty to
speak or act, even so far as to say in council which of two different
opinions he liked the best.  He would sit by, hearing consultations on
the most important and pressing affairs, and after all leave his
ministers unable to act, because he would not utter so much as "Yes" or
"No."  He had no will, and nothing could be done without it.  What a
pity, for suffering France, and for the mild Louis himself and all his
family, that he was not a huntsman or a mechanic instead of a king!

The little Duke of Normandy knew nothing of all this, and saw very
little of his father in any way.  What did he see his mother doing?  The
formality of the court was such that he saw less of his mother than
almost any child in the kingdom of its parents; but the sort of life the
queen led was as follows.

She had been married, as we know, at fifteen, when she was not only
inexperienced, but very ignorant.  Her mother, the Empress of Austria,
was so busy governing her empire, that she could pay little attention to
the education of her children.  She gave them governesses; but these
governesses indulged their pupils, doing their lessons for them,--
tracing their writing in pencil,--casting up their sums,--whispering to
them how to spell,--doing the outline of their drawings first, and
touching them up at last.  The consequence was, that when this young
girl entered France, a bride, at fifteen years of age, she knew next to
nothing, and though she took some pains, she never learned to spell well
in French, or to write grammatically, even after she declared that she
had forgotten her native language--German.  She was very clever,
notwithstanding.  She had a strong, firm, and decided mind.  Her
ignorance, however, was an irreparable evil,--especially her ignorance
of men and common life.  She had no means of repairing this ignorance.
Everybody flattered her; every one yielded to her in the days of her
prosperity; so that she knew no will but her own, till some mistake,
which it was to late to set right, showed her how she had been deceived.
Even during the happiest years of her life, while all appeared to go
well, she was perpetually getting into scrapes, and making enemies; and
we shall see, by-and-by, how, on one occasion, her inexperience cost, in
its consequences, the lives of herself and all her family but one.

Of her many mistakes, however, none were so fatal as that of concluding
that all was well because no one told her to the contrary,--of passing
her days in splendour and pleasure, giving her whole mind to acting
plays, masquerading, and inventing new amusements, and now and then
providing for dependents by giving a licence to sell some necessary
article dear to the poor, while the poor were growing desperate with
famine.  She was careless and selfish, but she was not hard-hearted; for
whenever she witnessed misery she hastened to relieve it, often
sacrificing her own pleasures for the purpose; but the people,
hunger-bitten and in rags, seeing her splendour, and hearing reports of
far more than was actually true, believed her hard-hearted; and from
being proud of her, and devoted to her, when she entered France as a
bride, they learned at last to hate her from the bottom of their souls.

There would be no end to the story of how many attendants the queen had,
and what were the formalities observed among them.  We will only briefly
go over the history of a day, in order fully to understand how great was
the reverse when she became a prisoner.

The queen was awakened regularly at eight o'clock, at which hour her
first lady of the bed-chamber entered the room, sad came within the gilt
railing which surrounded the bed, bringing in one hand a pincushion, and
in the other the book containing patterns of all the queen's dresses, of
which she had usually thirty-six for each season, besides muslin and
other common dresses.  The queen marked with pins the three she chose to
wear in the course of that day;--one during the morning, another at
dinner, and a third in the evening,--at a card-party, a ball, or the
theatre.  The book was then delivered to a footman, who carried it to
the lady of the wardrobe.  She took down from the shelves and drawers
these dresses and their trimmings; while another woman filled a basket
with the linen, etcetera, which her majesty would want that day.  Great
wrappers of green taffeta were thrown over these things, and footmen
carried them to the queen's dressing-room.  Sometimes the queen took her
breakfast in bed, and sometimes in her bath.  Her linen dress was
trimmed with the richest lace; her dressing-gown was of white taffeta;
and the slippers in which she stepped to the bath were of white dimity,
trimmed with lace.

Two women were kept for the sole business of attending to the bath,
which was usually rolled into the room upon castors.  The bathing-gown
was of fine flannel, with collar and cuffs, and lining throughout of
fine linen.  The breakfast, of coffee or chocolate, was served on a tray
which stood on the cover of the bath.  Meantime one of the ladies warmed
the bed with a silver warming-pan, and the queen returned to it, sitting
up in her white taffeta dressing-gown, and reading; or if any one who
had permission to visit her at that hour wished to see her, she took up
her embroidery.  This kind of visit, at a person's rising, is customary
abroad; and it had been so long so at the court of France, that certain
classes of persons were understood to have a right to visit the queen at
the hour of her levee, as it was called.  These persons were the
physicians and surgeons of the court; any messengers from the king; the
queen's secretary and others; so that there were often, besides the
ladies in waiting, ten or a dozen persons visiting the queen as she sat
up in bed, at work, or taking her breakfast.

The great visiting hour, however, was noon, when the queen went into
another room to have her hair dressed.  We see in prints, how the hair
was dressed at that time,--frizzed and powdered, and piled up with silk
cushions, and ribbons and flowers, till the wonder was how any head
could bear such a weight.  It took a long time to dress a lady's hair in
those days.  The queen sat before a most splendid toilet-table, in the
middle of the room.  The ladies who had been in waiting for twenty-four
hours now went out, and gave place to others in full dress, with
rose-coloured brocade petticoats, wide hoops, and high head-dresses with
lappets, and all the finery of a court.  The usher took his place before
the folding-doors; great chairs and stools were set in a circle for such
visitors as had a right to sit down in the presence of royalty.  Then
entered the ladies of the palace, the governess of the royal children,
the princes of the royal family, the secretaries of state, the captains
of the guard, and, on Tuesdays, the foreign ambassadors.  According to
their rank, the queen either nodded to them as they entered, or bowed
her head, or leaned with her arm upon her toilet-table, as if about to
rise.  This last salutation was only to the royal princes.  She never
actually rose, for her hair-dresser was powdering her hair.

It was considered presumptuous and dangerous to alter any customs of the
court of France; but this queen thought fit to alter one among others.
It had always, before her time, been the etiquette for the lady of the
highest rank who appeared in readiness in the queen's chamber, to slip
her majesty's petticoats over her head in dressing; but when her majesty
was pleased to have her head dressed so high that no petticoat would go
over it, but must be slipped up from her feet, she used to step into her
closet, to be dressed by her favourite milliner and one of her women.
This change gave great offence to the ladies who thought they had a
right to the honour of dressing the queen.

Her majesty came forth from her closet ready to go to mass in the
chapel, on certain days: and by this time her chaplains were in waiting
among her suite.  The royal princesses and their trains stood waiting to
follow the queen to the chapel: but, strangely enough, this was the hour
appointed for signing deeds of gift on the part of the queen.  These
gifts were too often licences for the exclusive sale of articles which
all should have been left free to sell.  The secretary of the queen
presented the pen to her majesty; and at these hours she signed away the
goodwill of thousands of well-disposed subjects.  At such a moment,
while she stood, beautiful and smiling, among a crowd of adorers, and
while her husband, with smutted face and black hands, was filing his
locks in his attic, how little did either of them think that their
eldest son was sinking to his grave, and that the storm of popular fury
was even now growling within their dominions,--the tremendous storm
which was to prove fatal to themselves!

At this hour of the toilet, on the first day of the month, the queen was
presented with her pocket-money for the month--the sum which she might
do what she liked with, and out of which she made presents.  This sum
was always in gold, and was presented in a purse of white kid,
embroidered in silver, and lined with white silk.  Its amount was, on an
average for the year round, 12,500 pounds.  It was by saving out of this
allowance that she paid for the pair of diamond ear-rings which she
bought soon after her marriage; but it took six years' savings to pay
for that one ornament.  She was young and giddy when she bought those
jewels, and she paid for them out of her own pocket-money; but, as has
been seen, the purchase did not sound well in the ears of peasants who
boiled nettles for food when they could get no bread, from the pressure
of the taxes.  Whether the discontented knew it or not, a good deal of
this monthly gold went in charity--charity, however, which did not do
half the good that self-denial would have done.

Her majesty was waited on at dinner by her ladies.  She dined early,
generally eating chicken, and drinking water only.  She supped on broth,
or the wing of a fowl, and biscuits which she steeped in water.  She
spent the afternoons among her ladies, or with her two most intimate
friends--the Duchess de Polignac, for some time governess to the royal
children, and the Princess de Lamballe, superintendent of the household.
After a time the friendship with both these ladies cooled; but while it
lasted, the pleasantest hours the queen passed were when working and
conversing with these ladies.  After the private theatre was given up,
the evenings were commonly spent in small dull card-parties, but
sometimes in more agreeable parties in the apartments of one or other of
her two friends.  It was thoughtless and undignified of the queen to act
plays, to which the captains of the guard, and various other persons,
were in time admitted as spectators; but though her best friends would
have been glad that she should have abstained from such performances, it
is not surprising that she inclined to an amusement that gave her
something to think of and to do, and from which she really learned more
of literature than she could otherwise have done.  Amidst the deplorable
dulness of such a life as hers, we cannot wonder that studying some of
the best French dramatic poetry, and feeling for the hour that she was
the companion and not the queen, should have been a pleasure which she
was sorry to forego.  She sorely lamented afterwards that she had ever
indulged in it.

But, it may be said, she had children and she had friends.  Could she
not make herself happy with them?  Alas!  She found herself disappointed
there,--as she was whichever way she turned for happiness.  Though her
friend, the Duchess de Polignac, was governess to her children, and
though she had hoped by this plan to enjoy more freedom with both than
by any other means, all went wrong.  The other gentlemen and ladies--the
tutors and under-governesses who were about the children--became jealous
of the duchess, and taught the children to dislike her.  The Princess de
Lamballe also had misunderstandings with the duchess; and the queen and
her children's governess began to be equally hated by the people, who
believed that the duchess instigated the queen to all the bad actions of
which she was reported guilty.

The Duke of Normandy was three years old when the serious misfortunes of
his family began.  Up to that time he had seen only what was bright and
gay.  He himself was a little rosy, plump, merry child, with beautiful
curling hair, and so sweet a temper that everybody loved him.  He found
many to love.  There was his beautiful, kind mother.  She could not do
for him what a mother of a lower rank would have done; she could not
wash and dress him, and keep him on her lap, or play with him half the
day, or walk in the sweet, fresh fields with him--but she often opened
her arms to him, and always smiled upon him, and loved him so much, that
some ill-natured people persuaded his elder brother, the Dauphin, that
the little Duke of Normandy was his mother's favourite, and that she did
not care for her other children.

Then there was the Princess Royal, the eldest of the children.  She was
at that time eight years old, and as grave a little girl as was ever
seen at that age.  She rarely laughed or played, but she was kind to her
brothers and the people about her.

Next was the Dauphin, a year younger than his sister.  He was sinking
under disease; and it made every one's heart ache to see his long sharp
face, and his wasted hands, and his limbs, so shrunk and feeble that he
could not walk.  His tutor could not endure the duchess, his governess,
and taught the poor fretful child to be rude to her, and even to his
mother.  When the duchess came near to amuse him, he told her to go
away, for he could not bear the perfumes that she was so dreadfully fond
of.  This was put into his head, for she used no perfumes.  When the
queen carried to her poor boy some lozenges that she knew could not hurt
him, and that he was fond of, the under-tutors, and even a footman of
the Dauphin, started forward, and said she must give him nothing without
the advice of the physicians.  She knew that these were the very people
who were always putting it into the Dauphin's head that, she was more
fond of his little brother, and she saw that it was intended to prevent
her having any influence with her own sick child; and bitterly she wept
over all this in her own apartment.

One day, some Indian ambassadors were to visit the king in great
splendour, and it was known that there would be a crowd of people in the
courts and galleries to see them.  The queen desired that the Dauphin
might not be encouraged to think of seeing this sight, as it would be
bad for him, and she could not have him exposed, deformed and sickly, to
the gaze of a crowd of people.  Notwithstanding her desire, the
Dauphin's tutor helped him to write a letter to his mother, begging that
he might see the ambassadors pass.  She was obliged to refuse him.  When
she reproached the tutor with having caused her and her boy this pain,
he replied that the Dauphin wished to write, and he could not vex a sick
child--the very thing which he compelled the mother to do, after having
fixed the subject in the boy's mind, and raised his hopes.

There was another sister, younger than the Duke of Normandy--quite a
baby.  The Duke of Normandy used to see this little baby every day, and
kiss her, and hear her crow, and see her stretch out her little hand
towards the lighted wax candles, which made the palace almost as light
as day.  One morning, baby was not to be seen: everybody looked grave:
his mother's eyes were red, and her face very sad.  Baby was dead; and,
young as he was, Louis did not forget Sophie immediately.  He saw and
heard things occasionally which put him in mind of baby for long
afterwards.

There was one more person belonging to the family, whom the children and
everybody dearly loved.  This was their aunt Elizabeth, the king's
sister, a young lady of such sweet temper--so religious, so humble, so
gentle--that she was a blessing wherever she went.  She disliked the
show and formality of a life at court, and earnestly desired to become a
nun.  The king and queen loved her so dearly that they could not bear
the idea of her leaving them.  They devised every indulgence they could
think of to vary the dulness of the court.  The king declared her of age
two years before the usual time, and gave her a pretty country-house,
with gardens, where she might spend her time as she pleased; and he
encouraged her taking long country rides, as she was fond of
horse-exercise.  At last, when she was full of gratitude for her
brother's kindness, he begged her to promise not to become a nun before
she was thirty, when, if she still wished it, he would make no further
opposition.  She promised.  We shall see, by-and-by, what became of this
sweet princess when she was thirty.

She was at this time twenty-three years old.  She was a great comfort to
the queen, not concealing from her that she thought the Dauphin was
dying, and the nation growing very savage against the royal family; but
endeavouring to console and strengthen her mind, as religious people are
always the best able to do.  The poor queen began to want comfort much.
She went to bed very late now, because she could not sleep; and a little
anecdote shows that her anxieties made her again as superstitious as she
had formerly been, when she dreaded misfortune because she was born on
the day of the great earthquake at Lisbon.

On the table of her dressing-room, four large wax candles were burning
one evening.  Before they had burned half-way down, one of them went
out.  The lady-in-waiting lighted it.  A second went out immediately,
and then a third.  The queen in terror grasped the lady's arm, saying,
"If the fourth goes out, I shall be certain that it is all over with
us."  The fourth went out.  In vain the lady observed that these four
candles had probably been all run in the same mould, and had therefore
the same fault.  The queen allowed this to be reasonable, but was still
much impressed by the circumstance.

For one of the impending evils there was no remedy.  The Dauphin died
the next June, when the Duke of Normandy, then four years old, became
Dauphin.  It may give some idea of the formality of the court
proceedings to mention that, when a deputation of the magistrates of
Paris came, according to custom, to view the lying-in-state, the usher
of the late Dauphin announced to the dead body, as he threw open the
folding-doors, that the magistrates of Paris had come to pay their
respects.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THREE.

THE DAUPHIN LOSES HIS GOVERNESS.

Little Louis had no cause to rejoice in his new honours.  Much more
observance was paid to him within the palace, now that he had become
heir to the throne; but out of doors all was confusion: and five weeks
from his brother's death had not passed before the little prince had to
endure one of those fits of terror of which he had but too much
experience from that time forward.

The two principal royal palaces were, that called the Tuileries, in
Paris, and that of Versailles, twelve miles from Paris.  At this time,
July, 1789, the royal family were at Versailles.  The discontented,
long-murmuring people of Paris rose in rebellion, because their
favourite minister, Necker, who had managed the money affairs of the
nation well, and was more likely to take off taxes than any other
minister, had been dismissed from his office.  The nation were
determined to have him back again; but, having once risen in rebellion,
they aimed at more achievements than one.  On the 14th of July the
people of Paris besieged and took the Bastille, the great state-prison,
where, for hundreds of years, victims had suffered cruel imprisonments,
often without having been tried.  The very sight of this gloomy castle
was odious to the people; and they pulled it down, leaving not one brick
upon another, and carrying the prisoners they found there on their
shoulders through the city, in triumphant procession.

While this attack on the Bastille was taking place, there was a ball
given in the orangery at Versailles, where the court ladies and the
officers of the troops danced, and laughed, and talked, and took their
refreshments, as if all was well.  The French Parliament was sitting in
the town of Versailles; and they sent some of their body repeatedly that
day to the palace, to tell the king of the danger, and urge him to do
what was proper: but there was no moving the king to do anything, that
day, any more than on other occasions; and he only sent word to the
parliament to mind their own business.  The inhabitants of Versailles
were alarmed at the reports that arrived from Paris, and they were all
on the watch, consulting in the streets, or wondering in their own
houses what would happen next.  Some vague rumours reached the palace;
but the court ladies and their guests danced away in the orangery, till
the time for breaking up the ball arrived.  Late at night, a nobleman
who had a right to demand an audience of the king at all times, arrived,
made his way, dusty as he was, to the king's chamber, and told of the
rebellion, the destruction of the Bastille, and the murder of two
faithful officers, well-known to the king.  "Why," said the king, as
much surprised as if nothing had happened to warn him, "this is a
revolt."

"It is not a revolt," said the nobleman: "it is a revolution."

The Dauphin was fast asleep when this alarm arrived.  He saw, the next
morning, that every one about him was in terror, and that the courts of
the palace were filled with a crowd of ill-looking angry people.  His
governess appeared greatly alarmed; and well she might be; for the mob
outside were shouting her name, and saying that they would be revenged
on her for giving the queen bad advice.  The king had gone to address
the parliament, promising to do all that they had advised the day
before, and to recall Monsieur Necker, the favourite minister.  While he
was gone, one of the queen's ladies came to the room where Louis was
with his governess, unlocked the door with the queen's key, and told him
that he was to go with her to his mother.  The Duchess de Polignac asked
whether she might not take him herself to the queen: but the lady
messenger shook her head, and said she had no such orders.  She knew
very well that if the people who were looking up at the windows should
once see the duchess, they would be ready to pull her to pieces.  The
duchess, understanding the lady's countenance, took the child in her
arms, and wept bitterly.  Louis did not know what it all meant; but it
frightened him.  The messenger tried to console the duchess with
promising to bring Louis back presently; but she said, weeping, that she
knew too well now what to expect.  One of the under-governesses asked
whether she might take the prince to his mother, and did so.

The queen was waiting for the boy, with the Princess Royal by her side.
She stepped out into the balcony with her two children, and repeatedly
kissed them in the sight of the people.  Little Louis might well be glad
to step back from the balcony into the room again; for the mob was very
noisy and rude.  The lady who had been sent to summon him slipped out
among the people, to hear what they were saying.  A woman, who kept a
thick veil down over her face, seized her by the arm, told her she knew
her, and desired her to tell the queen not to meddle any more in the
government, but to leave it to those who cared more for the people.  A
man then grasped her other arm, and said he knew her too, and bade her
tell the queen that times were coming very different from those which
were past.  Just then, the queen and the children appeared in the
balcony.  "Ah!" said the veiled woman, "the duchess is not with her."

"No," said the man, "but she is still in the palace, working underground
like a mole: but we will dig her out."  The queen's lady had heard quite
enough.  She was glad to go in and sit down, for she could scarcely
stand.  She thought it her duty to tell the queen what she had heard;
and the queen made her repeat it to the king.

One of the king's aunts was at her tapestry-work that day, in a room
which looked towards the court, and where there was a window-blind
through which she could see without being seen.  Three men were talking
together; and she knew one of them.  They did not whisper, or speak low;
and one of them said, looking up at the window of the throne-room,
"There stands that throne of which there will soon be left no remains."

While such a temper as this was abroad, it mattered little that
everything seemed set right for the time by what the king said to the
parliament.  The members escorted him back to the palace, and the people
cheered him.  All Paris cheered when the news arrived that the people's
minister was to be restored to his office; and a messenger was sent off
to Monsieur Necker that night.

The Duchess de Polignac and her relations now saw that they must be off,
if they wished to preserve their liberty--perhaps their lives.  After
the next day, Louis never saw his governess more.  She bade him
good-night at his bed time; and in the morning she was far away.  She
went disguised as a lady's maid, and sat on the coach-box, leaving the
palace just at midnight.  The queen bade her farewell in private, with
many and bitter tears, forgetting any coolness that had lately existed
between them in the thought of their former friendship, and the care the
duchess had taken of her children.  The duchess was not rich; and the
queen, after they had parted, sent her a purse of gold, with a message
that she might want it on the journey.

It was a perilous journey.  The party consisted of six, of whom two were
gentlemen.  When they arrived at Sens they found the people had risen.
The mob stopped the carriage to ask, as they had been asking of other
travellers who came the same road, if those Polignacs were still about
the queen.  "No, no," said one of the gentlemen, "they are far enough
from Versailles.  We have got rid of all such bad subjects."  The next
time the carriage stopped, the postilion stood on the step, and
whispered to the duchess, "Madam, there are some good people in France.
I found out who you were at Sens."  They gave him a handful of gold.

The queen wept the more bitterly on parting with her friend, because she
would have been glad to have gone away too.  It was talked of: and some
of the king's relations, with their families, set off the same night as
the Polignacs, and were soon out of danger beyond the frontier.  The
question had been whether the king should go with them, or show himself
in Paris, and endeavour to come to an understanding with his people.
This question was debated for some hours by the royal family and their
confidential friends; and the king let them argue, hour after hour,
without appearing to have any will of his own.  "Well," said he, when he
was tired of listening, "something must be decided.  Am I to go or stay?
I am as ready for one as the other."  It was then decided that he
should stay.  The queen, meanwhile, had been making preparations for
departure, in hopes that they should go.  She probably saw that it would
have been all very right to stay if the king meant to act vigorously,
and to save the monarchy by joining with the nation to reform the
government; but that, since acting vigorously was the one thing which
the king could not do, it would have been better for all parties that he
should have left a scene where his apathy could only do mischief,
exasperate the people, and endanger his own safety and that of his
family.  The queen had burned a great many papers, and had her diamonds
packed in a little box, which she meant to take in her own carriage: she
had also written a paper of directions to her confidential servants
about following her.  As she saw her jewels restored to their places,
and tore the paper of directions, with tearful eyes, she said she feared
that this decision would prove a misfortune to them all.

The king was next to go to Paris.  He set out from Versailles at ten in
the morning after the departure of the Polignacs.  He was well attended,
and appeared, as usual, very composed.  The queen kept her feelings to
herself till he was gone; but she had terrible fears that he would be
detained as a prisoner in his own capital.  She shut herself up with her
children in her own apartment.  There she felt so restless and miserable
that she sent for one after another of the courtiers.  Their doors were
all padlocked--every one of them.  The courtiers considered it dangerous
to stay; and they were all gone.  Though this afflicted the queen at the
moment, it happened very well; for it taught her to place no dependence
on these people another time.  It must have been a dreary morning for
the children,--their father in danger, their governess gone, and their
mother weeping, deserted by her court.  She employed herself in writing
a short address, to be spoken to the National Assembly at Paris (which
may be called the people's new parliament), in case of the king not
being allowed to return.  She meant to go with her children, and beg of
the Assembly that they might share the lot of the king, whatever it
might be.  As she learnt by heart what she had written (lest she should
not have presence of mind to make an address at the time), her voice was
choked with grief, and she sobbed out, "They will never let him return."

He did return, however, late in the evening.  He had had a weary day.
He had been received with gloom, and with either silence or insulting
cries.  It was not till, at the desire of the mayor of Paris, he had put
the new national cockade in his hat, that the people cheered him; after
which they were in good humour.  This cockade was made of the three
colours which are now seen in the tricolour flag of France,--red and
blue, the ancient colours of the city of Paris, with the white of the
royal lilies between.  In these troubled times a white cockade was a
welcome sight to royal eyes, as an emblem of loyalty; while red and blue
colours were detestable, as tokens of a revolutionary temper.  When the
king himself was compelled to wear them, it was a cruel mortification.
It was, in fact, a sign of submission to his rebellious people.  Glad
indeed was he to get home this night, and endeavour to forget that he
had worn the tricolor.  He kept repeating to the queen what he had said
in the hearing of many this day, "Happily, there was no blood shed; and
I swear that not a drop shall be shed by my order, happen what may."
These were the words of a humane man: but it was hardly prudent to speak
them during the outbreak of a revolution, when they might discourage his
friends, and embolden the violent.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: The Fleur-de-Lys (lily) was blazoned in the royal arms of France
for many centuries.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FOUR.

LAST NIGHT AT VERSAILLES.

From this day forward the king met with insults whichever way he
turned,--even at the doors of his own apartments.  It was resolved by
the National Assembly that all the men in France should be armed and
wear a uniform, and be called the National Guard.  One day the Dauphin's
footmen all appeared in this uniform, and the king's porters, and almost
every man about the palace.  What displeased the king yet more was, that
the singers in the royal chapel appeared in the same dress.  It was
absurd and shocking to see their part of divine service performed by men
in the uniform of grenadiers.  The king said so, and forbade that any
person should appear in his presence again in that dress.  But the time
was past for the king's orders to be obeyed.  He was destined to grow
weary enough of the sight of this uniform.

