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Title: In exitu Israel

an historical novel, volume 2 (of 2)

Author: S. Baring-Gould

Release date: March 12, 2023 [eBook #70270]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Macmillan and Co., 1870

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70270

Credits: David Edwards, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN EXITU ISRAEL ***

IN EXITU ISRAEL.

IN EXITU ISRAEL

AN HISTORICAL NOVEL

by

S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.

Author of 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,' 'Origin and Development of Religious Belief,' 'The Silver Store,' &c., &c.

VOL. II

LONDON

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1870

OXFORD:

BY T. COMBE, M.A., E.B. GARDNER, E.P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A.,

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

IN EXITU ISRAEL.

CHAPTER XXI.

WHEN Gabrielle and Madeleine had retired for the night to the little bedroom of the latter, Madeleine seated herself on the bed, set her candle on the table, and holding Gabrielle by the wrists looked full in her face, and said abruptly: 'What brings you to Paris?'

The little peasantess was startled, and hesitated. Madeleine asked after a moment's delay,—'You have come to trade on your youth and beauty?'

Gabrielle's eyes opened wide. She did not understand.

'Yes,' said the Parisian flower-girl; 'God gives us comely countenances, graceful limbs, and ready wit. These are our wares, set up at auction to the highest bidder. So runs the world. God did not make it so; it is the creation of privilege. I have tried millinery-work—that did not suit me. I have tried wood-carving for churches—that did not pay. I have sought admission to many another trade—it was not open to women. So now my mother has sent me to Versailles to sell flowers to the nobles and gentry of the court, to be coaxed and petted and flirted with, to try to bewitch, ensnare, shackle one of them. By all means, if possible, to entangle some rich aristocrat. A glorious aim for woman! Hah! to estimate beauty at so much; a straight nose at so much, ruddy lips at so much, dimples at so much, laughing black eyes at so much, wit at so much, and virtue at nothing!'

She paused and shook Gabrielle's arms passionately. Then she went on: 'Bread is scarce, all provisions are dear. Why? because speculators buy up the corn,—keep it back to create a famine, and enrich themselves on the sufferings of the poor. Can poor folk afford to keep daughters at home to eat, eat, eat, and bring in nothing? First the interested create destitution, and then they take advantage of it to buy of the destitute what we would not sell except to save life. We are not poor here,—we in this house, because we live on the scraps flung us by the privileged classes. The corporal is salaried by the king to defend his majesty and his majesty's prisons against the French people, whose father he pretends to be; my mother makes caps and head-dresses for the grand ladies, the wives and mistresses of the officers; Klaus gets his living from the ecclesiastics, who buy his statues; and I sell flowers to the queen and the court, and keep my eyes open, looking out for a chance. Tell me now—why are you come here? On speculation?'

'I have come to Paris, because a lady whom I love is in the Bastille.'

'In the Bastille!' exclaimed Madeleine, dropping her hands.

'And I must do my best to obtain her release.'

The Parisian girl laughed.

'You are a foolish little peasantess,' she said; 'what can you do?'

'Did not Madame Legros obtain the release of Latude? Why, then, should I despair?'

'Madame Legros had a hard time of it. She worked for three years, she left no stone unturned, she was a woman of indomitable will.'

'And why should not I—with my faith?'

'Faith in what? in the righteousness of your cause? More the reason that it should fail. Violence and injustice alone gain the day now.'

'Madeleine, I will see the king.'

'The king is nothing, he is in the hands of the queen.'

'Then I will see the queen.'

'The queen!' echoed Madeleine, with a shrug. 'If you are to prevail with her, you must interest her vanity, her ambition, her love of display, her passion for pleasure,—those are the only springs that will move her.'

'Madeleine, I am sure I could persuade her to obtain the release of Madame Berthier.'

'What Madame Berthier do you speak of?'

'The wife of the Intendant, Berthier de Sauvigny.'

'Take my advice and do not meddle. You will burn your fingers.'

'Madeleine!' exclaimed Gabrielle, 'I must, I must indeed do what I can. The poor lady's last cry was to me to save her. I know that I am nothing but a little peasant-girl, that I am ignorant of the ways of grand people at court, but I feel in my heart that I have been called to do something for her. Even if I cannot deliver her, I can, perhaps, obtain permission to see her and attend on her in her prison.'

'Why is she deprived of her liberty?'

'Because she is a little deranged. Understand me, she is not mad, but has been driven by ill usage into eccentricities. She is harmless, and oh! so good.'

'Sit down on the bed, and listen to me,' said Madeleine, 'and you shall hear exactly what your prospects are.' Gabrielle took her place beside the Parisian flower-girl, and took her hand between her palms.

'Are you listening?' asked Madeleine; 'well, be prepared for the worst. I am going to throw a bucket of cold and dirty water over your enthusiasm.'

'I am prepared,' answered Gabrielle, feebly.

'In the first place,' began Madeleine, 'know that the great people do nothing without requiring a return. What have you to give the queen? I say the queen; for if anything is to be done, it must be done through her.'

'Nothing to give her, but I may interest her.'

'You can only interest her through herself. Can you do that; can you gratify her pride and love of display?'

'No.'