A great part of the king's own guard had joined the revolutionary party;
but one company remained, whose commanding officer was proud of their
loyalty, and declared he could answer for its continuance.  He was
mistaken, however.  One morning, at the end of July, when the royal
family rose and looked out from their windows, they did not see a single
sentinel anywhere about the palace.  Such a sight had never been
witnessed before as the palace of Versailles without a guard.  On
inquiry, it turned out that the whole company had marched away in the
night, to join their former comrades in Paris.

During the month of August, crowds had at various times assembled in
Paris, with the declared purpose of going to Versailles, to separate the
king from his bad advisers, and to bring the little Dauphin to Paris, to
be brought up better than he was likely to be at home.  One would think
that such assemblages and such declarations would alarm the king and
queen, and cause them to make some preparations for putting themselves,
or at least the Dauphin, in safety.  Because these crowds were several
times dispersed, however, the royal family appear to have thought
nothing of the danger: and in September they committed an act of
imprudence which brought upon them the worst that was threatened.  The
truth is, they were ignorant of all that it most concerned them to know.
They did not understand the wants of the people, nor the depth of their
discontent; nor had they any idea of the weakness, ignorance, and
prejudice of the gentlemen and ladies about them, whose advice they
asked, and on whose narrow views they acted.  There were a few wise and
good men in the nation who understood both sides of the question, and
who were grieved for the hardships of the people, and for the sufferings
of the royal family; and happy would it have been for all if the king
and queen could have been guided by these advisers.  The chief and best
of these was that excellent patriot and loyal subject the Marquis
Lafayette.  While he was adored by the people, he did all in his power
to aid and save the royal family; but, unhappily, the king distrusted
him, and the queen could not endure him.  She not only detested his
politics, but declared that she believed him (the most honourable man in
the world) to be a traitor, and laid on him the blame of misfortunes
which he had no hand in causing, and for which he grieved.

The king had a regiment from Flanders on whom he was sure he could rely.
It came into some one's head that if this regiment and the faithless
body-guard could be brought together, the loyalty of the latter might be
revived and secured.  So there was an entertainment given in the theatre
of the palace of Versailles, where the soldiers of the two regiments
were to make merry, sitting alternately at table.  Such a feast, if
every man there was loyal in the extreme, could signify little, while
there was out of doors a whole rebellious nation,--millions of hungry
wretches clamouring for food and good government; and, whether such a
meeting signified much or little, it was certain that the king and his
family, should have had nothing to do with it, after he had been to
Paris to assure the people of his reliance upon them, assuming their
cockade as a declaration that he was in earnest.

The friends of the royal family thought this,--even the queen's own
ladies.  One of them was requested by the queen to enter the theatre,
and observe what passed, in order to report it to the king and her.
What was the surprise of this lady, when in the midst of the
entertainment, the doors were thrown open, and their majesties appeared,
the queen having the Dauphin in her arms!  The sight of them, looking
gratified and trustful, roused all the loyalty of the soldiers present;
and some imprudent acts were done.  The queen's ladies handed white
cockades to the officers; the party drank the healths of the king and
queen, omitting that of the nation; they cheered the loyal air, "O,
Richard!  O my king, the world is all forsaking thee:" and the whole
company were presently in a delirium of hope, and of defiance of the
people of Paris.  The queen afterwards declared in public that she was
delighted with the Thursday's entertainment; and this set the people
inquiring what had delighted her so much.  They made many inquiries.
"Why was this Flanders regiment brought to Versailles?"

"How did it happen that the king had at present double the usual number
of his Swiss guards?"

"Where were all those foreign officers from, who were seen in the
streets in strange uniforms?"  The people, exasperated afresh by finding
that, though the harvest was over, there was still a scarcity of bread,
were in a temper to believe the worst that was told them; and it seems
now very probable that much of it was true.  They were told that these
same soldiers had breakfasted together, and that they had planned to
march upon the National Assembly, and destroy it.  They heard a report
that the king meant to go away to Metz, and to return at the head of an
army, and to crush all those who had risen against him.  Nothing could
now prevent the people from doing what they had threatened--going to
Versailles, to separate the king from his evil counsellors, and bring
the Dauphin to Paris.  Some went further than this, saying to General
Lafayette that the king was too weak to reign; that they would destroy
his guards, make him lay down his crown, and declare the Dauphin king,
with Lafayette and others to manage the affairs of the empire till the
boy should be of age.

This was said to Lafayette on the morning of the 5th of October.
Grieved as he was to see that the mob were resolved to go to Versailles,
he saw what he must do, since he could not keep them back.  He detained
them as long as he could by speeches and arguments, while he sent
messengers by every road to Versailles, to give notice of what might be
expected; and he declared his intention of leading the march when the
people could be detained no longer.  Several of his messengers were
stopped: but some who went by by-roads reached Versailles, and gave the
alarm.  Meantime, he contrived to make the march so slow, as that he and
his thirty thousand followers were nine hours going the twelve miles to
Versailles.  Lest the royal family should not be gone, as he hoped, he
made the crowd halt on the ridge of the hill which overlooked
Versailles, and swear, with their right hands lifted up towards heaven,
to respect the king's dwelling, and be faithful to the orders of the
Assembly they themselves had chosen.  Unhappily, all he did was of
little use.  He arrived at near midnight; but another mob--a mob of
women, savage because their children were hungry--had been in possession
of Versailles since three in the afternoon.

Though it became rainy during the latter half of the day, so that the
thousands out of doors were all wet to the skin, the morning had been
fair; and the king went out hunting, as usual, while the queen spent the
morning at her favourite little estate of Trianon.  The Dauphin was at
home, with his new governess, the Marchioness de Tourzel, little
dreaming, poor child, that there were people already on the road from
Paris who wanted to make him a king instead of his father.  One of the
ministers hearing unpleasant rumours, took horse, and went to try to
find the king.  He met him in the woods, some way from home, and
conjured him to make haste back.  The king, however, rode as slowly as
possible, till more messengers appeared with news that a mob of
desperate women was actually entering the avenue.  Then he had to spur
his horse; and he arrived safe.  The queen had returned before him.  She
had been sitting, alone and disconsolate, in her grotto at Trianon,
reflecting on the miserable prospects of her family, when a line was
brought to her from one of the ministers, begging that she would hasten
home.  As soon as the king returned, orders were given to have the
carriages ready at the back doors of the palace; and the children (kept
out of sight) were equipped for a journey.

The want of decision in the royal movements, as usual, ruined
everything.  When the king had received and dismissed a deputation of
the women, there was a shout of "Long live the king!" and he then
thought it would not be necessary to go.  Not long afterwards, when the
people were seen to be as angry as ever, and to be insulting the royal
guard, the carriages were again ordered.  Some of them, empty, attempted
to pass the back gates, to ascertain whether others might follow with
the family: but the mob were now on the watch, and the carriages were
turned back.  The hour for escape was gone by.

When little Louis was got ready for the journey, it was by candlelight,
and past bedtime.  Perhaps he was not sorry when his things were taken
off again, and he was laid in his bed, instead of getting into the
carriage on a pouring rainy night, to pass through or near a disorderly
mob, who might be heard from within the palace crying "Bread!  Bread!"

Little Louis did not know all the disorders of that mob.  Thousands of
women, wet to the skin, were calling out "Bread!  Bread!" till they were
hoarse.  They threatened his mother's life, believing that to her
influence and her extravagance it was owing that their children had no
bread.  Some sat upon the cannon they had brought.  Some dried their wet
clothes at the fires that blazed on the ground: and haggard and fierce
did the faces of both men and women look in the light of these fires.
By the orders of certain officers and members of the Assembly,
provisions were brought from the shops of Versailles; and groups were
seen eating bread and sausages, and drinking wine, in the great avenue;
and not there only, but in the House of Assembly itself,--the
parliament-chamber of Versailles.  Hundreds of poor women, wet and
dirty, rushed in there, and sat eating their sausages while the members
were in debate, breaking in sometimes with, "What's the use of all this?
What we want is bread."  The king was told of what was going forward;
and yet it was six hours before he could make up his mind what answer to
give to the messages sent him by deputations from the rioters.  The
answer he gave at last, late at night, could be no other than that which
they chose to have; though the king was well aware that the people did
not know what they were asking, and that he should never be able to
satisfy them.  What they asked, and made him promise in writing, was an
abundance of food--"a free circulation of corn," as they called it,--
believing that the wealthy, and the millers and bakers under them, kept
large hidden stores of grain, in order that bread might be dear.

Louis understood nothing of all this; but he was aware that all was
confusion and danger.  About two hours after midnight everybody in the
palace was suddenly relieved, and led to believe that the danger was
past.  General Lafayette entered, and pledged his life that they should
be safe: and everybody was accustomed to rely on Lafayette's word.  He
happened to be mistaken this time,--to think better of the temper of the
people outside than they deserved; but what he said he fully believed.
With him came some messengers from Paris, to entreat the king, among
other things, to come and live among his people at Paris.  This was the
very thing the king was least disposed to do; but he dared not say "No."
He promised to consider of it.  Lafayette and his companions then went
away; and between two and three o'clock almost everybody but the guards
went to bed.

I say _almost_ everybody.  The queen desired her ladies to go to rest;
but two of them were still uneasy and distrustful, and thought that the
queen's servants should not all sleep while thousands of people who
hated her were round about the very doors.  They watched in the
ante-chamber: and it was their vigilance which saved her life.

About five in the morning the Dauphin was snatched from his bed, and
carried into his father's room.  There were his mother, aunt, and
sister; and his mother was in a passion of tears.  Clinging round the
king's neck, she cried, "O!  Save me!  Save me and my children!"  There
was a dreadful noise.  Not only was there the clamour of an angry
multitude without, but a hammering and battering at all the doors, and
fierce cries, and clashing of arms--all the dreadful sounds of
fighting--from the queen's apartments.  The mob had indeed forced their
way in.  Her two watchful ladies had heard the shout from the corridor,
given by a faithful guard at the peril of his life, "Save the queen!"
They lifted her from her bed, threw a dressing-gown over her, and
hurried her across a great apartment which divided her rooms from the
king's.  This was her only way of escape, and even this appeared at
first to be closed; for the door which led from the queen's
dressing-room to this apartment--a door which was always kept fastened
on the inside--was now, by some accident, found to be locked on the
outside.  It was a moment of dreadful suspense,--for the fighting behind
came nearer.  The ladies called so loud that a servant of the king's
heard them, and ran to unlock the door.  Even as they crossed the large
apartment, the mob were battering at the doors.

Presently some soldiers came from the town: and General Lafayette
appeared, addressing the people in passionate speeches, in favour of
respecting the persons and dwelling of the royal family.  The palace was
soon cleared; but the terrors of the household did not disperse with the
intruders who occasioned them.

It is believed that this sudden uproar was caused by a quarrel between
one of the body-guards and the people without.  Some shots were fired;
and a young man, known to the mob, was killed.  They were instantly in a
rage, shook at the gates, burst in, and, as they hated the queen most,
sought her first.

This was the last night that the royal family ever spent in their palace
of Versailles.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FIVE.

A PROCESSION.

It was too plain to all now that everything must be yielded to the
people, if lives were to be saved.  As soon as it was light, Lafayette
led into a balcony the commander of the Flanders regiment,--the
body-guard,--with a huge tricolor in his hat, instead of the royal white
cockade.  All the soldiers of the regiment immediately mounted tricolor
cockades, and were cheered by the mob.  The king appeared on the
balcony, with Lafayette, and they cheered him too; but some voices cried
that he must go to Paris.

The mob then demanded to see the queen.  She asked for her children; and
they were brought to her, probably not very willing to face the noisy
multitude.  She took Louis in her arms, and led his sister by the hand,
and stepped out on the balcony, with Lafayette by her side.  There was a
shout, "No children!"  It does not seem clear why the people would not
have the children too; but the queen believed that it was intended that
some one should shoot her as she stood, and that the children were not
to be endangered.  She gently pushed them back, and bade them go in, and
then stepped forward in the sight of the people, with her hands and eyes
raised to heaven.  Lafayette took her hand, and, kneeling reverently,
kissed it.  This act turned the tide of the people's feelings, and they
cheered the queen.  It was finely done of Lafayette, both for presence
of mind and noble feeling.

Here was the difference between the enraged people and their enlightened
leaders.  Lafayette was a friend of the people, and an enemy to tyranny:
but he had not been ground down by poverty, reared in hunger and brutal
ignorance, and taught to hate proud and selfish oppressors with a cruel
hatred.  Such was the difference between him and this wretched mob, whom
we feel more disposed to pity than to blame, so great was their
ignorance, and so terrible had been the sufferings of their lives.
Lafayette's eyes were opened by knowledge and reflection, while theirs
were closed by passion and prejudice.  They believed that all royal
rulers were wicked, and the queen the most wicked of all; and that if
she were but out of the way, with a few more, all would go right,--bread
would be cheap, the nobility less extravagant and oppressive, and the
king willing to govern by men of the people's choice.  Lafayette saw
that all this was very foolish.  He saw that nothing could be worse than
the state of France,--the tyranny of the nobility,--the extravagance and
frivolity of the court,--and the wretchedness of the people.  He was for
amending all this; but he knew that these sins and woes were the growth
of many centuries, and that no one person, or dozen of persons, was to
be blamed as the cause.  He probably saw that the queen was as ignorant
in one way as the mob in another; and was therefore to be pitied.  She
had never been taught what millions of people were suffering, and did
not know how to frame her conduct so as to spare their irritated and
wounded feelings: and therefore she had filled up her youth with shows
and pleasures, and from year to year given to her dependents the means
of enriching themselves at the expense of the poor, without being in the
least aware of the mischief she was doing.  It was in the knowledge of
all this, in deep sorrow and compassion for both parties in this great
quarrel, and with an earnest desire to bring them to bear with each
other, that Lafayette kissed the queen's hand in the balcony.  His heart
must have beat with hope and gladness when he heard the people
immediately shout, "Long live the queen!"

Again the cry was, "The king to Paris!" and still the king was as
unwilling as ever to go.  He wished to consult the Assembly about it,
and sent to ask them to come, and hold their sitting in the palace.
While they were deliberating whether to do so, the mob became so
peremptory, so noisy, that the king dared no longer hesitate.  He did
the same thing now that no experience could teach him to avoid, in great
affairs or small: he refused as long as possible what the people had set
their hearts upon,--then hesitated, and at last had to yield, when it
was no longer possible to show any good grace in the action.  From his
failures a lesson might be taken by all rulers of a nation which has
learned to have a will of its own, and to speak it:--a lesson to grant
with readiness and a good grace what must be, or ought to be yielded,
and to refuse with firmness what ought not to be granted.  Louis the
Sixteenth never could even get so far as to settle in his own mind what
ought, and what ought not to be granted; and unhappily there was no one
about him well-qualified to advise.  The queen was firm and decided; but
she was so deficient in knowledge that she was always as likely to guide
him wrong as right.  Now, however, there was no longer room for doubt.
The king said from the balcony, "My children, you wish that I should
follow you to Paris.  I consent, on condition that you do not separate
me from my wife and children."  He also stipulated that his guards
should be well treated; to which the multitude consented.

It was, however, far from their intention that the king should _follow_
them to Paris.  They did not mean to lose sight of him, for fear he
should slip away.  They caused General Lafayette to fix the hour at
which the king would go.  One o'clock was fixed.

Till one, the royal grooms were preparing the carriages to convey the
royal family and suite,--a long train of coaches.  The servants in the
palace were packing up what they could for so hurried a removal.  The
royal children did no lessons that day, I should think; for Madame de
Tourzel, who was to go with them, must have been in great terror for the
whole party.  Lafayette was establishing what order he could, riding
about, pale and anxious, to arrange what was called the Parisian army.
For two nights (and what nights!) he had not closed his eyes.  The
people meantime searched out some granaries, and loaded carts with the
corn, to take with them to Paris.

A more extraordinary procession was perhaps never seen.  Royal
carriages, and waggons full of corn,--the king's guards and the
ragamuffin crowd; round the king's carriage a mob of dirty, fierce
fish-women and market-women, eating as they walked, and sometimes
screaming out close at the coach-door, "We shall not want bread any
more.  We have got the baker, and the baker's wife, and the little
baker's boy:"--such was the procession.  There was another thing in it
which the king and queen saw, but which we must hope the children did
not,--the heads of two body-guards who had been killed early in the
morning, in the quarrel which led to the attack upon the queen.

The queen sat in her coach, seen by the vast multitude, for five long
hours,--calm, dignified, and silent.  From one till two the royal
carriage had to stand, while the great procession was preparing to move;
and it did not enter Paris till dusk,--till six o'clock.  It was still
raining,--a dull, drizzling rain.  Louis could not have liked to hear
himself talked about as he was, by the loud dirty women that crowded
round the coach; nor to hear them speak to his mother.  Some pointed to
the corn-waggons, and told her they had got what they wanted, in spite
of her.  Some said, "Come now, don't you be a traitor any more, and we
will all love you."  There were two hundred thousand people in this
procession.

When they reached Paris, the royal family did not go straight home to
the Tuileries.  There was something to be done first.  They had to go to
the great city hall, to meet the authorities of Paris.  The mayor
received them, and welcomed them to the city; and the king replied that
he always came with pleasure and confidence among his good people of
Paris.  In repeating what the king had declared to those assembled, the
mayor forgot the word "confidence."  The queen said aloud, "Say
_confidence_;--with pleasure and confidence."

Then there were many speeches made, during which poor little Louis,
tired as he was, had to wait.  Called up before five in the morning, and
having sat so many hours in the carriage, with guns and pistols
incessantly popping off, and yells and shouts from such a concourse of
people, he might well be tired: but before they could go home, the king
had to show himself in the balcony of the city hall, by torch-light,
with a great tricolor cockade in his hat.  It was just eleven o'clock
before they got to their palace of the Tuileries.

There everything was comfortless,--for there had been no notice of their
coming.  The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court,
who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion.  Probably
Louis did not mind this,--glad enough to get to bed at all after such a
long and dreary day.  This was the 6th of October.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SIX.

THE DAUPHIN AT PARIS.

In the morning of the 7th, some magistrates came, bringing upholsterers
with them, and asked the king how he would be pleased to be lodged.
They were ready to dispose and furnish the palace as he liked.  He
answered gruffly that others might lodge as they pleased, he had nothing
to say to it.  He was apt to be sulky occasionally, in his most
prosperous days; and it was natural that he should be more so now.
Sometimes, when the queen made anxious inquiries about the state of
affairs, he answered, "Madam, your affair is with the children."  He
knew that he was, in fact, a prisoner in his own capital; and that it
must at any rate be long before he could leave it.  He was losing the
fine hunting season; and there was no saying when he might hunt again.
This grieved him very much.  He sent for his locksmith, and did a little
filing, now and then; but he was losing his pleasure in everything.

Some of the women who had walked by the royal carriage yesterday came
this morning, and stationed themselves before the queen's windows,
requesting to see her.  One of them told her that she must send away all
bad advisers, and love the people.  The queen replied that she had loved
the people when she lived at Versailles, and that she should go on to
love them now.  They repeated to her some reports that they had heard
against her,--that she had wished in the summer that Paris should be
fired upon; and that she would yesterday have fled to the frontiers, if
she had not been prevented.  She replied that they had heard these
things, and believed them; and that while some people told and others
believed what was not true, the nation and the king would never be
happy.  One woman then spoke a few words of German: but the queen
interrupted her, saying that she was now so completely a French woman,
that she had forgotten her German.  This delighted the women much; for
some of the jealousy of the queen which existed was on account of her
being a foreigner.  They clapped their hands; and asked for the ribbons
and flowers out of her hat.  She took them off with her own hands, and
gave them to the women.  They divided them to keep; and they remained
half an hour shouting, "Long live Marie Antoinette!  Long live our good
queen!"

It was found, during the whole long period of her residence where she
now was, that everybody who talked with the queen liked her;--her
bitterest enemies were heard to shout as these women did, when once they
had heard her speak; and soldiers, who had spoken insultingly of her
before they knew her, were ready to lay down their lives for her when
they became her guards.  The reason of this was, not merely that she was
beautiful, and that she spoke in a winning manner, when she knew how
much depended upon her graciousness;--it was chiefly because the
ignorant and angry people had fancied her a sort of monster, determined
upon her own indulgence at all cost, and even seeking their destruction,
and delighting in their miseries.  When, instead of this monster, they
found a dignified woman, with sorrow in her beautiful face, and
gentleness in her voice, they forgot for the time the faults she really
had, and the blameable things she had really done.  When again reminded
of these, in her absence, the old hatred revived with new force; they
were vexed that she had won upon them, and ended by being as cruel as we
shall see they were.

She found, this morning, how frightened her little boy had been, the day
before.  There was some noise in the court-yard of the palace.  Louis
came running, and threw himself trembling into her arms, crying, "O,
mamma, is to-day going to be yesterday again?"  When they were settled,
and everything was done to make him as happy as a child should be, he
did not forget what he had seen and heard.  He not only walked with his
mother, or with Madame de Tourzel, in the garden of the Tuileries, but
he had a little garden of his own, railed in, and a little tool-house
for his spade and rake.  There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen
digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes,
feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread.  Still he
did not forget what he had seen and heard.  One day, his father saw the
boy looking at him very gravely and earnestly.  The king asked him what
he was thinking about.  Louis said he wanted to ask a very serious
question, if he might; and the king gave him leave.

"I want to know," said Louis, "why all the people who used to love you
so much are now so angry with you.  I want to know what you have done to
put them in such a passion."

The king took him upon his knee, and said,--

"My dear, I wished to make the people happier than they were before.  I
wanted money to pay the expenses of our great wars.  I asked it of the
parliament, as the kings of France have always done before.  The
magistrates who composed the parliament were unwilling, and said that
the people alone had a right to consent that this money should be given.
I called together at Versailles the principal people of every town,
distinguished by their rank, their fortune, or their talents.  These
were called the States-General.  When they were assembled, they required
of me things which I could not do, either for my own sake or yours; as
you are to be king after me.  Wicked persons have appeared, causing the
people to rebel; and the shocking things that have happened lately are
their doing.  We must blame them and not the people."

So spoke Louis the Sixteenth to his young son: and from these words
(among other evidence) we learn how little he was aware of the true
causes and nature of the great Revolution which was taking place.  It
appears that he really thought this revolution was owing to the acts of
the last few months, and not to the long course of grinding oppression
which had begun hundreds of years before he was born.  He believed that
the violence he witnessed was owing to the malice of a few "wicked
persons," and not to the exasperation of a nation,--the fury of many
millions of sufferers against a few hundreds of the rich and powerful.
This was not the first time of the king's showing how little he
understood of what was taking place and what ought to be done.  When it
was absolutely necessary to the peace of the kingdom to have a minister
who would relieve the people of the heaviest taxes, the king removed
such a minister, and thought he was doing what he could to make up for
this, by retrenching some expenses in the palace.  For instance, it had
always been the custom for the two first bed-chamber women of the queen
to have for their own all the wax-lights placed daily in the whole suite
of royal apartments, whether lighted or not.  These they sold for many
hundred pounds a year.  When the king began to retrench, he took from
these women the wax-light privilege; and the candles which were not
lighted one evening served for the next.  The ladies were not pleased at
being thus deprived of a large part of their income; but this, with the
few other retrenchments made by the royal family, was right.  All these
retrenchments were nothing, however, in comparison with what was wanted.
The peasantry still had to pay the grievous land-tax, even when they
were reduced to eat boiled nettles and grass.  The poor still had to buy
the quantity of dear salt ordered by law, even when they had no meat to
eat it with.  The labouring man and his sons, weakened by hunger and
spent with toil, still had to turn out and work upon the roads, without
wages, while wife and young children were growing savage with want in
their ruined hut.  It was all very well for the king and queen to burn
fewer wax-lights; but far happier would it have been could the monarch
have seen and known that the thing wanted was to relieve the poor from
these heavy oppressions; and that his duty was to uphold a minister who
would do it, even if every rich and noble person quitted his court, and
turned against him.  This, however, was not to be expected; for the king
and queen lived amongst, and were acquainted with, not the poor, but the
noble and the rich, and heard only what they had to say.

It is not known whether little Louis was ever told what the poor suffer.
It is probable that he heard something of it; for his elder brother and
sister certainly had, upon one occasion.  It was the queen's custom to
give her children a stock of new playthings on New Year's Day.  One very
hard winter, she and the king heard of the sufferings of the poor in
Paris from cold; and the king ordered a large quantity of wood to be
purchased with his money, and given away.  The queen commanded the
toy-man to bring the new toys, as usual, on New Year's eve, and spread
them out in one of her apartments.  She then led the children in, showed
them the playthings, and said these were what she meant to have given
them; but that she had heard that so many poor families were perishing
with cold, that she hoped they would be willing to do without new toys,
and let the money go for fuel for the poor.  The children agreed, and
the toy-man was sent away, with a present of money, to console him for
the disappointment of having sold nothing.  It is probable that Louis
also, when old enough to understand, was told of the sufferings of the
poor: but it is difficult to give an idea of what want really is to
children who have half-a-dozen ladies and footmen always at their
orders, and who are surrounded with luxuries which seem to them to come
as naturally as the light of day, and to belong to them as completely as
their own limbs and senses.  We have all heard of the little French
princess who, when told by her governess how many of the poor were dying
of starvation, in a hard season, said, she thought that was very
foolish; and that, rather than starve, she would eat bread and cheese.
She had no idea that multitudes never tasted anything better than the
coarsest black dry bread; and that it was for want of this that many
were perishing.  How should she know?  She had never seen the inside of
a poor man's hut, or tasted any but the most delicate food.

Louis wished to know what he ought to do, now that the people were so
angry with his father.  The queen told him that he must behave civilly
and kindly to the magistrates, when they came; to the officers of the
people's army,--the National Guard,--and to everybody that belonged to
Paris.  Louis took great pains to do this: and when he had an
opportunity of speaking kindly to the mayor, or any other visitor, he
used to run up to his mother, and whisper in her ear, "Was that
right?"--He once said a thing which pleased the mayor of Paris very
much.  The mayor showed him the shield of Scipio, which was in the royal
library, and asked him which he liked best, Scipio or Hannibal.  The boy
answered that he liked best him who had defended his own country.

At this time he read, not only of Scipio and Hannibal, but much besides.
The royal family, out of spirits, and not knowing what would happen
next, led a very quiet life in the Tuileries, from the 6th of October,
when they were brought there, till the beginning of the next summer.

During this season, the queen never went to the theatre.  She gave no
concerts, or large entertainments: and only received the court twice a
week, where everybody came wearing white lilies, and bows of white
ribbon, while tricolor cockades were sold at all the corners of the
streets; and the National Guards stopped all who did not show red and
blue colours.  The queen went to mass, and dined in public with the
king, twice a week, and joined small card-parties in the evenings.  The
Princess de Lamballe, who had returned to resume her office in the
palace, gave gay parties; and the queen went a few times, but soon felt
that, in her circumstances, a private life was more suitable.  One
evening she returned to her apartments in great agitation.  An English
nobleman had been exhibiting a large ring which he wore, containing a
lock of Oliver Cromwell's hair.  She looked with horror upon Cromwell,
as a regicide; and she thought the English nobleman meant to point out
to her what kings may come to when their people are discontented with
them.  It was probable that the gentleman meant no such thing: but he
was guilty of a very thoughtless act, which gave a great deal of pain.

The queen's mind was so full of the revolution, that she found she could
not fix her attention upon books.  Work suited her best; and she sat the
greater part of the morning working, with the Princess Elizabeth, at a
carpet intended for one of their apartments.  After breakfast she went
to the king, to converse with him, if he was so inclined.  She then sat
by, at work, while the children did their lessons, which was the regular
employment of the morning.  They all walked in the palace gardens; and
the queen returned to her work after dinner.  She could talk of nothing
but the revolution: and was extremely anxious to know what everybody
thought of her,--particularly persons in office.  She was for ever
wondering how it was that those who hailed her with love and joy, when
she came as a bride from Germany, should so fiercely hate her now.  It
is a pity that she did not now learn to know and trust Lafayette.  It
might have saved her, and all who belonged to her; but she was
prejudiced against him from his being a friend of the people, and in
favour of great changes in the government.

Thus the winter passed wearily on.  If the people of Paris were jealous
of the queen's wish to get away, and suspicious of her meaning it, if
possible, they were not far wrong.  Some or other of the nobles and
clergy were continually planning to carry the royal family, either to
Rouen (a loyal city) or to the frontiers, to meet the king's brother and
friends, and the army they were raising.  It would probably have been
done, but for the king's irresolution.  He would neither speak nor stir
about it.

One night in March, at ten o'clock, when the children were asleep in
bed, the king and queen were playing whist with his next brother and
sister-in-law (who had not gone away), and the Princess Elizabeth was
kneeling on a footstool beside the card table, looking on.  Monsieur
Campan, one of the most trusty of the queen's attendants, came in, and
said, in a low voice, that the Count d'Inisdal had called to say that
everything was planned for an escape.  The nobles who had contrived it
were collected to guard and accompany the king;--the National Guard
about the palace were gained over;--post horses were ready all along the
road;--the king had only to consent, and he might be off before
midnight.  The king went on playing his cards, and made no answer.  "Did
you hear," said the queen, "what Campan has been telling us?"

"I hear," said the king; and still went on playing.  After a while, the
queen observed, "Campan must have an answer of some kind."  Then, at
length, the king spoke.  "Tell the Count d'Inisdal," said he, "that I
cannot consent to be carried off."  The queen repeated, "The king cannot
_consent_ to be carried off," meaning it to be clearly understood that
he would be very glad to go, if it could be so done as that he might say
afterwards that he had had nothing to do with the plan.  The Count
d'Inisdal was very angry at the message.  "I see how it is," said he.
"We, the king's faithful servants, are to have all the danger, and all
the blame, if the scheme fails."  And off he went.

The queen would not give up her hopes that the nobles would understand
how glad the royal family would be to go, and would come for them.  She
sat till past midnight wrapping up her jewels to carry away; and then
desired the lady who assisted her not to go to bed.  The lady listened
all the night through, and looked out of the window many times; but all
was still, and no one but the guards was to be seen.  The queen observed
to this lady that they should have to fly.  There was no saying to what
lengths the rebellious people would go, she declared, and the danger
increased every day.

There was indeed no respite from apprehensions of danger.  About a month
after, on the 13th of April, there was a good deal of agitation in
Paris, from the debates in the Assembly having been very warm, and such
as to make the people fear that the king would be carried away.
Lafayette promised the king that if he saw reason to consider the palace
in danger, he would fire a great cannon on a certain bridge.  At night,
some accidental musket-shots were heard near the palace, and the king
mistook them for Lafayette's cannon.  He went to the queen's apartments.
She was not there.  He found her in the Dauphin's chamber, with Louis
in her arms.  "I was alarmed about you," said the king.  "You see," said
she, clasping her little son close, "I was at my post."

While thus suffering, and certainly not learning to love the people more
on this account,--while distrusting Lafayette, and knowing no one else
who could give them the knowledge and advice which would have been best
for them, the royal family were confirmed in their worst prejudices and
errors by letters which reached them from a distance.  Those who wished
to write to them in their distress were naturally those who sympathised
most with them, and least with the people.  One instance shows how
absurd and mischievous such a correspondence was.  The Empress Catherine
of Russia wrote to the queen, "Kings ought to proceed on their course
without troubling themselves about the cries of the people, as the moon
traverses the sky without regard to the baying of dogs."  Whether the
queen saw the folly of these words, and thought of the proper answer to
them,--that a king is a man, like those who cry to him for sympathy, but
the moon is not a dog,--we do not know; nor whether she perceived the
insolent wickedness of the sentence; but she saw the unfeeling absurdity
of writing this to a king and queen who were actually prisoners in the
hands of their subjects.  If the king had been active, decided, and
equal to the dangers of the times, he would have made use of this winter
in Paris to go among his people, and learn for himself what was the
matter, what they wanted, and how much could be done for peace and good
government: and then this correspondence from a distance might have done
no harm: but, indolent and passive as he was, everything seemed to
conspire to prevent all mutual understanding between him and the nation.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN.

AT SAINT CLOUD.

One of his wishes was, to a certain degree, gratified at length.  He got
a little more hunting when June came.  To the surprise of the court, and
many besides, the royal family were quietly permitted to go to their
country-house at Saint Cloud, a few miles from Paris, when the weather
became too warm for a comfortable residence at the Tuileries.  The
National Guard followed them; but the king rode out daily, attended only
by an officer of General Lafayette's staff.  The queen was guarded by
another of these officers, and the Dauphin by a third.

It seems rather strange that so much liberty should have been allowed,
when so lately every precaution was taken to prevent the flight of the
family.  During the past winter and spring, and the next season, the
leaders of the revolution kept a constant watch upon the palace, and
knew all that went on there.  They knew what persons were admitted at
back doors to consult with the queen.  They also knew, after the family
returned from Saint Cloud, how many horses were in the royal stables,
and how many of them stood constantly saddled and bridled.  They knew
how the royal carriages were kept stuffed with luggage, ready to start
at a moment's warning,--the royal arms being nearly rubbed out from the
panels.  They declared also that they knew that the king's old aunts
meant to go away, carrying off, not only plenty of treasure, but little
Louis; and that a boy, very like Louis, had been in training for some
time, to represent him, when the true Dauphin should have been carried
to his uncle, over the frontiers.  All this was published in the
newspapers, so that, if the old princesses had any such plan prepared,
they were obliged to give it up.  Thus were the family guarded in Paris,
before and after, and yet, in June, they were riding and driving about
Saint Cloud, believing that they might go off any day they chose.
Perhaps, however, this might not have proved so easy as they thought.
There might have been spies about them that they did not know of; and,
since nothing could be worse than their management of all business
matters, from inexperience and want of knowledge of other people's minds
and affairs, their enemies might feel pretty secure that the royal
prisoners could not fly far without being caught.

There was a plan for escape completely formed, as we know from the lady
to whom the queen confided it.  No one doubted of the entire success of
this scheme; and the lady daily expected and hoped to have to wait in
vain for the return of the royal family from their drive.

They went out every afternoon at four o'clock; and often did not return
till eight, and sometimes even not till nine.  The king went on
horseback, attended by grooms and pages on whom he could rely.  The
ladies, in a carriage, were also followed by grooms and pages.  The plan
was for all to ride to the same place on a certain afternoon, by
different roads,--the king on horseback, the queen and her daughter, and
the princess Elizabeth, in a carriage; the Dauphin and Madame de Tourzel
in a chaise; and some of the royal suite in other vehicles.  On meeting
in a wood, twelve miles from Saint Cloud, the three officers of
Lafayette's staff were to be gained over, or to be overpowered by the
servants; and then all were to push on for the frontier.  Meanwhile, the
people at home would wait till nine o'clock, quietly enough.  Then, on
becoming alarmed and looking about, they would find on the king's desk a
letter to the Assembly, which they would instantly forward.  It could
not reach Paris before ten; and then the Assembly would not be sitting.
The president would have to be found; and the Assembly could hardly be
got together, or messengers sent after the fugitives, before midnight;
when the royal family would have had a start of eight hours.

The lady to whom the queen confided this scheme approved it, but asked
no questions, and hoped she should not be told the precise day, as she
was to be left behind, and wished to be able to say that she had not
known that they intended more than an afternoon drive when they went
forth.  One June evening, nine o'clock came, and none of them were home.
The attendants walked restlessly about the courts, and wondered.  The
lady's heart beat so that she was afraid her emotion would be observed.
But presently she heard the carriage-wheels; and all returned as usual.
She told the queen that she had not expected to see her home to-night:
and the queen replied that they must wait till the king's aunts had left
France, and till they knew whether the plan would suit the wishes of
their friends over the frontier.

It was believed by many persons, and certainly by Lafayette, that there
were plots, at this time, against the life of the queen.  An agent of
the police gave notice of an intention to poison her.  The queen did not
believe it.  She believed that her enemies meant to break her spirit by
calumny; but she had no fear of poison.  Her head physician, however,
chose to take precautions.  He desired one of her ladies to have always
at hand a bottle of fresh, good oil of sweet almonds, which, with milk,
is an antidote against corrosive poisons.  He was uneasy at the queen's
habit of sweetening draughts of water from a sugar-basin which stood
open in her apartment.  He was afraid of this sugar being poisoned.  The
lady therefore kept a great quantity of sugar pounded in her own
apartment, and always carried some packets of it in her bag, from which
she changed the sugar in the basin, several times a day.  The queen
found this out, and begged she would not take the trouble to do this, as
she had no fear of dying by that method.  Poor lady!  She said sometimes
that, but for her family's sake, she should be glad to die by any means.
She was indeed unhappy; but she had not yet learned how much more
unhappy had been multitudes of her people before they hated her as they
now did.  She grieved to see her daughter growing up grave and silent,
and her little boy of five years old surrounded by sorrowful faces, and
subject to terrors at an age when he should have been merry, and smiled
upon by everybody near him: but she knew nothing of the affliction of
thousands of mothers who had seen their children dying of hunger on
heaps of straw, in hovels open to the rain; or of the indignation of
thousands more who had seen their lively, promising infants growing
stupid and cross under the pressure of early toil, and in the absence of
all instruction.  All this had happened while she was paying 15,000
pounds for a pair of diamond ear-rings, and using her influence in
behalf of bad advisers to the king.  She might wish to die under her
sorrows; she little knew how many had died under their most intolerable
sufferings.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE ENTERPRISE.

The longer the revolution went on, exhibiting more and more fully the
incapacity of the king, the more were the intoxicated people tempted to
exult over him, sometimes fiercely, and sometimes in mockery.  It is not
conceivable that they would have ventured upon some things that were
said and done, if the king had been a man of spirit; for men of spirit
command personal respect in their adversity.  The great original quarrel
with the king, it will be remembered, was on matters of finance,--about
the vast debts of the State, and the choice of a minister who would
wisely endeavour to reduce these debts, and at the same time to relieve
the people from some of the pressure of taxation.  Towards the end of
this year, 1790, the Assembly had decreed the discharge of the debts of
the State; and (whether or not they might prove able to execute what
they decreed) the people were highly delighted.  It was the custom to
serenade the royal family on New Year's morning.  On this New Year's
day, the band of the National Guard played under the king's windows an
opera air which went to the words, "But our creditors are paid, and we
are consoled."  They would play nothing but this air; and finished it,
stopped and resumed, over and over again.  They might have been very
sure that the king knew what they meant by playing it at all.

Another New Year's day custom was to present gifts to the royal
children.  On this day, some grenadiers of the Parisian guard came,
preceded by military music, to offer a gift to the Dauphin.  This gift
was a set of dominoes made of the stone and marble of which parts of the
Bastille had been built.  On the lid of the box were engraved some
verses, of which the sense was as follows:--

"These stones of the walls which enclosed so many innocent victims of
arbitrary power, have been made into a toy, to be offered to your
Highness, as a token of the love of the people, and a lesson as to their
strength."

The queen would not allow her son to have this toy.  She took it from
him, and gave it into the hands of one of her ladies, desiring her to
preserve it as a curious sign of the times.

If the royal family received insults from people who could not feel for
them, it was equally true that their adherents exasperated the feelings
of persons who quite as little deserved insult.  Such was the effect of
mutual prejudice.  General Lafayette, still in hopes of bringing the
opposing parties to some understanding, frequently went to the palace of
the Tuileries, where now, during the winter, the royal family were once
more established.  As there was little use in conversing with the king
about affairs, these interviews were generally with the queen,--a fact
which prevents our wondering much at the common accusation that the
queen meddled with the government, and did mischief by it.  One day when
Lafayette was with the queen, one of her majesty's ladies observed
(intending to be heard by the General's officers) that it made her
uneasy to think of her majesty's being shut up alone with a rebel and a
robber.  An older and more prudent lady, Madame Campan, seeing the folly
of such a speech at a time when everything might depend on General
Lafayette's goodwill, reproved the person who had spoken; but it is
curious to see how much more she thought of the imprudence than of the
injustice of the speech.  She observed that General Lafayette was
certainly a rebel: but that an officer who commanded forty thousand men,
the capital, and a large extent of country, should be called a chieftain
rather than a robber.  One would think this was little enough to say in
favour of such a man as Lafayette: yet the queen the next day asked
Madame Campan, with a mournful gravity, what she could have meant by
taking Lafayette's part, and silencing the other ladies because they did
not like him.  When she heard how it was, the queen was satisfied: but
we, far from being satisfied, may learn from this how difficult it must
have been to help the royal family and court, while they thought and
spoke of the best men in the nation in such a way as this.  In truth,
there were miserable prejudices and insults on both sides: and at this
distance of time, Lafayette, with his love of freedom, and his goodwill
towards all the sufferers of both parties, rises to our view from among
them all as a sunny hill-top above the fogs of an unwholesome marsh.

The next event in the royal family was the departure of the old
princesses.  They got away in February; and, though stopped in some
places on their journey, crossed the frontiers in safety.  They might
probably have remained secure enough in Paris; and their departure was
not on their own account, so much as that of the king.  He could not
have attempted to fly while his aged aunts remained in the midst of the
troubles.  When they were disposed of, he felt himself more free to go
or stay.  The old ladies earnestly entreated the sweet princess
Elizabeth to go with them, representing to her how happy she might be at
Rome in the exercise of the religion to which she was devoted.  But her
religion taught her that her duty lay, not where she could say her
prayers with the most ease and security, but where she could give the
most help and consolation.  She refused ease and safety, and declared
her intention of remaining with her brother's family to the end--
whatever that end might be.

The queen immediately (that is, in March) began her preparations for
departure.  Remembering how easily they might have got away from Saint
Cloud, last summer, it was determined to start from Saint Cloud this
time.  On the 15th of April, notice was given to the Assembly that, the
king having become subject to colds of late, the royal family would
remove into the country in a few days.

The people of Paris discussed this plan very earnestly.  Lafayette
wished that the king should live at any one of his palaces that he
pleased.  But so much had been said, all through the winter, about his
majesty's leaving Paris, that it had now become a very difficult thing
to do.  The papers on the royal side had proudly threatened that the
king would leave his people, if they were not more worthy of his
presence.  The revolutionary papers had said that the king should not
go, to raise up armies of enemies at a distance.  All Paris had been
kept awake by stories of saddled horses in the royal stables, of packed
carriages, and a host of armed nobles, always hovering about, ready to
rescue him and murder the people.  It does indeed appear that latterly
there had been various mysterious meetings of gentlemen, who were
secretly armed: and report, which always exaggerates these things,
declared that thirty thousand such armed gentlemen were hidden in the
woods, about Saint Cloud, and that they would overpower the people's
guard, and carry off the family.

Some may wonder why the nation, if sick of their king, did not let him
go, and rejoice to be rid of him.  The reason why they detained him so
carefully was this: they knew that his brother and friends were raising
an army at a distance; and they saw that, if once the royal family
escaped from their hands, they should have all Europe down upon them;
whereas, if they kept the family as hostages, their enemies would let
them alone, in the fear that the first march of a foreign army into
France would be revenged upon the lives of the very persons whom it was
desired to save.

Considering all these things, the people resolved that the royal family
should not go to Saint Cloud.

First, numbers of the servants were sent off, to get everything made
ready for the king, who was to follow on the 18th, to dinner.  The
servants were allowed to go without opposition; so that on the 18th, the
apartments at Saint Cloud were ready, the dinner was cooking, and the
attendants looking out along the road to Paris, wondering why the
carriages did not appear, and fearing the dinner would be spoiled.
Nobody came to eat it, however, unless it was given to the National
Guard, a detachment of whom had gone forward, to be on duty about the
palace.

At one o'clock, the great royal coach, drawn by its eight black horses,
drove up to the palace-gate in Paris; and immediately the alarm-bell
from a neighbouring church-steeple began to sound.  The family were
almost ready; but multitudes of people, summoned by the bell, collected
presently, and declared that the coach should not move.  Lafayette and
his officers came up, and did what they could in the way of persuasion:
but the crowd said, "Hold your tongues.  The king shall not go."  They
shouted, on seeing one of the royal family, "We do not choose that the
king should go."  The royal party, however, entered the carriage, and
the coachman cracked his whip; but some seized the reins and the horses'
heads; others shut the gates: and a multitude so pressed round the heavy
coach that it rocked from side to side.  Such of the royal attendants as
attempted to get near for orders were seized, their swords taken from
them, and their persons roughly handled.  The children must have been
grievously terrified; for even, their mother, so calm in danger,
passionately entreated from the carriage-window that her servants might
not be hurt.  The National Guards did not know how to act.  Lafayette
and his officers rode hither and thither, trying to open a way: the
driver whipped, the horses scrambled and reared; and the people pressed
closer and closer, so that the great coach rocked more and more;--all in
vain, it did not get on one inch.

All this, amidst tremendous noise and confusion, went on for an hour and
three-quarters.  Then Lafayette rode up to say he would clear the way
with cannon, if the king would order it.  The king was not a person to
give any order at all; and least of all, such an order as that.  So the
royal family alighted, and returned into the palace, while the coach
went back to the coach-house, and the eight black horses to their
stalls.

The king and queen were not sorry for what had happened.  This act of
violence must prove so plainly to all the world that they were
prisoners, that all the world would now think them justified in getting
off, in any way they could.  They might now devote themselves to the one
great object of escape.

Poor little Louis must have been very sorry.  He had seen the hay-making
at Saint Cloud, last summer: and now he must have been pleased at the
thought of the sweet fields and gardens of the country, and the woods
just bursting into leaf.  There were many woods about Saint Cloud.  He
knew nothing of armed nobles lurking there to save him and his family.
What he thought of was the violets and daffodils, and fresh grass and
sprouting shrubs,--the young lambs in the field, and the warbling larks
in the air.  And now, when actually in the carriage to go (his garden
tools probably gone before), he had to get out again, and stay in hot,
dusty, glaring Paris; and, what was far worse, in danger of seeing every
day the sneering, angry faces which had been crowded round the carriage
for nearly two hours; and of hearing, wherever he walked, the cruel
laugh or fierce abuse with which his parents were greeted when they
attempted to do anything which the people did not like.  No doubt, the
little boy's heart was heavy when he was lifted from the coach, and went
back into the palace.

How much happier he might have been if he had been one of the children
he had seen hay-making at Saint Cloud, the year before!  Or even as the
child of a Paris tradesman he might have been happier than now, though
the children of the tradesmen of capital cities seldom have a run in the
fields, or gather violets in the fresh woods of April.  But, as a
shop-keeper's child, he might at least have seen his father cheerful in
his employment, and his mother bright and gay.  He might have passed his
days without hearing passionate voices, and seeing angry faces; without
dreaming of being afraid.  It was now nothing to him that he was born a
prince, and constantly told that he was to be a king.  He saw nothing in
his father's condition that made him think it a good thing to be a king;
and he would have given all the grandeur in which he lived, all the
ladies and footmen that waited upon him, all his pretty clothes, all his
many playthings, all the luxuries of the palace, to be free from the
terrors of the revolution, and to see his parents look as happy as other
children see theirs every day.

He did not know it, but preparations were from this time going on
diligently for an escape,--for a real flight, by night.

We must not suppose that in this, any more than other affairs, the king
showed decision, or the queen knowledge and judgment.  They could not
show what they had not: and it was now too late for the king to become
prompt and active, and for the queen to learn to view people and things
as the rest of the world did, brought up, as she had been, in ignorance
and self-will.  She often complained (and we cannot wonder) at having to
live and act among people who showed no presence of mind and good sense:
but, really, the king, and everybody concerned, might well have
complained of the ruin which her folly and self-will brought upon the
present scheme,--the last chance they had for liberty.  Not that she
only was to blame.  There were mistakes,--there was mismanagement
without end; showing how little those who are brought up in courts,
having everything done for them exactly to their wish, are fit for
business, when brought to the proof.

The case was just this.  Here were the king and queen, with a sister and
two children, wanting to get away from Paris.  They had plenty of money
and jewels; plenty of horses and carriages; plenty of devoted servants
and friends:--friends at hand, ready to help; friends at a distance,
ready to receive them; and every court in Europe inclined to welcome and
favour them.  The one thing to be done was to elude the people of Paris,
and of the large towns through which they must pass.

In such a case as this, it seems clear that, in the first place,
everything at home should go on as usual, up to the very last moment;
that there should be no sign of preparation whatever, to excite the
suspicion of any tradespeople or servants who were not in the secret.

In the next place, it is clear that the king should have separated from
his family on the road.  His best chance was to go with one other
gentleman, and to travel as private gentlemen are in the habit of doing.
While he went by one road to one country, the queen and princess should
have gone by another road, under the escort of one or two of the many
gentlemen who were devotedly attached to their cause.  The children
might, with their governess, have gone, under the charge of another
gentleman, to Brussels, to the arms of their aunt (their mother's
sister), who held her court there.

In the third place, they should have taken the smallest quantity of
luggage they could travel with without exciting suspicion, carrying on
their persons money and jewels, with which to buy what they wanted when
they were safe.  They should have travelled in light carriages, and have
made sure, by employing drivers and couriers who knew the respective
roads, of encountering no difficulty about meeting the relays of horses,
and of exciting no particular observation at the post-houses.  These are
the arrangements which ordinary people, accustomed to business, would
have made.  We shall see how the queen chose that the affair should be
managed.

During the month of March (before the attempt to go to Saint Cloud), the
queen began her preparations for her escape to another kingdom.  Madame
Campan (in whom she had perfect trust, and with good reason) was in
attendance upon her during that month.  The queen employed her in buying
and getting made an immense quantity of clothes.  Madame Campan
remonstrated with her upon this, saying that the queen of France would
always be able to obtain linen and gowns wherever she went: but the
queen was obstinate.  Though it was necessary for Madame Campan to go
out almost disguised to procure these things,--though she was obliged,
for the sake of avoiding suspicion, to order six petticoats at one shop,
and six at another, and to buy one gown in one street, and two in
another,--and though this great load of things would be sure to attract
notice, however they might be sent off, nothing could satisfy the queen
but having with her a complete and splendid wardrobe for herself and the
children; and this, after she and the king had a hundred times wondered
how it came to be told in the newspapers that so many horses were kept
saddled in their stables, and that such and such persons had paid them
visits by the back-door.  After having suffered for months from spies,
the queen would not agree to the simple plan of doing nothing which
spies might not see, and tell all Paris, if they chose.  As it was, it
was well-known when Madame Campan went out, where she went, and what
about, from the very day her shopping began.

Madame Campan endeavoured to use more disguise by getting her own little
boy measured for the clothes which were intended for the Dauphin; and by
asking her sister to have the Princess Royal's wardrobe made ready as if
for her daughter.  But these poor expedients were seen through, as might
have been expected.  How much easier and safer it would have been to
have no ordering and making at all.

These clothes were not all to go by the same coach which conveyed the
family.  Most of them were sent in a trunk to one of the queen's women,
who was now at Arras, from whence she was to proceed to Brussels with
these clothes, to meet her mistress.  Of course, the sending off of this
trunk was observed.

All this was not so foolish as what followed.  The queen had a very
large, expensive, and remarkable toilet-case, called a necessaire, which
contained everything wanted for the toilet, from her rarest essences and
perfumes down to soap and combs.  It was of fine workmanship, and had
much expensive material and ornament about it.  In short, it was fit for
a splendid royal palace, and no other place.  The queen consulted Madame
Campan about how she should get this necessaire away.  Madame Campan
entreated her not to think of taking it, saying that if it was moved
from its place, on any pretence, it would be enough to excite the
suspicions of all the spies about the court.  The poor queen, however,
seemed to think that she could no more do without her necessaire than go
without shoes to her feet.  The necessaire, she declared, she must have;
and she hit upon a device which she thought very clever for deceiving
any spies, but which deceived nobody, though Madame Campan herself hoped
it might afford a chance of doing so.  The queen agreed with the
ambassador from Vienna (who was in her confidence), that he should come
to her, while her hair was dressing, and, in the presence of all her
attendants, request her to order a necessaire precisely like her own,
for her sister at Brussels, who wished to have exactly such an one.  The
ambassador did as he was desired; and the queen turned to Madame Campan,
and requested her to have a necessaire made by the pattern of the one
before her.  If the plan had succeeded, here was an expense of 500
pounds incurred, at the time when money was most particularly wanted,
and great hazard run; and all because the queen could not be satisfied
with such a dressing-case as other ladies use.  Any of her friends could
have supplied her with such an one as she was setting off.

The necessaire was ordered in the middle of April.  A month after, the
queen inquired whether it would soon be done.  The cabinet-maker said it
could not be finished in less than six weeks more.  The queen declared
to Madame Campan that she could not wait for it; and that, as the order
had been given in the presence of all her attendants, nobody would
suspect anything if her own necessaire was emptied and cleaned, and sent
off to Brussels; and she gave positive orders that this should be done.
Madame Campan ordered the wardrobe-woman, whose proper business it was,
to have this order executed, as the archduchess could not wait so long
as it would take to finish the new necessaire; and she particularly
desired that no perfume should be left hanging about any of the drawers
which might be disagreeable to the archduchess.

One evening in May, the queen called Madame Campan to help her to wrap
up in cotton, and pack, her jewels, which she sent, by the hands of a
person she could trust, to Brussels.  They sat in a little room by
themselves, with the door locked, till seven o'clock, when the queen had
to go to cards.  She told Madame Campan that there was no occasion to
put by the diamonds; they would be quite safe, as there was a sentinel
under the window, and she herself should keep the key in her pocket.
She appointed Madame Campan to be there early the next morning, to
finish the packing; till which time the jewels lay on the sofa, some in
cotton, and some without.

The same wardrobe-woman, Madame R---, who was ordered to empty the
necessaire, was clever about her business, and had been engaged in it
for many years, and all the year round; so that the queen, without
having much to do with her, had become accustomed to see her, liked her
way of discharging her business, and did not dream of distrusting her.
Madame Campan did, however.  She knew that this lady, having grown rich
in her office, gave parties, consisting chiefly of persons of politics
opposed to the court,--several members of the Assembly of those politics
being often there,--and one of Lafayette's staff, Monsieur Gouvion,
being a lover of Madame R---'s.  This lady was indeed not to be trusted.
On the 21st of this month of May, she went and made a declaration
before the mayor, that she had no doubt the royal family were planning
an escape.  She told the whole story of the necessaire, saying that
everybody knew the queen was too fond of her own necessaire to think of
parting with it, when another might be had for a little waiting; and
that the queen had often been heard to say how useful this article would
be to her in travelling.  Madame R---went on to declare that the queen
had been engaged in packing her diamonds in the evening of such a day,--
those diamonds having been seen by her lying about, half wrapped in
cotton, on the sofa of such a room; and that Madame Campan had helped
the queen, and, of course, knew all about it.  It was plain that this
woman had a key of the little room, and that she must have been in it,
either in the evening while the queen was at cards, or very early the
next morning.

The queen confided to Madame Campan a letter-case full of very valuable
papers, which was immediately put into the hands of some faithful
persons in the city.  This proceeding also did not escape the quick eyes
of Madame R---.  She declared before the mayor that she saw a
letter-case upon a chair, which had never been seen there before: that
she observed the queen say something about it in a low voice to Madame
Campan, after which it disappeared.  The mayor took these depositions,
as in duty bound: but he let them lie, not wishing to injure the royal
family.  So the queen went on, more hopeful every day, and not in the
least suspecting that her scheme was seen through from beginning to end.

The other persons who were taking part in the plan were, a brave officer
of the name of Bouille, and a Swedish Count Fersen, helped by the Duke
de Choiseul, who was a colonel in the French army.

Bouille was near the frontier, collecting together such French soldiers
as were loyal, and several Germans, under pretence of watching the
Austrians.  It was secretly settled for him to meet the royal family
near the frontiers, and escort them beyond the reach of their enemies.
They really had not to go very far.  Montmedy, where Bouille was making
a fortified camp, was less than two hundred miles from Paris; and he
meant to meet the royal family, with a guard of hussars, at some
distance nearer Paris.

We have seen how the queen neglected the first precautions, and how much
risk she ran about clothes and luggage.  So it was with the other
precautions we mentioned.  She did, at one time, intend to send the
children to Brussels, under the care of a gentleman who might be
trusted; but she changed her mind, and resolved that the whole family,
with attendants, should go together.

Again, instead of travelling in light carriages, and in the most
ordinary style, so as to excite as little observation as possible, they
must all go in the same carriage,--that is, the king, the queen, and two
children, the Princess Elizabeth, and Madame de Tourzel,--six in one
carriage, while the other attendant ladies were to follow in another.
These were great difficulties; and it was over these difficulties that
Count Fersen did all he could to help them.  He declared, openly, that a
Russian lady, a friend of his, the Baroness de Korff, was about to
travel homewards, with her valet, waiting-woman, and two children, and
that she wanted a carriage for that purpose.  The Count pretended to be
very particular about this carriage,--a large coach, called a berlin.
He had a model made first; and employed the first coach-makers in
France.  When it was done, he and the Duke de Choiseul made trial of it
in a drive through the streets of Paris.  They then sent it to a certain
Madame Sullivan's, near the northern outskirts of the city.  Count
Fersen also bought several horses and a chaise, to convey, as he said,
two waiting-women; and exerted himself much about getting the necessary
passport for the Baroness de Korff and her party.  It appeared that
Count Fersen was uncommonly polite, or very much devoted to this
Baroness de Korff.

In order to put Paris off its guard, the king and queen promised to be
present at a great Catholic festival, in the church of the Assumption in
Paris, on the 21st of June; meaning, however, to be off on the 20th.

Little Louis knew nothing of all that was going on, nor guessed, when he
went to bed on the 20th of June, that he should have to get up again
presently.  As soon as it was dark, his governess took him up, and
dressed him, and put a sort of hood over his head, which prevented his
face being seen.  He was probably as sleepy as a little boy of six, just
waked up before eleven o'clock at night, was likely to be; and knew and
cared little about what Madame de Tourzel was doing with him.  His
sister was dressed, and had a hood over her head too; and so had Madame
de Tourzel.  They were very quiet; for everybody in the palace but those
who were in the secret believed that the king was now gone to bed.
Somebody opened the doors for them, and showed them the way.  They
passed some sentinels who knew better than to ask them who they were;
then went out through a back-door where there was no sentinel, along a
court and a square, and into a street.  A glass-coach was stationed
before the door of Ronsin, the saddler, as if waiting for some visitors
of Ronsin's.  The coachman, standing beside his horses, opened the door
without any question, and let Madame de Tourzel and the children into
the coach.  This was no real coachman, however, but Count Fersen.

In a little while came another lady, attended by a servant, as it
seemed.  She said "Good night" cheerfully to him, and stepped into the
coach.  It was the Princess Elizabeth.  If anybody in the street
wondered to see ladies coming the same way, one after another, the
answer was easy; they had, no doubt, been at the palace.

Presently, the coachman's hand was again upon the door; and a gentleman,
stout, in a round hat, was seen coming, leaning upon the arm of a
servant.  As he passed a sentinel, one of his shoe buckles gave way.  He
stooped down and clasped it.  Glad were the party in the coach when the
king stepped in.  They were all there now but the queen; and it was
rather odd that she should be the last.

One looked from the window, and then another watched; and still she did
not come.  It must have been a terrible worry,--waiting and waiting
there,--the Count afraid of what everybody in the street might think of
a coach standing so long before one door;--the party within afraid of
something having happened to the queen.  Minute after minute passed
slowly away, and then,--"what is this?  Here is some great man's
carriage, with lights all about it, dashing up the street!"  It was
Lafayette's carriage, evidently in a prodigious hurry: and it went under
the arch; it was certainly going to the palace.

It _was_ going to the palace.  Madame R---'s eyes were as quick as ever.
She had told her lover perpetually that she was sure the royal family
were going off; and Gouvion had kept constantly on the watch, but could
discover nothing.  This evening she had told him that she was sure they
meant to go in the night.  Gouvion sent an express for Lafayette, who
came directly.  He thought he met no one in the courts,--saw nothing
suspicious.  The sentinels were all at their posts, and the royal family
(as all the palace believed) quietly in their chambers.  So Lafayette
went away again, telling his officer that he must have been deceived,
and bidding him beware of treachery.

Lafayette was mistaken if he thought he had met no one within the
precincts of the palace.  Under the arch he had whirled past two
people,--a lady in white, with something in her hand, leaning on a man's
arm.  The lady had even touched the spoke of one of his carriage-wheels
with that which she had in her hand,--a sort of switch, which it was
then the fashion for ladies to carry.  This lady was the queen, and she
was conducted by a faithful body-guard.  However faithful this man might
be, he did not know the way; and the queen's guard on such an occasion
should also have been a well-qualified guide.  The queen was flurried
with meeting the enemy's carriage rumbling under the archway, with its
flaring lights; and, on entering the square, she took the turn to the
right hand instead of the left.  She and her guard wandered far away,
over the bridge, and they knew not where.  The queen of France wandering
through the streets of Paris, losing her way on foot at midnight!  What
could she have thought of a situation so new?  How must her guard have
felt, with such a charge upon his arm!  And the Count, standing beside
the hackney-coach-door; and the party within!  We may hope that Louis
was fast asleep upon Madame de Tourzel's lap, forgetting all about where
he was.

A hackney-coachman came up, and began to talk.  The Swedish count talked
as like a hackney-coachman as he could.  They took a pinch of snuff
together, would rather not drink together, and the real hackney-coachman
bade good-night, and went off without making any discovery.  The clocks
had struck midnight by this time; but soon after the queen appeared.
She had had to inquire her way, which was dangerous.  Her companion and
the king's were to go with them; so they jumped up, the Count was on the
box in a moment; and off they drove,--six inside and three out.

In a little while there was another panic.  The king was sure they were
going the wrong way.  They ought to leave Paris by the north-eastern
road; but they were now going straight north.  The king might have been
sure that the Count knew which way to drive, after managing so well all
else that he had to do.  He was only going to Madame Sullivan's, to make
sure that the new berlin was gone to the place where they were to meet
it.  All was right.  Count Fersen's servant had called for the Baroness
de Korff's coach, an hour and a half before.  So on they went, through
the north entrance, turning immediately eastwards; and when fairly free
of Paris, they came in sight of the great coach, waiting by the
roadside, with its six horses, and the Count's coachman on the box.

The party made haste to settle themselves in the berlin; for too much
time had been lost already.  Count Fersen was again the driver.  His
coachman went off in another direction, to have his master's chariot
ready for him, at some distance on the north road.  Who then was there
to drive home the glass-coach?  Nobody.  So they turned the horses'
heads towards the city, and set them off by themselves; and the coach
was found next day in a ditch.  Still there was another meeting to take
place.  At the hamlet of Bondy they were to meet the two waiting-women,
with their luggage in the new chaise, and postilions with fresh horses.
There they were at Bondy, while every one else was asleep.  They had
been waiting some time.  Here Count Fersen took his leave.  How must the
party have felt towards him!  How must they have longed to say what they
must not say before the postilions, in whose eyes Count Fersen must be a
driver, and nothing more!  He met his coachman and chariot on the north
road, and got safely away.  It must have given him satisfaction all the
rest of his life to look back on this adventure, in which his part was
so admirably performed.  Perhaps, if he had been of the party for
another day or two, things might have gone better with the fugitives
than they did.

Now they had to take care of their behaviour, lest, by any
forgetfulness, they should cause suspicion as to who they were.  Madame
de Tourzel had to act the Baroness de Korff, and call the princess and
the dauphin her children.  The king, who wore a wig, was her valet, and
the queen her waiting-maid.  The Princess Elizabeth was her travelling
companion.  We know nothing of how they supported these characters at
the places where they stopped.  One may imagine the queen putting some
spirit into her part; but one can never fancy the king doing anything in
the service of Madame de Tourzel.  They stopped as little as they could,
however; and yet they did not get on fast.  How should a heavy coach,
with nine people in and on it, get on fast?  How much wiser would it
have been to have travelled separately, and like other people!  The
king's brother and his lady did so; going in common carriages towards
Flanders, by different roads, and finding no difficulty.  At one point
their roads crossed, and they happened to meet while changing horses.
They had the presence of mind to take no notice, and drove off their
separate ways without a look or sign.  The Princess de Lamballe
travelled in the same way towards England, without impediment.  It was
lamentable folly in the king and queen to choose a way of journeying
which must attract all eyes.

This sort of notice began almost before it was light.  About sunrise
they passed, in the wood of Bondy, a poor herb-man, with his ass and
panniers of greens.  When the hue and cry began, this herb-man told of
the fine new berlin he had seen in the wood of Bondy; and thus set
pursuers upon their track.  Besides the eight horses wanted for the two
carriages, there were more for the three body-guards, mounted and
dressed as couriers, but knowing nothing about courier's business, as
the people along the road must have found out, while watching the
changing of eleven horses at the different stages.  Then the berlin
wanted some repairs, and this detained them at Etoges: and the king
would get out, and walk up the hills, and they had to wait for him: so
that though they gave double money to the drivers to get on fast, they
had gone only sixty-nine miles by ten at night.  This slowness ruined
everything.

The Duke de Choiseul, Count Fersen's friend, had left Paris ten hours
before the royal family, and was waiting, with a party of hussars, at a
village, some way beyond Chalons.  If the party had kept their time,
they would have met their guard, and, finding more and more soldiers all
along the road, would have been safe.  There would have been no time for
the attention of the country people to be fixed on the gathering of
military in the neighbourhood.  The Duke de Choiseul's pretence for his
party was that they were to guard a treasure that was expected.  The
"treasure" did not arrive; the soldiers lounged about; and it was all
their officers could do to keep them out of public-houses, where they
would be questioned and made suspicious;--for, of course, they knew
nothing of the meaning of their errand.  It was a great misfortune, too,
that the queen had changed her mind about the day, when it was too late
to warn some of the officers; and they, supposing the party to have set
off on the 19th, were now in great dismay; and their soldiers were
lounging about twenty-four hours sooner than they should have been.  The
village politicians did not like what they saw.  They began to say to
one another that no treasure ought to be leaving the kingdom.  Any
treasure which had to be guarded by soldiers must be public treasure,
belonging to the people, which no one had any right to carry away.  Some
of these rang the alarm-bell of their parish church; and from several
places, parties of the national soldiery went out to explore the roads,
and met parties of the national soldiery from other places.  They agreed
that there must be something wrong.  At Saint Menehould, the National
Volunteers demanded three hundred muskets from the town-hall, and stood
armed: the same Saint Menehould where the former arrival of the queen as
dauphiness had been awaited in a far different temper.  In short, the
hussars had to ride away, and leave the "treasure" to take its chance.
Thus all was confusion, expectation, and alarm along the road, for hours
before the berlin appeared: the very road by which the queen had entered
France, amidst cheers of welcome, in her bridal days!

It appeared afterwards that it was the king's wish to have these
soldiers in waiting along the road, while his advisers thought it would
be better to keep up the story of the Baroness de Korff till the party
actually drew near Montmedy.  As it turned out, the king not only lost
his desired security, but, by his and the queen's management together,
the whole region beyond Chalons was in an uproar before they entered it.
Meantime, the party had travelled only sixty-nine of their two hundred
miles in twenty-two hours; and little Louis must have been sadly tired
before they had gone nearly half-way.

On and on they went, however, through the night and all the next day,
little knowing how fast messengers from Paris were racing all over the
kingdom, to give the news of their flight.  Lafayette had been roused,
at six in the morning of the 21st, by a note from a gentleman who had
been informed that the king's rooms at the Tuileries were empty.  The
whole city was in consternation, and Lafayette's life in great danger.
Tranquillity was preserved, however.  Messengers galloped off in every
direction; and one of these it was who, going north-east, spread the
alarm which made the herb-man go and tell what he had seen in the wood
of Bondy.  Little did the travelling party think how much faster the
mounted messengers were going than they: and on they lumbered, the
eleven horses whisking their tails, and the king taking his time in
walking up the hills, while the alarm was flying abroad.

It was near sunset on the second evening, when they had gone about one
hundred and seventy miles, that one of the body-guards, mounted and
dressed in yellow as a courier, came prancing into the village of Saint
Menehould.  His dress attracted all eyes; and so did his proceedings.
The gazers saw that this odd courier did not know the post-house; for he
spurred past it, and had to inquire for it.  The master of the post,
Drouet, of revolutionary politics, was in a very bad humour, and had
been so all day, having been angry about the mysterious hussars in the
morning, and no less angry at seeing the village now full of dragoons,
from another quarter, whose business here he could not understand.
These dragoons, strolling through the streets, touched their helmets to
the party in the carriage, which the waiting-maid of the baroness
acknowledged with remarkable grace.  The dragoon officer, Dandoins, at
first delighted to see the party arrive, presently did not like what he
saw, and was pretty sure the village had taken the alarm.  He looked
full at the pretended courier, from the side pavement, as much as to
say, "Be quick!  Make haste to change horses, and be off."  The dull
fellow, not understanding what he meant, came up to him, to know whether
he had anything to say.  All which was observed by a hundred eyes.
Drouet's eyes were the quickest.  He thought that the waiting-maid's
face was like somebody he had seen somewhere in Paris; and the valet,
how very like the king!  He called to a friend to bring him, quick, a
new assignat.  [Note: A promissory note which passed as money, like a
bank-note.  It bore an engraving of the king's head.] The king's head
there, and the valet's head in the carriage, were exactly alike.  Now
Drouet understood the meaning of his village being filled with hussars
in the morning, and dragoons in the afternoon.

The great coach was just driving off; and he dared not stop it, while
the armed dragoons were standing about, even if he had been absolutely
certain that he had seen the king and queen; which he could not be.  So
he let them drive off; and then told the friend that had brought him the
assignat, desiring him to saddle two of the fleetest horses in the
post-house, while he stepped over to the town-hall, to give the alarm.
While they rode off, the report got abroad through the whole village.
Dandoins wanted his dragoons to mount and ride; but they were hungry,
and would have some bread and cheese first.  While they were eating, the
National Volunteers drew up, with their bayonets fixed, to prevent their
leaving the village.  The dragoons were willing to stay, and side with
the people: and stay they did; only the quarter-master cutting his way
through, and riding off with a pocket-book, containing secret
despatches, which Dandoins had managed to slip into his hand.

The berlin went on faster now; but not so fast as Drouet and his
companion were following; while the quarter-master was spurring on to
overtake _them_, if possible.  What a race!--the fate of France probably
depending upon it!

About six miles before coming to Varennes, the party observed a horseman
passing, at a gallop, from behind, close by the coach-window.  In
passing, he shouted something which the noise of their carriage-wheels
prevented their hearing exactly.  They caught the sound, however; and
when all was over, agreed that he must have said, "You are discovered!"
They did not know whether to take this man for a friend or an enemy.
They received another warning from one who was no enemy.  A beggar, who
asked alms of the king at a place where the coach stopped, said, with
much feeling, "Your Majesty is known.  May God take care of you!  May
Providence watch over you!"

The quarter-master, on reaching Clermont after them, called up the
dragoons who were gone to bed; and a _few_ of them followed the royal
carriage, under the command of a Cornet Remy.  But they lost their way
in the dark, and floundered about in fields and lanes, stumbling over
fences, before they found the direction in which they should go to
Varennes.  The rest of the dragoons at Clermont,--all but two,--struck
their swords into the scabbard when ordered to draw, and declared for
the people, instead of the king.

The Duke de Choiseul, with his hussars, was all the while stumbling
about in the cross country, finding it difficult enough to get to
Varennes, as he must avoid the high roads.  Some of his troop fell and
were hurt; and their comrades refused to go on without them.  Towards
midnight, the alarm-bell of Varennes was heard through the darkness.
The duke said it was no doubt some fire: but in his heart he had strong
fears of the truth.

Bouille, junior, sent by his father, had been waiting with his troop six
hours at Varennes: and he, supposing that the party would not arrive
this day, was in bed and asleep when the berlin reached the village, at
eleven o'clock.  His troop were, some of them, drinking in the
public-houses.  None of them were ready; and the royal party tried in
vain to discover through the thick darkness any sign of a friendly
guard, where they had made sure of meeting one.  If they could but find
these hussars, they believed they should be safe; for they had now no
more towns to pass through, and no great way to go.

The berlin stood on the top of the hill, at the entrance of Varennes,
while their pretended couriers were riding about, rousing the sleeping
village, in search of horses to go on with.  The horses were standing,
the whole time, all ready, by the orders of the Duke de Choiseul, in the
upper village, over the bridge; and the men never found this out.  They
might have changed horses in five minutes, and proceeded, without having
wakened a single person in the place; instead of which, the carriages
actually stood five-and-thirty minutes on the top of the hill, while
this blundering was going on.  The king argued with the postilions about
proceeding another stage: but their horses were so tired, they would not
hear of it.

In the midst of this argument, two riders came up from behind, checked
their horses for a moment on recognising the berlin, which they could
just make out in the dark; and then pushed on quickly into the village.
It was Drouet and his companion.

They rode to the Golden Arms tavern, told the landlord what they came
for, and proceeded to block up the bridge with waggons, and whatever
else they could find.  And the fugitives might have passed that bridge
above half an hour before, and be now speeding on with the fresh horses
that were standing ready,--if only young Bouille had not gone to bed; or
even if, instead of one of their useless servants, they had had a
courier who knew the road, and could have told them of the upper
village!  Was ever an expedition so mismanaged?

Before the berlin came up (the horses somewhat refreshed with meal and
water), the bridge was well barricaded; and (the landlord having roused
three or four companions) about half-a-dozen men, with muskets and
lanterns hidden under their coats, were standing under an archway,
awaiting the party.  Suddenly the lanterns shone out, the horses'
bridles were seized, and a man thrust the barrel of a musket in at each
window, exclaiming, "Ladies, your passports!"

This was one of the moments which occur now and then in the course of
men's lives, as if to show what they are made of.  This was the
occasion, if the king had been a man of spirit, to forget that he had
blood to spill,--to assert his rights as a ruler and as an innocent
man,--to daunt his enemies, and rouse his friends,--to carry off his
family in triumph,--to save his crown and kingdom, his life and
reputation.  Things much more difficult have been done.  His enemies
were but six; and he and his body-guards might have resisted them till
Bouille was roused by the noise, to come up with his hussars, to help
and save.  It is true, the king did not know that his enemies were but
six: but a man of spirit would have seen how many they were before he
yielded.  It is true he did not know that Bouille was in bed, and his
hussars drinking in the village: but a man of spirit would have trusted
that help would rise up, or have done without it in such an extremity,
rather than yield.  Instead of this, what did the king do?  He heard
what his enemies had to say.

One of the six was Monsieur Sauce, a grocer who lived in the
market-place, and a magistrate.  He said, in the name of his party,
that, whether the travellers were the Baroness de Korff and suite, or of
a higher rank still, it would be better that they should alight, and
remain at his house till morning.

With what a bursting heart must the queen have seen the king quietly
doing as he was bid!  For twenty-one years she had suffered what a high
spirit must suffer in being closely united with a companion who has
none; but the agony of this moment must have exceeded all former trials
of the kind.  She, the woman and the wife, must obey, to her own
destruction, and that of all who belonged to her.  She said little; but
there was afterwards a visible sign of what she must have endured.  In
this one night, her beautiful hair turned white, as if forty years had
at once fallen upon her head.

The king stepped out of the coach, and the ladies followed him.  They
took each an arm of Monsieur Sauce, and walked across the market-place
to his shop, the king following, with a child holding either hand.  It
was strange confusion for little Louis.  This was the third night that
he had spent out of his bed.  He had been asleep,--the whole party had
been asleep in the coach; and now this disputing, and the flare of the
lanterns, and the presenting the muskets, and the having to get out and
walk, must have been perplexing and terrifying to the poor little
fellow.  There was much noise round about.  The alarm-bell was clanging;
there were lights in all the windows: men poured out of the houses,
half-dressed, and rolled barrels, and laid felled trees across the road,
that no help might arrive on the king's behalf.

And what did the king do next?  He asked for something to eat!
"Something to eat" was always a great object with him; and he seemed to
find comfort under all trials in his good appetite.  He sat now in an
upper story of Monsieur Sauce's house, eating bread and cheese and
drinking Burgundy,--declaring that this bottle of Burgundy was the best
he ever tasted.  One wonders that the queen's heart was not quite
broken.  She believed that there was yet a chance.  She saw Monsieur
Sauce's old mother kneeling, and praying for her king and queen, while
the tears ran down her cheeks.  The queen saw that Monsieur Sauce looked
frequently towards his wife, while the king talked with him, explaining
that he meant no harm to the nation, but good, since he could come to a
better understanding with his people when at a distance and in freedom.
Monsieur Sauce, the queen saw, looked so frequently towards his wife,
that it was plain that he would act according to her judgment.  The
queen of France therefore kneeled to the grocer's wife to implore mercy
and aid.  Fain would the grocer's wife have aided her sovereign, if she
dared: but she dared not.  Again and again she said, "Think what it is
you ask, madame.  Your situation is very grievous; but you see what we
should be exposed to.  They would cut off my husband's head.  A wife
must consider her husband first."

"Very true," replied the queen.  "My husband is your king.  He has made
you all happy for many years; and wishes to do so still."  Whatever
Madame Sauce might think of the poor queen's belief that her husband had
made his people happy, she replied only, as before, that she could not
induce Monsieur Sauce to put his life in danger.

The leaders of the different military parties, hearing one alarm-bell
after another beginning to toll through the whole region, made
prodigious exertions to reach Varennes, and did so.  The Duke de
Choiseul and his troop surmounted the barricade, and got in; and the
hussars promised fidelity to "the king--the king!  And the queen!" as
they kept exclaiming.  They were led forward to beset Monsieur Sauce's
house: but Drouet shouted to his national soldiery to stand to their
cannon.  On hearing of cannon, the hussars drew back: though Drouet's
cannon were only two empty, worn-out, useless field-pieces, which seemed
fit only to make a clatter on the pavement.

Count Damas had also arrived; and the king sat consulting with these
officers and the magistrates of Varennes,--consulting, when he, with the
aid which had arrived, should have been forcing his way out towards the
frontier.  There he sat, as usual, unable to decide upon anything; and
while he sat doubting, the national soldiery poured in to the number of
three thousand, and would presently amount to ten thousand.  While he
thus sat doubting, the people were handing jugs of wine about among the
hussars; and when their commander came out from Monsieur Sauce's, at the
end of an hour, he found them tipsy, and declaring for the nation
against the king.

There was still one other chance--one more opportunity of choice for him
whose misfortune was that he never could make a choice.  Another loyal
officer, Deslons, arrived, with a hundred horse-soldiers.  He left his
hundred horse outside the barricade, entered himself, and offered to cut
out the royal party,--to rescue them by the sword, if the king would
order him to do so.  "Will it be hot work?" asked the king.  "Very hot,"
was the answer; and the king would give no orders.--In the bitterness of
her regrets, the queen said afterwards, at Paris, that no one who knew
what had been the king's answer to Count d'Inisdal about being carried
off, should have asked him for orders;--that the officers should have
acted without saying a word to him.

The children were asleep on a bed up-stairs, and the ladies
remonstrating with Madame Sauce, from hour to hour of this dreadful
night: and the end of it all was that it was decided by somebody that
the party were to go back to Paris, as the people in the market-place
were loudly demanding.  The poor queen's doubts and fears thus ended in
despair.  Weary as they all were,--after having travelled so far, and
escaped so many dangers,--and now so near the frontier, so near
Bouille's camp, so close upon the queen's own country,--they were to
pursue their weary way back to Paris,--journeying in disgrace, prisoners
in the eyes of all the people, to be plunged again into the midst of
their enemies, now enraged by their flight.  It would have been easier
to a spirit like the queen's to have died, with those who belonged to
her, in one more struggle,--in one rush to the camp, than to undergo the
slow despair of a return among their enemies.

Her feelings were understood,--the case was understood,--by one of the
attendants who had travelled in the chaise,--the Dauphin's head
waiting-woman.  Hoping that gaining time might afford a chance, she
threw herself on a bed, and pretended to be taken suddenly ill, and in
an agony of pain.  The queen went to the bedside, and the woman squeezed
her hand, to make her understand the pretence.  The queen declared that
she could not think of leaving in this state a faithful servant who had
encountered many dangers and fatigues for the sake of the family; but a
device so obvious was seen through at once, and no indulgence was
allowed.  The woman had to get off the bed and enter the chaise again.

The great berlin travelled back more slowly than it came, being
surrounded by sixty thousand National Guards, besides the crowds of
other people who drew near to see the captive royal family.  There was
so much indecent joy, so much insult shown by the ignorant and fierce
among the crowd, that civility which would have been thought nothing of
at another time touched the feelings of the unhappy ladies.  The queen
was delighted with the manners of a lady at whose house they rested,--
the wife of Monsieur Renard, the mayor of Ferte-sous-Jouarre.  The mayor
waited upon the king at table; and Madame Renard did all she could to
make the ladies comfortable.  Everything was done so quietly that the
queen did not discover, for a long time, who she was.  When, at length,
the queen inquired whether she was not the mistress of the house, Madame
Renard replied, "I was so, Madame, before your Majesty honoured this
abode with your presence."  To us there appears some affectation in this
speech; but the queen was now so unused to homage from strangers that
she shed tears at the words.

The Dauphin did not travel back, as he came, on the lap of Madame de
Tourzel.  The National Assembly sent three of its members from Paris to
meet and travel with the royal family.  Two of these members were to be
in the carriage with the king; so that Madame de Tourzel had to turn
out.  The other member and she joined the two waiting-maids in the
carriage behind.  The pretended couriers were bound with cords, and rode
conspicuous to all eyes on the top of the berlin.

Monsieur Barnave, one of the king's new travelling companions, was so
considerate, polite, and gentlemanly, that the royal party decided and
declared that, if ever they regained their power, Monsieur Barnave
should be pardoned the part he had taken in the Revolution.  It does not
seem to have occurred to them that they might have been prejudiced
against him and others,--that the revolutionary leaders might not have
been altogether so wicked and detestable as the Court had been
accustomed to call them.  Barnave, on his part, seems to have been
touched by the sorrows of the queen; and it is probable that he
discovered now that he had been prejudiced--too strongly wrought upon by
the queen's enemies.

A poor clergyman, endeavouring to reach the carriages to offer his loyal
greeting, was seized, and roughly handled by the furious mob.  Barnave
feared they would kill him, as they had already killed one person under
similar circumstances.  He threw himself almost out of the coach-door as
he cried, "Tigers, have you ceased to be Frenchmen?  From being brave
fellows have you turned assassins?"  The Princess Elizabeth, fearing
lest he should fall out of the carriage, grasped the skirt of his coat;
and the queen told Madame Campan afterwards that she could not but be
struck with the oddity of seeing the Princess Elizabeth taking care of
the safety of a man whom they had all abhorred as a rebel and a traitor.
So vehemently had the whole Court thus detested him, that Madame Campan
could scarcely believe her senses when she heard the queen speak with
earnest regard of the revolutionary Barnave.  This is another
circumstance which indicates how much guilt and misery might have been
saved if the adverse parties could early have come to an understanding
and made their mutual complaints face to face.

Barnave's companion, Petion, disgusted them all; including Barnave.  He
behaved with ostentatious rudeness and brutality.  The king began to
converse with him upon the condition of the nation, and to explain the
reasons of his own conduct, saying that he wished to strengthen the
government so far as to enable it to _be_ a government, since France
could not be a republic...  "Not yet, indeed," interrupted Petion; "for
the French are not ripe for a republic yet."  This brutal reply silenced
the king, who spoke no more till he entered Paris.

The ladies offered refreshments to their new companions.  Barnave said
he had to occupy their Majesties with the serious business on which he
was sent, but would not trouble them with his personal wants.

Petion ate and drank greedily.  He threw chicken-bones out of the
window, past the king's face; and when the Princess Elizabeth poured out
wine for him, he jerked his glass, instead of speaking, to show that
there was enough.  He took Louis on his knees, and twisted his fingers
in the child's curly hair.  When eager in conversation, he twitched the
boy's hair so as to make him call out.  The queen held out her arms,
saying, "Give me my son.  He is accustomed to tender care, and to
treatment very unlike this familiarity."

The great coach entered Paris on the Saturday evening, slowly rolling on
through hundreds of thousands of gazers.  A placard had been stuck up
through one region of the city, in the morning, declaring that whoever
insulted the king should be caned: whoever applauded him should be
hanged.  The people were quiet, gaped and stared, and seemed neither
very much pleased nor very angry.  The king now began to speak once
more.  As one body of official personages after another met him, he
said, over and over again, with an embarrassed sort of smile, "Well,
here I am!"  Again we cannot help thinking what a pity it was that he
was not a locksmith, happy in his workshop in one of the meaner streets
of Paris.  As for his little son, how happy would Louis now have been to
be the son of the poor herb-man in the wood of Bondy, gathering his dewy
herbs in the fresh, free morning air and sunshine, and going to sleep at
sundown, far from crowds and quarrels and fears!  Never more was this
unfortunate child in the open country.  He had this day seen the last of
green fields, breezy hills, and waving woods.

The couriers were the first objects of the people's wrath.  Some at
length left off staring at the king and queen, and seizing the three men
in yellow liveries, would have massacred them, if the Assembly had not
sent a force to rescue them.

Glad was the poor queen to get out of sight of the hundreds of thousands
of gazers, and to be within the courts of the Tuileries: but she found
little comfort there.  Three women only were appointed to wait on her;
and those three were Madame R---the spy, her sister, and niece.  It was
only after the king had remonstrated with General Lafayette, that the
queen could obtain the attendance of her former servants.  She much
needed the presence of some to whom she could speak without restraint;
and yet this was an indulgence she found it prudent to wait for.
Immediately on her arrival she caused these few lines, unsigned, to be
forwarded by a faithful hand to Madame Campan:--"I dictate this from my
bath, by which my bodily strength at least may be recruited.  I can say
nothing of the state of my mind.  We exist: that is all.  Do not return
till summoned by me.  This is very important."  It was not till seven or
eight weeks after that Madame Campan saw her royal mistress.  The queen
was then rising from bed.  She took off her cap, and showed her hair,
white as any aged person's, saying that it had become bleached in one
night.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER NINE.

PLAYING FALSE.

From this time forward, the National Guards stationed in the palace had
orders never to lose sight of the royal family.  They therefore, for
some weeks, kept the doors open day and night, having their eyes upon
the royal party all day, and upon their very beds at night.  The queen
caused a small bed to be placed between the door of her chamber and her
own bed, that she might sleep or weep on her pillow without being
exposed to the observation of her soldier-gaolers.  One night, however,
the officer who was on watch, perceiving that the queen was awake, and
her attendant asleep, drew near her bed to give her some advice how she
should conduct herself in regard to politics.  The queen begged him to
speak low, that her attendant might not be disturbed.  The lady awoke,
however, and was in terror when she saw with whom the queen was
conversing.  Her majesty then used the smooth and flattering tone which
she always appeared to think her enemies would be pleased with, desiring
the lady not to be alarmed, for that this officer was an excellent man,
no doubt truly attached to the king, though mistaken as to what were the
intentions of both the king and herself.

The king one day rose to shut the door of the room where he was sitting
with his family.  The guard immediately threw it open again, saying that
he had orders to keep it open; and that the king would only give himself
useless trouble by shutting it.  The difficulty now was to find any
opportunity for private conversation.  This was done through the
attachment of one of the guards, who often took a very disagreeable post
which nobody else desired to have.  This was in a dark corridor where
candles had to be used all day, and where, therefore, no sentinel would
like being on guard for twenty-four hours together, in the month of
July.  Saint Prix, an actor, devoted, however, himself to this service,
for the sake of the king and queen, who often met here for short
conversations.  Saint Prix, on these occasions, retired out of hearing,
and gave notice if he believed anyone was coming.

This extreme of insulting rigour did not last long this time.  In August
the family were allowed to open and shut their doors when they pleased,
and the king was treated with more outward respect.  The Assembly was
then preparing a Constitution, which it was believed the king would
sign; and it would be well that, at the time of doing so, he should
appear in the eyes of the world as a king, and not a prisoner who acted
merely upon constraint.

The new Constitution was prepared, and the king agreed to it; even
sending a letter to the Assembly to propose to swear to the new
Constitution in the place where it was framed,--in their chamber.  The
members were highly delighted: all Paris appeared highly delighted.  The
leaders of parties thronged to court: their majesties went to the
theatres; and when the deputies from the Assembly came to the palace to
assure the king how much satisfaction was felt at this agreement of all
parties, the queen, the princess royal, and the dauphin stood looking on
from a doorway behind.  The king pointed to them, saying, "There are my
wife and children, who feel as I do."

All this, however, was false and hollow: all these celebrations were but
melancholy mirth.  All thinking persons must have known that the king
could not really approve and rejoice in a new Constitution such as the
people liked,--a Constitution which took from him many and great powers
and privileges which he considered to be as truly his own as the throne
itself.  On the other hand, the royal family believed that this act was
only one step towards the destruction of the monarchy altogether,--only
one stage towards their own total ruin.  So, while each party was
applauding the other, and all wore smiles in public, there was no real
confidence and joy except among the ignorant and thoughtless.  After the
queen had assured the deputies of her approbation and pleasure, she
said, in the privacy of her apartment, "These people do not like having
sovereigns.  We shall be destroyed by their cunning and persevering
management.  They are levelling the monarchy stone by stone."

The king felt the same.  After professing the utmost satisfaction and
delight at this settlement of affairs, and hearing from the Assembly,
echoed by the acclamations of the people, that he had "obtained a new
title of grandeur and of glory," the king appeared at the door of the
apartment to which the queen had retired after the ceremony,--his face
so pale and so wretched that the queen uttered an exclamation as she
looked at him.  He sank into a chair, and covered his eyes with his
handkerchief, saying, "All is lost!  O, why were you a witness to this
humiliation?  Why did you come to France to see--" His words were choked
by sobs.  The queen had cast herself on her knees before him.  She now
exclaimed to Madame Campan, "Go!  Go!" in a tone which conveyed, "Why do
you remain to witness the humiliation of your king?"

All Paris was illuminated at night; and the royal family were invited to
take a drive in the midst of the people.  They were well guarded by
soldiers, and received everywhere with acclamations.  One man, however,
with a prodigiously powerful voice, kept beside the carriage-door next
the queen, and as often as the crowd shouted "Long live the king!"
bawled out "No, no: don't believe them.  Long live the nation!"  The
queen was impressed with the same sort of terror with which she had seen
the four wax-lights go out.  Though panic-struck with this ominous
voice, she dared not complain, nor ask to have the man removed.  While
the royal family were driving about the city in this false and hollow
triumph, a messenger was setting off for the Austrian court, with
letters from them expressive of extreme discontent and alarm at the
present state of public affairs.

There were bursts of loyal feeling occasionally, which gratified the
royal family; but these became fewer and fewer, as it was observed that
they were not well taken by the leaders of the revolution.  One day this
summer, the Dauphin was walking on the terrace of the Tuileries.  A
grenadier took him in his arms, with some affectionate words; and
everybody within sight cheered the child.  Orders, however, soon came to
be quiet on the terrace: the child was set down again, and the people
went on their way.

Another day, Louis forgot his plan of being civil to everybody.  He had
hold of his mother's hand; and they were going to walk in the gardens.
A loyal sentinel, lately arrived from the country, made his salute so
earnestly that his musket rang again.  The queen saluted graciously: but
Louis was in such a hurry that he was posting on through the gate.  His
mother checked him, saying, "Come, salute.  Do not be unpolite."

Some of the first difficulties which arose under the new Constitution,
were of a kind which show how impossible it was for the royal family and
the people ever to agree in their thoughts and feelings.  The new law
had provided a military, and also a civil, establishment for the royal
household;--had provided what the king had declared a sufficient number
of attendants, and described their offices,--doing away with many of the
old forms, and with much of the absurd extravagance, of the old Court.
It was now in the queen's power to please the people by agreeing
cheerfully to the new arrangements, and showing that she was not so
proud and extravagant as she was reported to be.  Instead of this, she
clung to the old ways, after having declared her acceptance of the new.
She would not appoint people to the offices agreed upon, saying that it
was an injury to the old nobility to let them be turned out.  To be
sure, most of them had fled: but if they returned, what would they say,
if they found their places filled, and the queen surrounded by persons
of a lower rank?  One noble lady at this time resigned an office she had
been left in possession of, and said she could not stay now that she was
deprived of her hereditary privilege of sitting on a stool unasked in
the queen's presence.  This grieved the queen; and she said that this
was, and would be, the way with the nobility.  They made no allowance
for her altered circumstances; but deserted her if she admitted to
office persons of inferior rank.  She could not do without this
nobility: she said she could not bear to see nobody come to her
card-parties,--to see no throng but of servants at the king's rising and
undressing.  Rather than give up these old ceremonies, and this kind of
homage, she broke through the only part of the Constitution that it was
in her power to act upon, and insulted the feelings of the people.
Barnave argued with her, but she would not yield.

The rejoicings for the new Constitution took place on the last day of
September.  During the rest of the year, the royal family, and the most
confidential of their servants, were much employed in secret
correspondence with the absent princes and nobility, and with the
foreign Courts.  Some of these letters were in cipher, and were copied
by persons who knew nothing whatever of the meaning of what they were
writing.  The queen wrote almost all day long, and spent a part of the
nights in reading.  Poor lady!  She could sleep but little.

Towards the end of the year, a new alarm arose, for which one cannot but
think now there was very little ground; though no one can wonder that
the unhappy family, and the police magistrates who had the charge of
their safety, were open to every impression of terror.  The king was
told that one of his pastrycooks was dead; and that the man's office was
to be filled, of right, by a pastry-cook who, while waiting for this
appointment, had kept a confectioner's shop in the neighbourhood, and
who was furious in his profession of revolutionary politics.  He had
been heard to say that any man would be doing a public service who
should cut off the king; and it was feared that he might do this service
himself, by poisoning the king's pastry, now that he would have daily
opportunities of doing so.  The king was particularly fond of pastry,
and ate a great deal of it.  It would not do now suddenly to give up
eating pastry, so as to set everybody in the palace inquiring why:
besides, it does not seem to have occurred to the king, under any of the
circumstances of his life, to restrain himself in eating.  The new
pastry-cook had nothing whatever to do but to make and roll out the
crusts of pies and tarts; but it was thought so easy a matter to infuse
a subtle poison into any of the dishes that stood about in the kitchen,
that it was resolved that the king and queen should eat nothing that was
brought thence, except roast meat, the last thing which anyone would
think of poisoning.  Other dishes were to be apparently half-eaten, and
their contents conveyed away.

Here we see the absurdity of the old court-system, with its laws and
formalities;--the system by which so many hangers-on were enriched, to
the injury of better people than themselves: and by which the king
himself was placed in a sort of bondage.  Any shop-keeper in Paris might
turn away his shop-boy for insolence; any tradesman's wife might dismiss
her cook for unwholesome cookery: but here was the sovereign of France
compelled to retain in his service a man whom he believed to have said
that it would be a meritorious act to murder him; and this man's pastry
must be admitted to the royal table every day!  The man held the
reversion to the office of king's pastry-cook (the right to it when the
occupant should die), and the right once acquired, the man could not, by
court custom, be got rid of.  Thus were court offices not open to merit;
but conferred sometimes by favour, and sometimes for money; and greedily
grasped at for the great profits they yielded.  One wonders that the
royal family did not discover that the new state of affairs, if it
imposed some restrictions, might have freed them from many annoyances,
if they could have suited their conduct to their affairs.--We shall now
see what trouble was caused by the king's being unable to turn away a
kitchen servant whom he could not trust.

The bread and wine wanted for the royal table were secretly provided by
a steward of the household.  The sugar was purchased by Madame Campan,
and pounded in her apartment.  She also provided the pastry, of which
the king was so fond; purchasing it as if for herself, sometimes of one
confectioner and sometimes of another.  All these things were locked up
in a cupboard in the king's study, on the ground-floor.  The royal
family chose to wait on themselves; so, when the table was spread, the
servants went out, leaving a dumb-waiter and bell beside each chair.
Then Madame Campan appeared with the bread, wine, sugar, and pastry,
which were put under the table, lest any of the attendants should enter.
The princesses drank no wine.  The king drank about half a bottle; and
when he had done he poured into the bottle from which he had drunk about
half of that of which he dared not drink; and this latter bottle, with
some of the pastry from the kitchen, was carried away by Madame Campan
after dinner.  At the end of four months, the heads of the police gave
notice that the danger from poisoning was over; that the plans of the
king's enemies were changed, and that future measures would be directed
against the throne, and not the life of the monarch.  Meantime, did not
every labouring man who could supply his family with bread take his meal
in more cheerfulness and comfort than this unhappy king?

Everything went wrong.  The royal party had never been remarkable for
success in their undertakings; and now all that they did turned to their
ruin.  They corresponded at once with the emigrant princes, and with
those leaders at home who were attached to the Constitution; and when,
as might have been expected, they found that they could not please both,
they distrusted and withdrew from those who were best able to help them.
They would not follow Barnave's advice.  They believed General
Dumouriez a traitor, and broke off from him when he was perfectly
sincere in his wish to save them, and had more power to do so than all
their emigrant friends together.  They distrusted Lafayette; and when, a
few weeks later, they were in deeper distress than ever, but might have
been protected, and taken to Rouen by Lafayette's army, the queen
refused, saying in private that Lafayette had been offered to them as a
resource, but that they had rather perish than owe their safety to the
man who had most injured them, or even be obliged to treat with him.
Thus, rejecting those who could help them, and relying on those who
could not, this unwise and unhappy family went on to their ruin.

The foreign courts and emigrant princes were preparing to invade France;
and the consequence was that the poor helpless king had to do an act
which would have been ridiculous, if it were not too sad to laugh at.
As pretended Constitutional King and Head of the Nation, he had to
behave in public towards these foreign princes as if they were enemies,
when it was for his sake that they were levying armies.  By his private
letters, written in cipher, and sent in secret, he was urging them to
make haste to march to his rescue; and at the very same time he had to
go to the Assembly and propose that they should declare war against
these enemies of the nation.  He said this with the tears in his eyes.
It was on the 20th of April that he endured this humiliation.  What man
of spirit would not rather have taken one side or the other, at all
hazards, than have played such a double part as this?  If he could act
with the people in reforming their affairs, well and good.  If he could
not,--if he believed them all wrong, and that it was his sacred duty to
stand by the old order of things, how much more respectable it would
have been to have said so,--to have declared, "You may imprison me--you
may destroy me,--but I will stand by my throne and its powers!"  In that
case, the worst he could have been charged with would have been a
mistake.  As it was, he stood before the Assembly an object of universal
contempt,--proposing, with tears in his eyes, a declaration of war
against those who were preparing war at his desire, and for his sake;
and everyone knowing that it was so.

He and the queen seemed never to have understood or believed what was
carefully pointed out to them by the advisers whom they distrusted--that
this making war in their behalf could not end well for them.  If their
foreign friends should be beaten, they would be left more helpless and
despised than ever.  If the French should be beaten, the frightened and
angry people would be sure to treat with more and more rigour--and
perhaps with fury--the family who had brought a foreign enemy upon them.
Their advisers must have been glad at last to be rejected and
dismissed; for it must have been provoking to discover, at every turn,
the double dealing of the king and queen; and very melancholy to see
them perpetually pursuing the exactly opposite course to that which was
noble and wise.  One wonders whether, if little Louis had lived to be a
man, he would have been as ignorant, selfish, and unwise;--whether there
is anything in belonging to the old royal family of France which stands
between its princes and wisdom and knowledge.  If so, one is less sorry
that he died so early as he did.

Barnave's last words impressed the feelings of the queen, but had no
other effect.  He begged to see her once more before he left Paris; and
then withdrew from public affairs.  He said, "Your misfortunes, madam,
and those of the country, had determined me to devote myself to your
service.  I see that my advice does not accord with your majesty's
views.  I augur little success from the plan which you have been induced
to follow.  You are too far from the help you rely on, and you will be
lost before it can reach you.  I earnestly hope that I may be mistaken
in this prophecy.  At all events, I am sure of losing my head for the
interest I have felt in your affairs, and the services I have
endeavoured to render you.  I only ask as a recompense the honour of
kissing your hand."

The queen shed tears as she extended her hand to him, and often
afterwards spoke of Barnave with regard.  It does not appear, however,
that either she or the king called in question their own conduct with
regard to these men.  They induced them to devote themselves to a most
hazardous service--summoned them to secret interviews in the palace, in
the night, in dark corridors, or on back staircases, where some spy or
another was sure to see them, and report of them to the jealous people;
and, after all this, they were dismissed, and left unprotected by the
exact contrary of their advice being pursued.  Barnave's dismal
predictions were all fulfilled.  The royal family did sink down into
destruction; and he himself perished, as he had foretold.  He now left
Paris, and married at Grenoble.  The next August, less than three months
after his last interview with the queen, his correspondence with her and
the king was found in a chest in the palace; and orders were sent to
arrest him, and imprison him at Grenoble.  He lay in prison fifteen
months, and was then brought to Paris, and tried for his life.  He made
a noble defence; but it was of no avail.  He was beheaded on the 29th of
October, 1793.  When on the scaffold, he seemed suddenly struck with the
infamy of the treatment he had met with on every side.  He stamped with
his foot, and exclaimed, "This, then, is the reward of all that I have
done for liberty!"  He was only thirty-two years of age.  His unwise and
miserable sovereign was not living to mourn the destruction he had
brought on this high-minded man; and the fair royal hand which he had so
desired to kiss had become cold in death some days before.

To return to the spring of 1792.  The palace was now as dismal an abode
as ever children grew up in.  The king's temper and manners gave way
entirely.  For ten days he never once spoke, except to say the words
necessary in the game of backgammon, which he played with his sister
every day after dinner.  The queen kneeled to him, imploring him to
exert himself.  When this availed nothing, she endeavoured to arouse him
by the most frightful representations she could make of the danger they
were all in--a danger which increased every day, and which required that
he should act, and not sit sulking, while the hours flew by which were
bringing destruction on their heads.  She sometimes expressed sympathy
and tenderness; sometimes showed him his children, and besought him to
act, for their sakes: and sometimes she asked him proudly whether, if
they must perish, it would not be better to die with dignity and honour
than to wait sullenly, as if inviting the rabble to come and tread their
lives out on the floor of their own palace?

In one instance, she prevailed with him against his judgment; and in
five days, after, bitterly repented it.  There was no use in persuading
him to a single spirited act now and then, when he had not resolution to
follow it up by others: and so she found.  In June, the Assembly wished
to banish all the clergy, and to form a camp of twenty-thousand men,
under the walls of Paris.  The king would have agreed, telling the queen
that the people only wanted a pretence for a general insurrection; and
that it would burst forth at the moment of his refusing anything they
wished.  The queen, however, induced him to use his lawful power of
disapproving and forbidding these measures.  This happened on the 15th
of June.  When he declared to his ministers his intention of doing this,
three days before, they remonstrated, and the wife of one of them,
Madame Roland, wrote a letter, in her husband's name, to the king; a
letter so plain spoken that the king and queen could not brook it; and
the ministry were all turned out next morning.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TEN.

THE MOB IN THE PALACE.

The angry people rose.  Twenty-thousand of the poorest, dirtiest, and
most savage, went to the magistrates in a body, to declare their
intention of planting the Tree of Liberty on a terrace of the Tuileries,
on the 20th; and of presenting, at the same time, petitions to the king
against his late prohibitions about the priests and the army.  It was
easy to see what sort of petitions these were likely to be; but it had
become difficult to make preparation for any expected public event,--
there were so many opinions to be consulted, and so much suspicion was
abroad.

Early in the morning of the 20th, a tall Lombardy poplar, which the
people called their tree of liberty, was lying on a car in the lower
part of the city, and the people were collecting in multitudes to make a
procession with it to the palace.  A messenger from the magistrates
spoke to the people against their scheme; but they said they were only
going to do what they had a right to do: it was lawful to petition; and
that was their errand.  So, on they went, their numbers being swelled by
groups from every by-street on their way.  They drew two pieces of
cannon with them, and carried abundance of tricolour flags and ribbons;
and also various significant emblems, one of which was a bullock's heart
with a spear through it, labelled "the Aristocrat's heart."  The
magistrates next met them: but again the crowd declared they intended
only what was lawful, and pushed on.

They read their address in the Assembly, and then went, dancing and
shouting, to plant their tree.  The iron gates of the Tuileries were all
shut, and National soldiers and cannon appeared within; so that the tree
could not be planted on the terrace, as designed.  There was a convent
garden near, which served their purpose, and there was the tree of
liberty erected.

While this was doing, the Assembly dispersed till evening.  The crowd
desired that the king would come out, and hear their petition.  They
waited and waited, pressing against the iron gates, till some were near
being pressed to death, and were not in the better humour for that.  The
king did not appear.  After a while, the guard within were told that, if
the king would not come out to his people, his people would go in to
him.  As usual, there was no decision in the treatment of the people.
After some hesitation, the guards opened one of the gates.  The
multitude swarmed in; rushed at a wooden door of the palace; shivered
it; and the royal household were at once at their mercy.

Now at last the sovereign and his craving people met, face to face: met,
too, that they might petition, and he reply.  But they were no longer
fitted for coming to an understanding.  They despised him as weak, and a
double-dealer; and he despised them for their ignorance, their tatters,
and dirt.  He showed this day that he was no coward.  He was indolent,
irresolute, and unable to act; but he could endure.  After this day, no
one could, unrebuked, call him a coward.  When the mob began battering
upon the door of the room in which he was, he ordered it to be thrown
open.  Some of the gentlemen of his household had rushed in through
another door, and requested him to stand in the recess of a large
window.  They drove up a heavy table before him, and ranged themselves
in front of it.  They begged him not to be alarmed.  "Put your hand on
my heart," replied the king, "and see if I am afraid."  The Princess
Elizabeth flew to see what was doing to her brother.  She heard fierce
threats from the mob against the queen.  They vowed they would have the
blood of the mischievous Austrian woman.  The attendants begged the
princess to go away from this scene.  "No," said she, "let them take me
for the queen, and then she may have time to escape."  They forced her
away, however, with what emotions of admiration words cannot express.

The king demanded of the riotous crowd what it was that they wanted.
They cried that they would have the patriot ministers back again, and no
prohibition about the clergy and the army.  The king replied that this
was not the way, nor the time, to settle such matters.  Those who heard
him must have respected him for having at last given a good and decided
answer.  During the rest of the time, about three hours, he stood in the
recess of the window, while the mob passed to and fro before the broad
table which stood between him and them.  At the very beginning of the
scene one of the people handed him a red woollen cap, such as the
furious revolutionary people had taken to wearing, to show their
patriotism.  This cap the king was bid to wear.  He put it on; and it
was matter of complaint against him afterwards by his aristocratic
adherents, that he had worn the red cap for three hours.  The fact was
that he did not feel the cap on the top of his hair, matted with pomatum
and powder as hair then was, and forgot it, till his family noticed it
on his meeting them again.  He declared himself thirsty, and a
ragamuffin handing him a half-empty bottle, he drank from it.

The queen had attempted, with her children, to reach the room where the
king was, but could not.  Each seems to have believed that it was the
intention of the mob to murder one or both of them, and there was much
said of the murderers' arms which were carried; but it does not now
appear probable that there was any such intention.  There was nothing to
prevent its execution; for the multitude could in a moment have
overpowered ten times the number of adherents that were about the royal
family; and the Assembly were not seen or heard of till past six, when
the mob had been parading about the palace for an hour and a half.
However, the royal party did expect murder, and their suspense of three
hours must have been terrible.

The queen was secured, like the king, behind a table.  She put a large
tricolor cockade upon her head, and placed the Dauphin on a table before
her.  There sat poor little Louis, with a great red woollen cap covering
his head, down to his very eyes, seeing how his governess and the other
ladies behind his mother were terrified, and perhaps finding out how his
mother's heart was swelling, and well-nigh bursting, while her face and
manner were calm and dignified.  He saw, too, the horrible things that
were shown in the procession.  The bullock's heart was there; and there
was a little gibbet, with a little doll hung to it, and his mother's
name written below.  He heard many dreadful things said to her; but he
also heard her answers, and saw that they pleased the people.  One angry
woman stood and railed at the queen.  The queen asked whether she had
ever seen her before, and whether she had ever done her any injury.
"No," said the woman; "but it is you who have done the country so much
harm."

"You have been told so; but you are mistaken," said the queen.  "Being
the wife of the king of France, and mother of the Dauphin, I am a
Frenchwoman.  I shall never see my own country again; it is in France
that I must be happy or unhappy.  I was very happy till you began to
hate me."  The woman was softened at once.  She said, with tears, "I did
not know you.  I see now that you are good."

The queen could not in the least comprehend the hatred of royalty, which
had now become common.  She could not comprehend it, because she was
born royal; and it seemed to her as natural that princes should be
served and obeyed by everybody below them as that children should be
ruled by their parents.  She also knew nothing of the miseries caused
for long years past by the abuse of power by both kings and nobles, and
by herself among the rest.  Unconscious of all this, she could make
nothing of what she heard this evening from a member of the Assembly.--
Some of the members arrived at six o'clock, too late to do any good.
The queen directed their notice to the broken doors, bidding them
observe the outrageous way in which the home of the royal family had
been violated.  She saw signs of emotion in the countenance of Monsieur
Merlin de Thionville, and observed upon it.  Monsieur Merlin replied
that he felt for her as a woman, a wife, and mother, but that she must
not suppose that he shed a single tear for the king or the queen; that
he hated kings and queens.  It was the only feeling he had towards them;
it was his religion.--Now, however extravagant this man's feelings might
be, and however harsh his expression of them, such sayings might have
been a valuable lesson to one who could reflect and reason upon them,
and diligently try to discover how such feelings could have grown up in
millions of minds.  This, however, the poor queen never thought of
doing.  She called it madness; and felt as if in Bedlam, while
surrounded by those who were of the same mind as Monsieur Merlin.

At last the Mayor of Paris came.  Monsieur Petion was now mayor: the
same who had pulled Louis's hair, on the return from Varennes, a year
before.  He harangued the people: several others harangued; and at last
the mob marched out through the broken doors of the violated palace.  It
was eight in the evening.  When the members of this unhappy family could
get to one another, again, when they felt that they were once more
alone, they threw themselves into one another's arms, weeping bitterly.
The monarch and his people had met at last, face to face; and it was
only to find that there was, and could be, no agreement between them.
One of the parties must give way: the people were strong; the king was
weak, and his ruin was now certain.  Little Louis understood nothing of
all this; but one wonders whether he could sleep that night,--whether he
could forget the frightful procession he had seen filling the very rooms
in which he lived.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

WHAT BEFELL WHILE THE QUEEN WAS HOPING.

The secret cipher letters went now faster than ever, and seem to have
been so urgent about speedy help and rescue as to have appeared somewhat
peevish to friends at a distance.  The queen's sister wrote from
Brussels that she hoped the royal family did not doubt the anxiety of
their friends: that the danger appeared indeed as pressing as it could
be represented; but that some prudence was necessary on the part of
those who were preparing help, and some patience on the part of those
who were awaiting it.--Alas!  It was difficult for the poor queen to be
patient, expecting, as she did daily, the murder of the king.  Though
this fear seems to have been unfounded, it caused her as much suffering
as if it had been just.--She had a breastplate made for the king, of
silk many times folded, and well wadded, so that it would resist the
blow of a dagger, and even a pistol-ball.  This under-dress was made at
Madame Campan's house; and she brought it into the palace, wearing it as
an under-petticoat, that no one might see it.  For three days, in the
beginning of July, did Madame Campan wear this heavy warm petticoat
before an opportunity could be found for the king to try it on.  The
occasion for which it was wanted was the 14th of July, the anniversary
of the destruction of the Bastille, and the date of the Independence of
the Nation, as the nation chose to say: on which day the king was to
appear in public.

When he tried on the breastplate, he said in a low voice to Madame
Campan that he wore this to satisfy the queen, but that he was persuaded
he should not be assassinated, but left to be disposed of in another
way.  The queen afterwards made Madame Campan repeat to her what the
king had said, and then observed that this was not new to her: she had
seen the king much occupied of late in studying the history of Charles
the First of England.  The king declared that he studied this history in
order to learn how to avoid the errors of Charles in dealing with his
people.  Alas!  If he had done so twenty years before, it is doubtful
whether such study could have been of any use to a ruler who had neither
the knowledge nor the spirit necessary for the times.  Now it was by
many years too late.  No one believed in his sincerity: every one
despised his weakness; and he was so humbled that no act of his could
have the force or the grace of freedom.  The history of Charles the
First is indeed a most instructive lesson to kings: but it is a lesson
which must be learned and used while kings are still sitting on an
honoured and unshaken throne.

There were people enough in Paris grieved and shocked at the proceedings
of the 20th of June to have made some stand in defence of the king,--
some delay in the dissolution of society; and these people declared
themselves by public acts, particularly by petitions to the Assembly.  A
man of spirit would have seized the occasion: and if the king had been
such a man, he might possibly have risen from this point out of his
misfortunes, and so have made a favourable day out of that most
miserable one.  But, as usual, the royal family overlooked the
opportunity.  They were so occupied in looking for help from Germany,
that they had no attention, no trust, for friends nearer home.  The Duke
of Brunswick was coming with an army to rescue them.  The people knew
this well enough; and their panic about an invasion did not make them
love the more the family at whose call the invaders were coming.  On the
25th of July, the Duke of Brunswick began his march into France, and
issued a proclamation which said that the whole French nation should be
protected by him in rallying round their king; but that, if any parties
should insult the king, or carry him away from Paris, such persons
should be destroyed, and Paris blown to pieces with his cannon.  As the
French nation did not wish or intend to rally round their king, this
proclamation made them furious, and caused the destruction of the royal
family in a shorter time than it would otherwise have happened; if it
had otherwise happened at all.  Was ever such mournful folly heard of as
marks the whole history of this unhappy king?  One's compassion,
however, is chiefly for the three who were victims of this folly without
sharing it.  The king and queen brought much of their misery upon
themselves; but the sweet Princess Elizabeth and the two children
suffered without having sinned.  The darkness of their lot was now
gathering fast about them.

It was impossible, after the late proceedings, to consider the palace
safe at any hour.  The queen feared assassination for herself as a
foreigner, and a trial for the king, preparatory to his death upon the
scaffold; and she desired to guard against any seizure of papers, which
might now take place at any time.  She deposited her ready money in the
hands of a faithful person; and the king employed his old companion,
Gamin, the locksmith, to make, in great secrecy, a safe for papers in a
place where no one would suspect its existence.  This fellow betrayed
the secret; first, luckily, to some friends; and the queen, hearing of
this, persuaded the king to empty out the safe.  Gamin afterwards
publicly informed the enemies of the king of this cupboard, and moreover
swore that the king attempted to poison him when it was done, that the
secret might be safe.  This absurd calumny was believed, like everything
else that was said against the royal family; and the wretch had a
pension given him.  Such was the king's reward for submitting, like a
timid apprentice, to this man's insolence, while learning lock-making
from him, for ten years past.

General Lafayette came to Paris, to remonstrate, at the head of
twenty-thousand petitioners, against the late treatment of the king.  Of
course, those who had done it looked coldly upon him; and so did the
king.  The king forbade his officers to support anything proposed by
General Lafayette; and the queen refused to allow him to remove her and
her family to the loyal city of Rouen.  Lafayette, thus unsupported, had
to hasten back to the army; and in this way the royal family insulted
and dismissed the last person who could have rescued them from their
impending fate.

Whenever even the children appeared out of doors, they experienced such
insults that they left off going anywhere beyond the palace gardens,
from which the public were excluded, in order to allow the family to
take the air unmolested.  Such cries, however, were heard from the
terrace outside, that, after being twice driven in by them, the family
gave up going out at all Louis had to give up his gardening, and the
sight of the flowers he had sown, and to keep within doors all these
long bright summer days.

The queen could not sleep much; and she ordered that neither the
shutters nor blinds of her chamber should be closed, that the nights
might appear less long.  One night, as Madame Campan watched beside her,
she fixed her eyes on the moon, and said softly, that before she saw the
same moon next month, she and the king should be free.  She declared
that their affairs were now proceeding fast and well, and told how the
army from Germany was to march, and how soon it might arrive.  She
admitted that there were alarming differences of advice and opinion
among their followers, and spoke of the fatal consequences of the king's
irresolution; but still she hoped that another month would set them
free.  She was, as usual, completely mistaken.  She found it so hard to
bear the insults daily offered, even while expecting so speedy an end to
them, that she declared she should have preferred imprisonment in a
tower, on a lonely sea-shore, to her present condition.  On their way
through the corridor to the chapel, one Sunday, the king and she were
greeted by the cry from some of the guards of "Long live the king!" but
others broke in with "No, no; no king!  Down with the veto!"  This
struck upon the queen's heart; for it was she who had persuaded the king
to put his veto, or prohibition, upon the banishment of the priests.
When they were in the chapel, something worse happened.  The passage "He
bringeth down the mighty from their seat," had to be sung; and when the
choir came to it, they sang, or shouted it, three times as loud as any
other part of the service.  The king's adherents were so angry at this
that when the words came "And may the Lord keep the king in safety," the
royalists shouted out three times "And the Queen."  This indecent
contention went on during the whole time of service; and the royal
family found that they were no longer permitted even to worship in
peace.

On the 9th of August, there was much noise and confusion throughout
Paris; and it became known that an insurrection was to take place the
next morning.  Louis knew that something was dreaded, but he slept as
usual.  His servant, Clery, put him to bed at half-past eight, while it
was still daylight, and then went out, to try what he could learn of the
proceedings of the people.  The king and queen supped at nine o'clock.
While Madame Campan waited on them at table, a noise was heard outside
the door.  Madame Campan went to see what it was.  Two of the guards
were fighting,--one abusing the king, and the other insisting that he
was sincere in professing to stand by the Constitution.  If the queen
had not before given over all idea of safety, she would now have done
so.  She said she knew that some of their fiercest enemies were among
their guards;--not their Swiss guards, but those who wore the national
uniform.

This was a terrible night.  It was oppressively hot; and the rooms of
the palace were crowded with gentlemen, adherents of the court, who had
come to devote themselves finally for their king and his family.  The
Swiss guards,--picked Swiss soldiers, strong and brave, hired to guard
the person and palace of the sovereign,--stood silently at their posts,
their red uniforms contrasting with the black clothes of the seven
hundred gentlemen who waited to see what they were to do.  Though these
seemed a large number when collected under a roof,--though the rooms
were so full that the windows had to be thrown open, and the mayor
Petion went down to walk in the gardens because the heat was so
oppressive within, this was no force to oppose to a siege from the
population of Paris.  The king caused the plan of defence, prepared by
General Viomenil, to be communicated to an officer, who said to Madame
Campan, "Put your jewels and money into your pockets.  There is no
chance for us.  The measures of defence are good for nothing.  Our only
chance is in the resolution of the king; and with all his virtues, he
has not that."

Never yet had the king cut such a wretched figure as on this occasion.
He often congratulated himself on no blood having been shed by his
order: and this was one of his dying consolations.  It seems never to
have occurred to him that his weakness caused more destruction than even
cruelty would have done.  It caused not only the loss of many lives; it
encouraged the breaking up of society from its very foundations; it
spared the wicked, while it betrayed the faithful.  It did moral injury,
which it may be worse to have to answer for in the end than some acts of
bloodshed.  He would not have half a dozen shots fired to make a way for
his coach over the bridge of Varennes; but he deserted, without a
moment's scruple, his devoted Swiss guards, as we shall see; and as he
refused to suffer with them, he may be considered answerable for their
lives.

The clang of bells was heard by the inmates of the palace, as they
stood, this summer night, by the open windows.  Steeple after steeple
rang out; and every one knew that this was the token of insurrection in
the respective parishes.  Petion had been sent for, to answer for what
was doing; he had not been civilly treated within doors, as might be
supposed,--the king speaking very roughly to him.  He could not get away
again, as the gates were all guarded, and no one allowed to pass; so
that the only thing he could well do was to walk in the gardens.

At four in the morning, the National Assembly sent for him, to appear
and give an account of Paris.  Considering that he had been pacing the
garden walks all night, the Mayor of Paris was as little able as anybody
to give an account of the city; but he was glad to get away, considering
his situation one of great danger.

The number of the Swiss guards was a thousand.  Their post was within
the Tuileries.  Outside were squadrons under the command of Mandat, a
loyal officer, who kept them ranged with their cannon round the outer
enclosures of the palace.  Just at dawn, Mandat was sent for by the
magistrates of the city, and went alone, suspecting no danger.  To his
amazement, he found that, with the exception of the mayor and one or two
more, the entire magistracy was changed, and now composed of furious
revolutionary men.  They arrested him, and ordered him to prison; but
the mob seized him on the steps, and murdered him.  The question next
was, what his soldiers would do now they had lost their commander.  They
were hungry and weary; and were heard to say how sad it would be to fire
upon their own countrymen--how much easier to side with them.  Now was
the moment for the king to speak and act.  Now he was told what a gloomy
and uncertain temper these squadrons were in.  He owed it to his office,
to his family, to his adherents, to his Swiss guards, to endeavour to
confirm these soldiers in their duty to him.  A word, a look, a gesture
might, in the right moment, have done it.  What did he do?

In the middle of the night, while all was supposed to be well among the
soldiers outside, the king had retired for a while.  When he appeared
again, on the arrival of fresh tidings, it was seen, by the powder being
rubbed off from one side of his head, that he had been lying down to get
a little sleep.  The queen and Princess Elizabeth also withdrew; but not
to sleep.  They went, with Madame Campan to attend upon them, to a small
room on the ground-floor, where they lay down on couches.  In preparing
to lie down, the princess took out the cornelian pin which fastened her
dress, and showed Madame Campan what was engraved upon it.  It was the
stem of a lily, with the inscription, "Oblivion of wrongs: forgiveness
of injuries."

"I fear," said the princess, "our enemies do not regard that maxim: but
we must, nevertheless."  The ladies conversed sadly enough, but little
imagining what was happening to Mandat.  At last they heard a shot.
They sprang from their couches, observing that this was the first shot,
but would not be the last.  They must go to the king.  They did so,
desiring Madame Campan to follow, and to be in waiting with the other
ladies.--At four o'clock, the queen came out of the king's apartment,
saying that she had no longer any hope whatever, as Mandat was killed.
Yet the king was going out to review the squadrons who had lost their
commander; and the wife of a resolute and spirited king would not have
been without hope.  She would have hoped much from the king's presence
and appeal.  It was because she knew the king so well that she had no
hope.

Orders were given for Louis to be taken up and brought immediately: and
he was presently ready,--at a little before five, when (it being the
10th of August) it was quite light.  His sister appeared too, and the
whole family went out to review the soldiers, as it was said, and to see
the preparations for defence.  Louis had hold of his father's hand.  At
first, a few voices cried "Long live the king!" but the king, pale and
silent, walked on without taking any notice; and in a few moments there
was a long growl, which burst into a clamour of "Long live the nation!"
Some of the gunners thrust themselves forward, and shook their fists in
the king's face, uttering the grossest insults.  Some of the attendants
pushed them back; but the king, now white as the wall, said not a word.
Followed by the ladies of his family, he walked along the line, and back
again, leaving nothing but contempt behind.  "All is lost," said the
queen to Madame Campan, as she entered her apartments: "the king showed
no energy; and this review has done nothing but harm."  What a lot was
hers!  To be dragged down, with her children, to destruction, by the
apathy of a husband, while she herself had spirit enough to have ruled
an empire, but must not now exert it, because it would exasperate the
people to have the foreigner, the Austrian, meddle with the affairs of
France!

What was to be done next?  The Swiss, and the gentlemen and servants of
the court, were all that now remained to be depended upon.  The Swiss
stood firm as their own Alps.  The household arranged themselves in the
apartments, armed, and ready for the assault from without: though no one
of them could have hope of victory, or any expectation but of
destruction.  In this terrible hour, however, they jested; and upon a
melancholy subject.  They were miserably armed; and they quizzed one
another and themselves for the appearance they made.  None had more than
a sword and a pair of pistols: one page had only a single pocket-pistol;
and another page and equerry had broken a pair of tongs, and taken each
a half.

The insurgents were now surrounding the Tuileries, and filling the
neighbourhood: and it seemed probable that the gunners, placed outside
for the defence of the palace, would turn their cannon against it.  The
king sent a messenger to the Assembly, to request them to depute some of
their body to be a safeguard to the throne in this extremity.  The
Assembly took no notice of the message; but went on with their regular
business.

The magistrate of the district saw now, from the temper of the people
outside, no chance but of destruction to every individual within the
palace, if once the siege began.  The error was in ever pretending to
make a defence, while such a helpless being as the king must be the one
to give orders.  It was too late to help that now.  There were the
cannon, with the gunners surlily asking whether it was expected of them
to fire upon the people: and there were the people, too many and too
angry to be got rid of.  The magistrate of the district, Roederer,
visited the palace, and begged a private interview with the king.  He
was shown into a small apartment, which the king and queen entered.
Roederer proposed their going over to the Assembly without a moment's
delay, to commit themselves and their children to the protection of the
representatives of the people.  "No, no!" exclaimed the queen, blushing,
no doubt, at the thought of the infamy of deserting, at the fatal
moment, their adherents, their steady Swiss, and the servants of the
household.  Roederer told her that by remaining she would render herself
responsible for the lives of the whole family; for that no power could
save them within the walls of the palace.  She said no more.  The king
sat, the picture of indifference, with his hands upon his knees,
listening.  When there was a pause, and he must say something, he looked
over his shoulder to the queen, and said, "Let us go."

As they left the apartment the queen told Madame Campan to remain till
either the family should return, or she should be sent for to join her
mistress,--no one knew where.  The family never returned.

Only two ladies were permitted to accompany them,--the Princess de
Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel.  In order to fulfil her duty,--in order
not to desert Louis,--his governess was compelled to leave her daughter
Pauline, only seventeen years old, in this besieged palace, among the
soldiers.  Pauline escaped with life and safety, and joined her mother
soon after.

As the king walked through the apartments of the palace, followed by his
family, Roederer went before him, saying, "Make way!  The king is going
to the Assembly."  How these words must have pierced the hearts of his
devoted servants, of his faithful Swiss!  This was the reward of their
brave fidelity!  The king was leaving those who were ready to die rather
than desert him.  He was going to walk out at an open door, while they
were shut in, to be shot down like game in an enclosure.

The family had but a short way to go; and their passage to the Assembly
was watched from the windows by some of the doomed friends whom they
left behind.  They walked between two rows of guards; but were yet so
pressed upon that the queen was robbed of her watch and purse.  Louis
held his mother's hand, and amused himself with kicking the dead leaves
as he walked.  A gigantic man, a ringleader of the mob, snatched up the
boy, and carried him.  The queen screamed with terror, and was near
fainting: but the man said, "Do not be frightened: I will do him no
harm."  He merely carried him, and then set him down at the gate, where
a deputation from the Assembly came out, to meet the royal family.  From
the palace windows the royal family were seen to enter that gate; and
those who saw it well knew that all hope for the royal cause was now
over.

The assailants without and the defenders in the outer court of the
Tuileries did not know of the departure of the royal family; and the
battle therefore began with fury.  The gentlemen and servants had now
only to think of saving themselves as they could.  Some escaped from
windows, and others under disguises: but many were murdered.  The fate
of the Swiss was dreadful.  They fought bravely, and kept their ranks.
At last, a messenger arrived with a written order from the king that
they should cease firing.  But they were still fired upon from without.
They knew not what to do, and dispersed.  Some few reached the Assembly,
and were sheltered there.  Some few more fled into private houses; but,
as for the rest, their blood streamed on the floor of the palace, and
their bodies blocked up the doorways.  Some lay dead on the terraces,
and others were shot down from street to street as they fled, fighting
their way.  From fifty to eighty were marched as prisoners to the Hall
where the magistrates were sitting: but the crowd broke in upon them on
the way, and slaughtered them every one.  Their last thought might well
have been, "Put not your trust in princes."  But perhaps more painful
thoughts still were in their fainting hearts; and before their swimming
eyes might be visions of their homes in the Swiss valleys, and their
wives and children singing of them, while tending the cows on the
mountain side.  Yet the king who, by his orders and arrangements, gave
them over to such a death as this, and deserted them at the crisis, was
for ever consoling himself with the thought that not a drop of blood had
ever been shed by his command.

In the neighbourhood of Lucerne, in Switzerland, there is a monument to
the memory of these men.  Above a little lake rises a precipitous face
of rock.  In the midst of this the monument is hollowed out.  The Swiss
lion, wounded and dying, grasps with its failing claws the French
shield, with the royal lilies upon it.--If the king had sent his family
to the Assembly for safety, and himself remained to fall with his
adherents, this monument would not have been, as it is now, a reproach
upon his memory, durable as Swiss honour and as the everlasting rock.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWELVE.

PRISON.

The royal family were placed for three days in a forsaken monastery,
where four cells were allotted to them and their attendants.  There
Madame Campan went to them on the 11th.  In one cell the king was having
his hair dressed.  In another, the queen was weeping on a mean bed,
attended by a woman, a stranger, but civil enough.  The children soon
came in, and the queen lamented bitterly over them, mourning that they
should be deprived of so fine an inheritance as this great kingdom; for
she now knew, she said, that the monarchy was really coming to an end.
She spoke of the kingdom, with its many millions of inhabitants, as she
would have spoken of a landed estate with the animals upon it,--as a
property with which monarchs ought to be able to do what they like.
Such was her idea of royalty.  She lamented in this crisis over her
boy's loss of the crown, as if that were the greatest of the misfortunes
that awaited him--as if he could not possibly be happy anywhere but on
the throne.  Such was her idea of human life.  She was brought up with
such ideas, and was to be pitied, not blamed, for acting and feeling
accordingly.

She mentioned to Madame Campan her vexation at the king having been so
eager about his dinner, and having eaten and drunk so heartily in the
presence of malignant strangers, on that dreadful day, and in this
miserable place.  She need not have minded this so much; for everybody
now knew the king and his ways, and how he never dreamed, under any
circumstances, of not eating and drinking as usual.

The departure from the Tuileries had been so sudden that the family had
at first only the clothes that they wore.  Louis would have wanted for
clean linen, if the lady of the English ambassador had not kindly
thought of the poor boy, and sent him some clothes.

On the 13th, the family were removed to the prison of the Temple; and
Madame Campan, and almost all the servants of the royal household, lost
sight of their master and mistress for ever.  It was seven in the
evening when the removal to the Temple took place; and then there was so
much disputing about where the family should be accommodated, whether in
the tower of the building or another part of it, that poor Louis, though
overcome with sleep, had to sit up while his father and mother supped.
At eleven o'clock Madame de Tourzel took him to the Tower, to find some
place where he might go to rest.  When the others lay down, at one in
the morning, there was no preparation made for their comfort.  The
Princess Elizabeth, with her waiting-woman, slept in the kitchen.
Louis, with his governess and lady-attendant, slept in the
billiard-room.  It was all confusion and discomfort.  The next morning,
Louis was taken to breakfast with his mother; and then all went together
to see the best rooms in the Tower, and arrange how they were to be
occupied.

It soon became unnecessary to plan for so many people; for an order
arrived for the royal attendants to be removed, to make room for a new
set appointed by the Common Council.  The king and queen refused to be
waited upon by strangers, who were, no doubt, to act as spies: but their
own people were removed notwithstanding.  On the night of the 19th, the
king's valets were carried off; and then the Princess de Lamballe, and
Madame de Tourzel and her daughter, and even the waiting-women.  Louis
was taken up, and carried to his mother's apartment, that he might not
be left quite alone.  He probably slept after thus losing his governess
a second time: but his mother and aunt did not.  They were too anxious
to think of sleeping: too anxious to know what to believe, and whether,
as they had been assured, they should see their companions again in the
morning.  In the morning, instead of the ladies, came the news that they
were all removed to another prison.  At nine o'clock, one of the king's
valets reappeared.  He alone had been pronounced innocent of any
offence, and permitted to return to his master.

Clery, the Dauphin's valet at the Tuileries, had been on the watch for
an opportunity of returning to his office, after having been left behind
on the dreadful 10th of August, when his life had been in the utmost
danger.  He now heard that the mayor was about to appoint two more
servants to wait on the king and the dauphin; and he so earnestly
entreated that he might be one, that he obtained the appointment.  No
one was more pleased than Louis to see Clery again.

It was on the 26th of August, at eight in the evening, that Clery
entered once more upon his service.  The queen desired him to resume his
attendance upon the Dauphin, and to unite with the king's valet in
rendering the family as comfortable as they could.  The princesses had
now been eight days without the attendance of their women; and their
hair much needed proper combing and arranging.  At supper they asked
Clery whether he could dress their hair.  His reply was, that he should
be happy to do whatever they desired.  The officer on guard commanded
him aloud to be more guarded in his replies.  Poor Clery was aghast at
finding that he must not be civil in his expressions to his master and
mistress.

Clery did not devote himself exclusively to the service of the Dauphin;
for there were at first few, and latterly no other servants than
himself, except a man named Tison, and his wife, who did the rough work
of the chambers for a time.

The way in which the royal prisoners passed their days, for some few
months, was as follows:

The king rose at six in the summer, and at seven as winter came on.  He
shaved himself, and then Clery dressed his hair, and finished his
toilette.  The king retired to a small turret-chamber, which he made his
study, and there kneeled at his prayers, and read religious books till
nine o'clock, his guard always taking care that the door was half-open;
so that the king could not even kneel to pray in entire privacy.--
Meantime Clery made the bed, and prepared the room for breakfast, and
then went down to take up little Louis.  After washing and dressing him,
he dressed the queen's hair, and then went to the other princesses, to
do the same service for them.  This was the opportunity seized for
telling the family any news he had been able to obtain of what was going
on out of doors.  It was almost the only occasion on which he could
speak without being overheard by the guards: and even this was contrived
with caution.  Clery showed, by an appointed sign, that he had something
to say; and one of the princesses engaged the guard at the door in
conversation, while Clery whispered his news into the ear of the other,
as he bent over her head, to dress her hair.--At nine, the princesses
and Louis went up to the king's apartment to breakfast, when Clery
waited upon them, making haste, when the meal was done, to go down and
get the other beds made.  At ten, the whole family came down to the
queen's apartment, and began the business of the day.  Louis said his
geography lesson to his father, read history with his mother, and
learned poetry by heart; and did his sums with his aunt.  His sister did
her lessons at the same time.  Hers lasted till twelve, while Louis's
were over by eleven, when he played by himself for an hour.  The queen
generally worked at her tapestry-frame; but sometimes she wrote out
extracts from books for her daughter's use.  When she did this, and when
the young princess wrote out sums into her cyphering-book, the officer
on guard used to stand looking over their shoulders, to see that they
did not, under false pretences, carry on any secret correspondence.  It
is believed that they did so, notwithstanding all this vigilance; but
how they contrived it will probably never be known; for, of course, they
have not told their plan, and their gaolers were not aware of it.

At twelve o'clock the ladies changed their dress in the Princess
Elizabeth's room, before going out to walk in the garden.  The king and
queen did not relish this daily walk in the garden, because they rarely
went without being insulted: but they persevered as long as the practice
was permitted, for the sake of the children.  That Louis, particularly,
might have air and exercise, they would have made a point of going out,
in all but the very worst weather.  They were, however, allowed no
choice.  Wet or dry, rain or shine, out they must go, at the same hour
every day, because the outside guard was changed at that hour; and the
officer chose to see, without trouble to himself, that the prisoners
were all safe.  Several guards were always in attendance upon the steps
of the family as they walked; and there was only one walk which they
might enter, because workmen were rebuilding the walls in other parts of
the inclosure.  Louis would thus have benefited little by the hour or
two out of doors, if it had not been for good Clery, who seems to have
found time to do everything that could serve or please the family.
Clery went out with them every day, and kept Louis at play the whole
time,--sometimes at football,--sometimes at quoits,--sometimes at
running races.

This daily walk did not long continue the practice of the family; and,
though they thought it right not to give it up themselves, some of them
were very glad when it was over.  Their gaoler treated them with
intolerable insolence.  He would not stir till they reached the door
they were to pass out at, and then made a prodigious jingling with his
great bunch of keys, and kept them waiting, under pretence of not being
able to find the key: then he made all the noise he could in drawing the
bolts; and, stepping before them, stood in the doorway, with his long
pipe in his mouth, with which he puffed smoke into the face of each of
the princesses as she passed,--the guard bursting into loud laughs at
each puff.  Wherever they went, the prisoners saw a guillotine, or a
gallows, or some vile inscription chalked upon the walls.  One of these
inscriptions was, "Little cubs must be strangled."  Others threatened
death, in a gibing way, to the king or the queen.  Clery one day saw the
king reading some such threat of death, and would have rubbed it out;
but the king bade him let it alone.

They had one object of interest in their walks, which, however, they
were obliged to conceal.  Certain of their devoted friends obtained
entrance to the houses whose back windows commanded this garden, and,
though afraid to make signals, looked down upon the forlorn party with
sympathy which was well understood.  Clery one day believed that Madame
de Tourzel had watched them during their walk; a lady very like her had
so earnestly followed Louis with her eyes through his play.  He
whispered this to the Princess Elizabeth, who shed tears on hearing it;
so persuaded had the royal family been that Madame de Tourzel had
perished.--It was not she however: neither had she perished.  She was at
one of her country estates, hoping that she was kindly remembered by the
royal family, and forgotten by their enemies.

One of the most important pieces of intelligence that reached them, they
first learned in the course of their walk.  A woman at a window which
overlooked the garden watched the moment when the guards turned their
backs, and held up for an instant a large sheet of pasteboard, on which
was written "Verdun is taken."  The Princess Elizabeth saw and read
this.  The woman no doubt thought this good news; and perhaps they, too,
were pleased that their friends and the foreign army were fairly in
France, and had taken a town on the road to Paris: but we shall see how
it turned out to be anything but good news.--After a few weeks they
walked no more in the garden, and had only such air and exercise as they
could obtain upon the leads of the Temple.

From their walk they came in to dinner at two o'clock, where Clery was
again ready to wait, when he became the only remaining servant.  This
was the hour when Santerre the brewer, now commanding the National Guard
of Paris, came daily, with two other officers, to examine all the
apartments inhabited by the family.  The king sometimes spoke to him,--
the queen never.

After dinner, the king and queen played piquet or backgammon; not
because they could enjoy at present any amusement of the kind, but
because they found means, while bending their heads together over the
board, to say a few words unheard by the guard.  At four o'clock, the
ladies and children left the king, as it was his custom to sleep at this
hour.  At six Clery and Louis entered the apartment, and Clery gave the
boy lessons in writing, and copied, at the king's desire, passages from
the works of Montesquieu and others, for the use of the Dauphin.  Then
Clery took Louis to his aunt's room, where they played at ball, and
battledore and shuttlecock, till Louis's supper-time, at eight o'clock.
Meanwhile the queen and the Princess Elizabeth read aloud, till eight
o'clock, when they went to Louis, to sit beside him while he had his
supper.  Then the king amused the children with riddles, which he had
found in a collection of old newspapers.  All kindly exerted themselves
to send Louis cheerful to bed.  He was too young, they thought, to lie
down with so sad a heart as they each had every night in their prison.

However busy Clery might be, he never failed to be in the king's little
study at seven o'clock.  Regularly at that hour every evening, a crier
stood in the street, close by the tower of the Temple, and proclaimed
what had been done that day in the Assembly, the Magistrates' Hall, and
in the army.  This crier was no doubt sent, or induced to stand in that
particular place, by friends of the royal family.  In the little
turret-room, while all was silent there, Clery could catch what the
crier said: and he found means to whisper it to the queen when she had
heard Louis say his prayers, and when Clery put him into bed.

Louis had added to his prayer one for the safety and welfare of Madame
de Tourzel.  He had so well learned the temper and feelings of the
guards that were always about the family, that when one of them stood
near enough to hear the words of his prayer, he repeated the parts in
which persons were named in a whisper.

At nine o'clock, Clery went down to wait at supper.  As the Dauphin was
never to be left alone, while such guards stood about, his mother and
aunt took it in turn to sit beside him; and Clery brought up supper for
whichever of them it might be.  This afforded opportunity for a few more
words of news, if there was any to tell.

After supper the king attended his wife, sister, and daughter to the
queen's apartment, shook hands with them as he said good-night, and
retired to his little study, where he read till midnight.  The guard was
changed at midnight; and the king would never go to rest till he knew
who was to be on guard.  If it was a stranger, he would learn his name.
This kept Clery up too.  After he had assisted the king to undress, he
lay down on his small bed, which he had placed beside that of the king,
in order to be at hand in case of danger.

Such was the course of the weary days of this unhappy family's
imprisonment.  The king does not seem to have been troubled by any
suspicion that they were all here through his fault; and there was
nothing in their conduct to remind him of it.  They could not but have
felt it; but they probably did not blame, but only mourned over him.
His quietness they called heroism, and his indolent content, patience.
His worst weaknesses were hidden here, where there was nothing to be
done.  The queen would have been better pleased if he had never spoken
to any of their gaolers; but, upon the whole, they managed to persuade
themselves and each other that he was a martyr suffering in piety and
patience.  We should have thought better of him if he had shown himself
capable of self-reproach for having done nothing in defence of his
crown, his family, and friends, but much towards the destruction of all.
If he had been brave and sincere, however ignorant and mistaken, his
family would now have been in a condition of honour and safety, though
perhaps exiles from France.

These dreary days were varied by the arrival of bad news; never of
good,--though the taking of Verdun at first looked like good news.  It
does not appear to have occurred to the king that, though his brothers
and other friends were nearer than they had been, his most deadly
enemies were nearer still,--close round about him, and sure to be made
more cruel by every alarm given them by his allies.  The nearer the army
approached, the greater was the danger of the prisoners.  A few minutes
after the Princess Elizabeth had read the words on the pasteboard, a new
guard arrived, in a passion of fear and anger.  He bade them all go in;
he arrested and carried off Clery's fellow-servant, whom they never saw
again, though he got off with a month's imprisonment.  While the valet
was packing up his clothes, the guard kept shouting to the king, "The
drum has beat to arms: the alarm-bell is ringing: the alarm-guns have
been fired: the emigrants are at Verdun.  If they come here, we shall
all perish; but you shall die first."  On hearing this, Louis burst into
an agony of tears, and ran out of the room.  His sister followed, and
tried to comfort him.  He saw that his father was not frightened.  The
king was full of hope; but there was more reason for Louis's terror than
for his father's expectation of deliverance.  Many warnings of the kind
occurred, but the king never believed them.  One of his guards said to
him, one night, that if the invaders advanced, the whole royal family
would certainly perish.  This man declared that many people pitied the
little boy; but that, as the son of a tyrant, he must die with the rest.

The fears of the disorderly people of Paris, who knew that they were ill
prepared for an invasion, made them desperate; and they began murdering
before the very gates of the prison, all whom they supposed to be the
king's friends, and therefore their enemies.  It was not likely that the
Princess de Lamballe should escape,--she who had been the superintendent
of the royal household, and the intimate friend of the queen;--she who,
after having been in safety in London, had gone back to France, to share
the fortunes of her mistress and friend.  This news of the taking of
Verdun cost her her life; and a multitude more were massacred during the
next three days.

In the night after the news came, the queen, who could not sleep, heard
the drums rolling continually.  The next day, the 3rd of September, as
she was sitting down to backgammon with, the king, at three o'clock, a
great clamour was heard in the street.  The officer on guard in the room
shut the window, and drew the curtains,--knowing well what was the
matter.  Clery at this moment entered.  The queen asked him why he was
not at dinner.  He replied that he was indisposed,--and well indeed he
might feel so.  He had just sat down to dinner with Tison and his wife,
when something was held up at the window which he knew at a glance to be
the head of the Princess de Lamballe.  He ran to prevent the queen's
hearing of it, if possible.

The king asked some of the officers if his family were in danger; and
was told that the people had heard that the royal prisoners had left the
Temple, and were crying out for the king to appear at a window; but that
this was not to be allowed, as the people must learn to have more
confidence in their magistrates.  Meantime, curses of the queen were
heard without; and one of the guard told her that the people wanted to
show her her friend's head, that she might see how tyrants were to be
served; and that if she did not go to the window, the people would come
up to her.

The queen dropped in a fainting-fit; and the brute left the room.  The
Princess Elizabeth and Clery lifted the queen into an arm-chair; and
Louis helped his sister to try to revive their mother.  He put his arms
about her neck, and his tears fell upon her face.  When she revived,
they were glad to see her shed tears.  They all went into the Princess
Elizabeth's room, where the noise from without was less heard.  There
the queen stood, silent and motionless, and apparently unaware of all
that was said and done in the room.  Yet this was the time chosen by a
messenger from the mayor for settling some accounts with the king.  This
man, not understanding the queen's misery, thought, when he saw her lost
and motionless, that she remained standing out of respect to him!

The noise continued for two hours; and it is believed that the mob would
have burst the doors, and murdered the family, if an officer of the
magistrates had not fastened a tricolor ribbon across the great gate,--a
symbol which the people always respected.  This officer made Clery pay,
out of the king's money, for this ribbon, which cost somewhat less than
two shillings.

The queen had not slept the night before; this night, her daughter and
sister heard her sobs the whole night through, while the continual roll
of the distant drums prepared them for new horrors.  Nothing more
occurred to alarm them, however, for some weeks; and it was long before
they knew that the massacre which began on that dreadful day was carried
on through the two next.

Whatever hopes the king had from abroad soon grew fainter.  The army
began to retreat before the end of September.  One of the reasons of
this was that the king's brothers and friends had misled the sovereigns
of other countries, by saying that the French nation generally were
attached to the king, and that the country people would rise in his
favour all along the line of march.  They may have believed this
themselves: but it was a great mistake; and when the foreign forces
entered France, they found the country people universally their enemies.
They would not furnish food, or any other assistance, and deserted
their homes to join the revolutionary forces.  Thus, the foreign troops
could not get on; and before a month was out, they were retreating,
having done the royal cause nothing but harm by taking Verdun.

The people of Paris, encouraged and delighted, now declared royalty
abolished in France.  The gaolers at once left off calling the family by
their titles, and objected to Clery's making any requests in the name of
the king, whom, to his face, they called Louis or Capet.  A shoemaker,
named Simon, was always in office in the Temple, superintending the
management of the prison in some of its departments.  This man prided
himself upon his rudeness, and would now sometimes say, in the king's
hearing, "Clery, ask Capet if he wants anything, that I may not have the
trouble of coming up a second time."

Some new linen being at last sent (after the princesses had been obliged
to mend their clothes every day, and to sit up to mend the king's after
he was in bed), the sempstresses were found to have marked the linen, as
usual, with crowned letters; and the princesses were ordered to take out
the marks before they were allowed to wear the clothes.  As it was found
that some correspondence was carried on between the prisoners and their
friends without, and the means could not be detected, all their
employments looked suspicious in the eyes of their gaolers.  After pen,
ink, and paper had been forbidden, the queen gave directions to Clery as
to what should be done with some chair-covers of tapestry-work which she
and her sister-in-law had worked for their amusement; but the guard
would not let them be sent out of the prison, as they were supposed to
contain hieroglyphic figures, which would be understood by the lady to
whom they were directed.  One day, when Louis was by his mother's side,
studying a multiplication-table which Clery had made for him, at her
desire, the guard interfered, saying that he was afraid the queen was
teaching her son a cipher-language, under pretence of giving him lessons
in arithmetic.  So the poor boy learned no more arithmetic.  While
reading history with her son, the queen had many lectures to undergo
about giving him a republican education,--lectures which were cruel
because they were perfectly useless.  The queen knew nothing about
republicanism, beyond what she had seen of late in Paris; and she had
seen nothing which could induce her to instruct her child in its favour.

Everything that came in and went out was searched; but yet it does not
appear that the real means of communication were discovered.  The
macaroons were broken, the fish cut open, the walnuts split, in search
of notes; and none were found.  A book which the Princess Elizabeth
wished to return to the person who had lent it to her, had all the
margins cut off, lest there should be writing on them in invisible ink.
The washing-bills, and all paper wrappers, were held to the fire, under
the same suspicion: and all the folds of the linen from the wash were
examined for hidden notes.

Once there was a fancy that the king wished to poison himself; and the
guards made poor Clery swallow some essence of soap, bought for the king
to shave with.  All these things show the dread entertained by the newly
freed people of being crushed by foreign powers, and the opinion that
prevailed of the selfishness and tyrannical habits of the king and
queen.  The jealousy and cruelty from which they were now suffering were
signs, perhaps, of the ignorance of the people; but they told quite as
plainly of a condition of desperate fear.  If they had known the truth,
they might have discovered that their persecutors were not less wretched
than themselves.  In point of ignorance of one another's views, wishes,
and intents, and of the means of securing the welfare of a nation, it
might be difficult to say which party was the least fit to govern.

Now that royalty was declared to be abolished, the family must have
pondered night and day what was to become of them, if a foreign army did
not come to release them; of which there seemed less chance now than on
that summer night when the queen had gazed at the moon, and hoped that
another month would restore her to freedom and dignity.  She could not
now avoid supposing that they might be got rid of by death: yet she
heard rumours of another fate.  One day she was told that her husband
and son were to be imprisoned for life in the castle of Chambord.  The
king was under forty years of age, and it was early for him to have to
quit the activity and enjoyment of life: but what must she have felt as
she looked upon her boy, not yet eight years old, and imagined him mured
up in a fortress for as long as he might live!  She seems to have felt
more keenly than anything else any fear or vexation caused to her boy;
which was natural enough, as he was the youngest of the party.  Almost
the only time when she showed any impatience at the behaviour of their
guards was when one of them waked Louis suddenly one night, to see
whether he was safe in bed.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE FAMILY SEPARATED.

Their sorrows increased as time went on.  The king was separated from
his family: but when the queen's grief alarmed the gaolers, the party
were allowed to take their meals together, on condition of their
speaking so as to be heard, and only in French.  It now became more
necessary than ever for Clery to learn what he could of what was passing
out of doors; and Louis helped in a plan by which Clery was to tell
whatever he could learn.  Louis and his sister now played battledore and
other games after dinner, in an outer room, their aunt sitting by with
her book or work.  Clery sat down with his book, and the children made
all the noise they could with their play, that Clery might speak to the
princess unheard by the guard.  Neither he nor the princess raised their
heads from their books, and Clery moved his lips as little as he could;
so that no one who was not listening could have supposed that he was
speaking.

The Dauphin cheered and amused his parents by his childish fun and
little pranks; but yet, every one observed that he never forgot that he
was in a prison.  It was painful to see a boy so young acting with the
caution of an old person, from the consciousness of being surrounded by
enemies.  Some of his caution was owing to fear, and some to the
gentleness of his temper.  He was never heard to speak of the Tuileries
or of Versailles, though it was certain that he had a vivid remembrance
of the kind of life he had led there.  He thought it would grieve his
parents to be reminded of their palaces, and of the days of their power.
One morning, he declared, when asked, that he had seen before an
officer who came to guard them for the first time.  The officer asked
him repeatedly where he had seen him, but Louis would not say.  At last,
he whispered to his mother, "It was when we were coming back from
Varennes."  When any guard more civil than the rest appeared on duty,
Louis always ran with the good news to the queen.  One day, a
stone-mason was employed in making holes in the doorway of the outer
room, in which large bolts were to be fixed.  While the man was at
breakfast, Louis amused himself with his tools.  This was an opportunity
for the king to gratify his well-known taste; and he began to work with
the mallet and chisel, to show his boy the way.  The mason came back,
and, moved by seeing the king so employed, said, "When you get out, you
will be able to say that you worked at your own bars."

"Ah!" said the king, "when and how shall I get out?"  Louis burst out
a-crying; and the king, throwing down the tools, went into his chamber,
and paced up and down with long strides.

It appears that the king was touched with somewhat of the same
superstition of which the queen gave occasional tokens,--like many other
sufferers in a time of suspense.  No one liked to refuse to play with
Louis when he wanted to play; so, one afternoon, when the king was very
sad, he consented to a game at nine-pins, because his boy asked him.
The Dauphin twice counted sixteen, and then lost the game.  "Whenever I
get sixteen," exclaimed he, a little vexed, "I always lose the game."
The king, remembering that he was the sixteenth Louis, looked very
grave; and Clery thought his mind was superstitiously impressed by the
boy's words.

In the beginning of November a feverish complaint attacked the king, and
then the whole family in turn.  The wife and sister of the king assisted
Clery to nurse him, and often made his bed with their own hands.  Louis,
who had slept in the king's room since the partial separation of the
family, was the next attacked.  Not all that the queen could say availed
to procure permission to remain with her child during the night.  Clery,
however, never left him; and Louis had soon an opportunity of showing
that he was grateful.

Before the princesses had recovered, poor Clery was more ill, with
rheumatic fever, than any of them had been.  He made a great effort to
rise and attend the king, the first day; but his master, seeing the
condition he was in, sent him to bed again, and himself took up his son,
and dressed him.  Louis scarcely left Clery's bedside all day, bringing
him drink, and doing all the little services he could think of.  The
king found a moment to tell Clery, unobserved, that he should see the
physician the next day; and the princesses went to visit him in the
evening, when the Princess Elizabeth slipped into his hand some medicine
which had been brought for her, as she was yet far from well.  It
distressed Clery to accept this, and to know how the ladies undertook
his duties,--the queen putting Louis to bed, and the Princess Elizabeth
dressing the king's hair.  The Princess Elizabeth asked for medicines,
as if for herself, that Clery might have them, even after he had left
his bed, to which he was confined for six days.  Among other things she
had obtained a box of ipecacuanha lozenges for his cough.  Having had no
opportunity of giving these to Clery during the day, she left them with
Louis when she bade him good-night, thinking that Clery would be
up-stairs presently.  This was before nine.  It was just eleven when
Clery came up, to turn down the king's bed.  Louis called to him in a
low voice; and Clery was afraid that he was ill, as he was not asleep.
"No," Louis said, "I am not ill; but I have a little box to give you.  I
am glad you are come, at last, for I could hardly keep my eyes open; and
they have been shut several times, I believe."  Seeing that Clery was
moved, Louis kissed him; and then was asleep in a minute.

At five in the morning of the 11th of December, everybody in the Temple
was awakened by the noise of cavalry and cannon entering the garden, and
the drums beating throughout the city.  Louis did not know what this
meant; but his parents understood that the king was to be brought to
trial, and that this noise arose from the military preparations for the
great event.  His father took him by the hand, and led him to breakfast,
as usual, at nine o'clock.  Nobody said much, because the guards were in
the room; but he saw his father and mother look very expressively at
each other when he and his father were going downstairs again, at ten
o'clock.  He went to his lessons, as usual, and was reading to the king,
when two officers came from the magistrates, to say that they must
immediately take Louis to his mother.  Argument was useless; so Clery
was desired to go with the boy.  On his return, Clery gave comfort to
the king by assuring him that Louis really was with his mother.

The king was soon after taken to the Convention, before whom he was to
be tried.  Never till this day had the queen asked any question of her
guards: and to-day she obtained no information, though she made every
inquiry she could devise.  The king returned at six o'clock; but he was
immediately locked up, without seeing any one.  No bed had yet been
provided for Louis in his mother's room: and this night, she gave up
hers to him, and sat up.  The princesses were most unwilling to leave
her in the state of agitation she was in; but she insisted upon their
going to rest.  The next day, she implored that if the king might see
his wife and sister, his children should not be separated from him.  The
reply was what might have been expected;--that the children must not be
made messengers between their parents; but that they might be with their
father, if they did not see the queen, till the trial was over.
Occupied as the king was with his defence, this could not be: nor would
he deprive their mother of the solace of their society: so Louis's bed
was removed to his mother's room, and no one knew when he would see his
father again.

Louis saw his father but once more.  It was in the evening of Sunday,
the 20th of January.  The crier, who came into the street at seven
o'clock, proclaimed the sentence that Louis Capet was to be executed the
next day.

The family were at last permitted to see the king; and at half-past
eight were told that he was ready.  The queen took Louis by the hand,
and led him downstairs, the princesses following.  It appears that the
guards had some idea that the king would attempt suicide; for they would
not allow him to have a knife at his dinner; and they now would not lose
sight of him, even while meeting his family.  They would not have
allowed the door to be shut, but that it was a glass door, through which
they could look, on any alarm.  So far from the king having thought of
suicide, it is now believed by most people that he allowed himself to be
persuaded by his counsel and friends that there was not really much
danger of his execution taking place, and that he would be permitted, at
the last moment, to appeal to the Primary Assemblies, where an appeal
would be successful.  This seems confirmed by his conduct on the
scaffold.  He was, as he had been through life, deceived and mistaken;
and the moment of his being undeceived was one of dreadful agony of
mind.  It deprived him of all dignity and fortitude; and his struggles
were such that it required the strength of three executioners to
overpower him, and fulfil the sentence.  It is to be hoped that his
family never knew this; and the mass of the crowd did not see what
happened on the scaffold; but some who did see the whole, have proved
beyond a doubt that Louis the Sixteenth showed, at last, no more dignity
in his death than in his life.

How much hope he imparted to his family during their evening interview
can now never be known; but his legal advisers and his servants gave him
such abundant assurances that the sentence could never be really
executed upon a king, that the hopes of his family were probably
sustained by their words.  Not a sound, however, was heard by Clery
outside the door.  The king sat between his wife and sister, and kept
Louis standing between his knees,--the Princess Royal sitting nearly in
front.  There was much weeping; and most that was said was by the king.
He desired his boy to harbour no revenge against the authors of his
death, and then gave him his blessing.

When the peasant-child sees his father dying on his fever-bed, and knows
that the question is in the heart of both parents, what is to become of
the widow and her children, he may feel his little heart bursting with
fear and sorrow, and may think that no one can be more unhappy than he.
But Louis was more unhappy.  Here was his father, in the full vigour of
his years, about to die a violent death, amidst the hatred of millions
of men who, if all had done right, should have been attached to him, and
have defended his life at the peril of their own.  For the peasant-child
there is comfort in prospect.  His father's grave is respected in the
churchyard; the neighbours are kind; there is the consolation of work
for those who survive, and the free air, and the spring flowers, and the
mowing, and the harvest, and all the pleasures which cannot be withheld
from those who live at liberty in the country.  For the princely child
there were none of these comforts.  As far as he could see, his father
and mother had no friends; he and his family were in a dismal prison,
with insulting enemies about them, and no prospect of any change for the
better, when his father should have been thus violently torn away.
Never, perhaps, was there a more miserable child than Louis was now.

The queen much wished to remain with the king all night; but the king
saw that it was better that their strength should not be thus worn-out
in grief, and he said that he needed some hours of rest and stillness.
He promised that the family should come to him in the morning: and they
therefore left him at a quarter past ten, having spent an hour and
three-quarters with him.  He told Clery that he never intended to keep
this promise, and should spare them and himself the affliction of such
an interview.  The queen chose to put Louis to bed, as usual; but had
hardly strength to do it.  She then threw herself, dressed, upon her own
bed, where the princesses heard her shivering and sobbing with cold and
grief, all night long.  The whole family were dressed by six, in
expectation of being sent for by the king; and when the door opened, in
a quarter of an hour, they thought the summons was come; but it was only
an attendant, looking for a prayer-book, as a priest was going to say
mass in the king's apartment.  Then they waited hour after hour, and do
not seem to have suspected that the king would not keep his promise.  At
a little after ten, the firing of the artillery, and the shouts in the
streets of "Long live the Republic," told them but too plainly that all
was over.

The melancholy life they led went on through the rest of the winter and
spring with little variety.  The parapet of the leads was raised, and
every chink stopped up, to prevent the family seeing anything, or being
seen when they walked; so that his daily exercise could have been but
little of an amusement to the poor boy.  On the 25th of March, he was
snatched up from sleep, in the middle of the night, in order that his
bed might be searched, as it was believed that his mother and aunt
carried on a correspondence with people without, by some secret means.
Nothing was found in Louis's bed; and only a tradesman's address, and a
stick of sealing-wax, in any of the apartments.  The princesses
certainly contrived to conceal some pencils; for they had some remaining
in the following October.  While the king was separated from them, they
corresponded with him by putting small notes into the middle of balls of
cotton, which were found by Clery in the linen-press, occasionally, and
which would hardly have excited any suspicion if they had been seen
there by the most watchful of the gaolers.  It is probable that the
princesses communicated by the same method with people out of doors,
when their linen went out or was brought in.  It certainly appears that
they did carry on a correspondence by some means.  No one would blame
them for this: but neither, when the situation and the fears of the new
republicans are considered, assailed and invaded as they were by the
powerful friends of royalty, can we wonder at the frequency and
strictness of their searches, while certain that their orders were
evaded by the prisoners.

On the 9th of May, poor Louis was taken ill with fever.  It was a very
serious illness, and lasted nearly a month; and he never was in good
health again.  The want of proper air, exercise, and play, and the dull
life he led among melancholy companions, were quite enough to destroy
the health _of any_ boy.  He was tenderly nursed by his mother and aunt,
and his sister played with him; but there was no peace in their minds,
and no mirth in their faces, to cheer his young heart.  One anecdote
shows how sad their manners were now.  Tison's wife, who did some of the
work of their chambers, went mad, and talked to herself in a way so
ridiculous, that the Princess Royal could not help laughing.  This made
the queen and Princess Elizabeth look at her with pleasure--it was so
long since they had seen her laugh!  And yet this poor girl who never
laughed was then only fifteen years old, and her brother not yet nine.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

FURTHER SEPARATION.

The 3rd of July was the most terrible morning to Louis.  Before he was
up, and while his mother was by his bedside, some officers came into the
room, with an order from the Convention that Louis should be taken from
his family, and kept in the most secure room in the Temple.  If the
queen could have commanded herself so far as to obey at once, and let
him go quietly, the unhappy boy might have been less terrified than he
was.  But this was hardly to be expected.  These repeated cruelties had
worn out her spirits; and she now made a frantic resistance.  For a
whole hour she kept off the officers from his bed, and her lamentations
were dreadful to hear: so that the terrified boy not only wept, but
uttered cries.  His aunt and sister, though in tears, commanded
themselves so far as to dress him, and thus show that they intended no
vain opposition.  The officers were made angry by the delay in obeying
orders of which they were only the bearers.  They did all they could in
assuring the queen that no danger to the boy's life was to be feared,
and in promising to convey to the authorities her request that she might
see him at meal-times, at least.  Then they carried him off, crying
bitterly.  He never again saw his mother, though she saw him by stealth.

It was not likely that her request about meeting him at meals would be
granted; for the very object of separating him was to put out of his
head all the ideas of princely power and authority of which the mind of
a royal child was likely to be full.  The intention was to bring him up
with republican ideas and feelings, in order at once to make of him what
was then called "a good citizen," and to render him less an object of
hope and expectation to the foreign powers who already gave him the
royal titles, and led on their armies, as if to the rescue of a king,
while the French nation declared that royalty was abolished, and that
they had no king, and would have none.  So this sickly, sad, helpless
little boy was taken by one of the party from the arms of his mother and
aunt, to be brought up in contempt of his family and rank, while the
other party were, all over Europe, giving him the title of Louis the
Seventeenth, and speaking with reverence of him, as if he sat upon a
throne.  This unhappy child, called a king, wept without pause for two
whole days, begging every one he saw to take him to his mother.  The
endeavour then was to make him forget her; but though they awed him so
that he soon did not dare to speak of her, or to weep, an incident
showed that he still pined for her.  A report got abroad that he had
been seen in one of the public walks of Paris; and others said that he
was dead.  Some members of the Convention were therefore sent to the
Temple, to ascertain the truth.  Louis was led down to the garden to be
seen by them; and he immediately begged to be taken to his mother; but
was told that it was impossible.

Long and wearily did she pine for him.  She heard of him frequently,
from one of the gaolers; but there was nothing to be told which could
cause her anything but grief: for those who had taken from her the
charge of her child, did not fulfil the duty they had assumed.  She saw
this for herself.  He often went to the leads; and the queen found a
chink in a wall at some distance, through which she could watch him as
he walked.  Sometimes she waited many hours at this chink, in hopes of
his coming: and yet it might have been better for her not to have seen
him; for he altered sadly.

It was the duty of the authorities, if they meddled with the boy at all,
to have educated him well.  Nothing could excuse their not taking him
from prison, tending his weak health, and having him kindly cheered and
well taught.  Instead of this, they committed him to the charge of the
man called Simon (mentioned before), a shoemaker, whose business it was
to tend and bring up the boy.  Simon was a coarse and ignorant man, full
of hatred of rank and royalty.  He would not let Louis wear mourning for
his father, and took away his black clothes.  He taught him to sing the
rough songs of the day, mocking royalty and praising revolution.  Louis
never till now drank wine, and had always disliked it.  This man made
him drink a great deal of wine, and eat to excess, so as to bring on his
fever again.  This might be meant for kindness; but it shows how unfit a
guardian Simon was.  Louis recovered less favourably from the second
fever than the first.  He still walked on the leads; but, instead of
growing taller, he was stunted in his growth, and became fat and
bloated, and thoroughly unhealthy.

On the 8th of October, just after he had got up, his room-door opened,
and his sister ran in.  She threw her arms round his neck; but almost
before he could express his surprise, she was fetched away.  She had
been sent for by some people below, who were waiting to question her;
and knowing which was Louis's room, she had run downstairs to it; thus
making use of the only opportunity she was likely to have of seeing her
brother.

In a little while, these two royal children were each left entirely
alone.  The queen had been removed early in August, and was beheaded in
October, the day week after Louis saw his sister.  The good Princess
Elizabeth was always persuaded that her turn would come; and so it did.
She suffered on the 10th of the next May, when she was thirty years of
age.  It will be remembered that the king implored her not to enter a
convent in her youth, as she desired; and that he obtained her promise
to refrain from being a nun till she should be thirty years old.  If he
had not interfered at first, and if her noble disinterestedness had not
caused her to devote herself to her brother and his family when she saw
adversity coming upon them, she might have fulfilled a long course of
piety and charity, and even been living now.  Her life was so innocent,
so graced by gentleness and love, that it may well be a matter of wonder
on what accusation she could have been tried and put to death.  It was
the accusation most common at that day--of having conspired with the
enemies of the Republic to set up royalty again in France.  That she
corresponded with the friends of royalty, is probable: that she wished
for the re-establishment of the throne, there can be no doubt: but to
suppose that she could in her prison conspire for such a purpose is
absurd.  The true reason of her death no doubt was, that the
party-leaders of the time wished to be rid of as many royal personages
as possible, and to strike terror into the hearts of all who were not
pleased with the Republic.  The Princess Royal was not told what had
become of her mother and aunt.  She remained alone, passing her weary
hours in keeping her chamber and clothes neat, in knitting, and in
reading a few books, which she had read over and over again.



VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE END.

How came her little brother to be alone too?  Why, Simon accepted an
office which he liked better than that of being Louis's guardian, and
left him on the 19th of January.  Nobody seems to have remembered to
appoint another guardian; and Louis was alone, all day and all night,
for months after.

We cannot dwell upon this part of his story.  We know little of it; and
that little is terrible.  There was a broken bell in his room; but he
was so afraid of the people that he never rang it.  He might, it is
said, have left the room: but he was very weak and ill, and seems to
have grown bewildered.  He had not strength to make his own bed; and it
was never made for six months: nor was the bedding changed, nor even his
shirt, nor the windows opened in all that time.  A pitcher of water was
put into his room sometimes; but he never washed himself.  There he lay,
feeble, and frightened at every noise, surrounded with filth, and
covered with vermin, scarcely knowing day from night,--with no voice
near to rouse him, no candle in the longest winter nights, no books, no
play, no desire for any of these things, no cheerful thoughts in his own
mind, and his weak body feverish and aching.  Was any poor man's child
ever so miserable?

Let us pass on to a brighter day, which came at last.

On the 28th of July following, there was much noise in the streets, and
bustle in the prison, so early as six in the morning; and some
finely-dressed gentlemen entered the poor boy's room.  He did not know
who they were; and they said little, and soon went away.  They were,
however, sufficiently impressed with what they saw to take some measures
for Louis's relief.  They had been sent by the Convention, on the
downfall and death of the great revolutionary leader, Robespierre, to
see what was the state of things at the Temple; and in consequence of
their report, a person named Laurent was appointed to visit the royal
children.

At last, Louis found himself visited, several times in the day, by one
whom he need not be afraid of.  Laurent spoke tenderly to him, and told
him he should be better taken care of.  The dirty bed was carried away;
the window was opened, and the room cleaned; and then a clean
comfortable bed was brought in.  The best thing was that Louis was put
into a warm-bath; and Laurent cleansed him from head to foot.  Louis was
sorry to see Laurent leave the room; but he knew he would soon be back
again; and never failed to appear three times during the day.  He would
have done more for the poor boy: he would have changed his room, and
found him amusements, and had him well nursed, but that he feared being
dismissed if he showed too much indulgence at once; and that then Louis
would be allowed to relapse into his former state.  Perhaps it was
better for the boy that the improvement in his condition took place
gradually; for it might have overpowered him to have had people about
him, taking care of him all day, after so many months spent entirely
alone.

In November there was another Commission sent to the prison, to give
further account of Louis.  One of the visitors, a kind-hearted
gentleman, named Gomier, remained to assist Laurent in his charge.
Gomier devoted himself to the boy, and made him as comfortable as he
could be made in his diseased state.  Louis need not fear the long dark
winter evenings this year; for Gomier had lights brought, as soon as it
grew dusk.  Gomier passed many hours of the day in talking with him, and
got him to play sometimes.  Gomier rubbed the swollen joints of his
knees and wrists, and obtained leave to give him such exercise as he
could take.  He did not carry him at once into the open air, but removed
him into a little parlour, where Louis seemed so happy that it touched
the heart of his kind guardian.  Then Gomier and Laurent took him to the
leads again, and wished him to go there every fine day.  They used all
gentle means to tempt him up, and to amuse him when there,--but poor
Louis was now too weak to enjoy air and exercise.  He complained
directly of being tired, and begged to go down: and his pleasure was to
spend the whole day quietly by the fire-side.  It was better to indulge
him in this; for it was clear that he could never again be well, and
that all that could be done was to make his decline as easy as possible.

He had several attacks of fever during the winter; and his knees swelled
more and more.  Laurent had to leave him; but happily a man no less kind
succeeded him in his charge.  This man's name was Loine.  During the
spring the boy's strength failed, day by day.  He was attended by good
surgeons, who saw that he must die, but did what they could to give him
ease.  His mind had now become dull and confused; but he had no pain.
Except when he had occasional fever fits, he seemed in an easy state,
and died, at length, quite peacefully.  He breathed his last on the 9th
of June, 1795, at three o'clock in the afternoon, his age being ten
years and two months.

His sister then felt as if she was quite alone: but it was not for long;
and in the interval she was treated kindly.  On the 19th of December
following, which happened to be her seventeenth birthday, she was
released from the Temple, and sent to her uncles and aunts, with whom
she lived from that time forward.  She married her cousin, the Duke
d'Angouleme, and is still living, having seen her family once more
restored to the throne of France, and again deposed for tyranny.  No
cruelty was inflicted upon them in the course of this last change.  They
were quietly sent into a foreign country, where they are now living,
surrounded by all the comforts and luxuries suitable to their rank; and
their gentle punishment is no more than, in the opinion of almost
everybody but themselves, their ignorant misuse of power deserves.

The pictures of human life which are here given are almost too sad and
dreary to be dwelt upon.  But we must dwell upon them long enough to
learn from them one important thing.  We are accustomed to say that the
sufferings of men come from the hand of God, and ought to be submitted
to with perfect patience on that account.  This is true with respect to
many of the woes of mankind; but we are far too hasty in declaring this
occasionally where it is not true.

How is it in the cases before us?  God gave to the French nation one of
the richest, gayest, and most beautiful countries in the world.  This
country, with its sunny hills, its fertile plains, its great forests,
and brimming rivers, can easily produce more of all the good things of
life than are wanted for the use of all its inhabitants.  No man, woman,
or child within its boundaries ought ever to be in want of the comforts
of life.  God has also given to the people of that country affectionate
hearts, and loyal tempers: as was shown by their long forbearance with
their rulers, under cruel oppression.  If such a people in such a land
were miserable, some living in pinching poverty and gross ignorance, and
others in tyranny and selfishness which brought upon them a cruel
retribution, let no one dare to say that such misery was from the will
of God.  God showed what his will was when he placed beings with loving
hearts in the midst of the fruitful land.  They might and must have been
happy, but for their misuse of his gifts.

The mischief cannot be undone: the misery cannot now be helped: but men
may learn from it not to allow such a case to happen again.  It is not
only France that has been ignorant, and guilty, and miserable.  Every
country is full of blessings given by the hand of God; and in every
country are those blessings misused, more or less, as they were in
France.  If every child, as he grows up, was taught this truth--taught
to reflect how all men may have their share of these blessings who are
willing to work for them, there would be no more danger of such woe as
we have been contemplating.  It would then appear as impious as it
really is to call God the author of sufferings which need never happen.
Instead of crying to Him for mercy under intolerable misery, all might
then bless Him for having placed His children on a fair and fruitful
earth, where all may have their fill and dwell in peace.






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