'Then put aside the hope of doing anything in that quarter. Now, who influences the queen? The court; in particular the Count d'Artois. If you gain him, you gain the queen, you gain the king, and you have what you want.'

'Can I see and speak to him?'

'Certainly, nothing easier. Announce yourself as a pretty girl, and he will be with you at once.'

'And has he a tender heart?'

'Most tender,' answered Madeleine, with irony.

'He will listen to the grievance?'

'Most certainly.'

'And you think he really will be moved?'

'No doubt about it.'

There was something in Madeleine's manner which grated on the young Norman girl's feelings; she withdrew her hands from clasping that of the Parisian, and said reproachfully: 'You are mocking me.'

'No, I am not,' answered Madeleine, vehemently. 'Poor simple child! Do you not see what I mean? You are pretty, more than pretty, you are beautiful, and with all the freshness of the country about you. The amorous prince will be bewitched at once. He will grant you all you want, take your request to the queen, insist on her obtaining from the king a release for your imprisoned lady,—but, remember what I told you. No one at court does anything without expecting a return.'

She looked at Gabrielle, who shrank from her.

'Mind,' said the city flower-girl; 'I counsel nothing of the sort. I show you the only possible means of success which is open to you in that quarter. I know the court. The court has made us French poor. It eats the fruit of our labour, and it says, when asked any little favour, Give! but what shall we give? you have taken our means of subsistence and our liberties. And the court answers, you have sacrificed to us your lives and liberties, surrender also your honour.' The girl sprang from the bed, and whirling round the room, cried in a tone of mingled bitterness and banter: 'Did they in olden times pass their sons and their daughters through the fire to Moloch? Hah! Versailles, temple of Moloch, I salute you! Hah! royalty, Moloch of modern days, I prostrate myself before you. Sometimes I think I shall live to see that charnel-house swept out, and the great idol overthrown. The hope is too great, the prospect overwhelms me. Gabrielle! have you ever heard of a vampire? The vampire is a dead man, who leaves his grave to suck the blood of the living. Where there is a vampire, a blight falls on the neighbourhood; old and young waste away, their blood is drained off to nourish a corpse which it cannot vivify. If the coffin be examined, it is found to brim over with blood; the corpse floats in blood, and is itself bloated with blood—blood that it has drained from young veins and hopeful hearts, withering hopes and destroying youth. Gabrielle! monarchy is the vampire. It is a dead system of the past, to which nothing can restore life. In olden times it was a living, thinking, acting power; now it is a carcase, but not a harmless one. It drinks blood to this day—the blood of the poor. It feeds worms, too, the court sycophants.'

The girl paced up and down the room as she spoke; then stopped, burst into a laugh, and said: 'And what am I but a courtier of those bloodsuckers? What is my highest ambition but to draw off a little of the blood they drink, that I may riot in it myself? God have mercy on poor France! men cannot afford to be honest or women to be modest, when their honest means of subsistence is snatched from them by harpies to be flung broadcast among the profligate.'

Then, reseating herself, and drawing her hand across her brow, she said, sadly: 'Why cannot I live on the work of my hands? Because prejudice and law combine to shut me out from trades in which I could honestly earn my bread. And yet I have wished to live quietly and toil for my living; but the times are against me, because society is against me. Alas, Gabrielle! what do you think is the proudest hope of a Parisian girl? Why, to become a Du Barry or a Pompadour. A man strives and denies himself to become a great judge, or a great artist, or a great philosopher, but a girl's ambition is to be mistress to a prince, a duke, or a count. It is not our fault, it is the fault of a rotten society which overwhelms some men with wealth and reduces others to beggary, and says to those who are down, your only hope of rising is by vice, all honourable avenues are shut.'

Madeleine put her arm round the little peasant-girl, and added in a soft tone, 'Do not misunderstand me, my little simpleton. I am not so low as you seem to think—I have not fallen over the precipice, but my mother and the necessities of the time are forcing me nearer and nearer to it every day, and my heart recoils with fear and loathing.' She began to cry. 'Dear Gabrielle,' she continued; 'I think that perhaps with a new order of things we might look up to Heaven for help, instead of groping for crusts of bread among the ashes of hell. I do not know, but I think it might be so. Oh that a Revolution might come before the edge of the precipice is reached, and I am lost!'

The poor Normande did not know how to comfort her. She thought of her father, and how ready he had been to expose her to danger, forced to it by his great need, by the slave-driver, Famine, and she asked herself what had created that famine, and the answer came, the Ancien Régime. She remained silent, and Madeleine, after a paroxysm of tears, recovered herself, and then returned to the subject on which she had questioned Gabrielle.

'I only showed you how hopeless it was for you to attempt anything like intercession on behalf of Madame Berthier at court. I do not advise you to take the only course open to you that promises success. Indeed, I warn you from it. But I will help you, if you like, to speak to the queen. It can be easily effected, as I am her flower-girl; only be not sanguine, I am convinced of the fruitlessness of the attempt.'

'I must make the attempt. I must, indeed.'

'Very well, then you shall.'

'Thank you, Madeleine, thank you very much.'

'Poor little friend, I will do for you what I can, but that is not much. Now let us to bed.'

CHAPTER XXII.

ON the 4th of May, the opening of the States-General was inaugurated by a solemn procession and service at Versailles. The king, the queen, the whole court and the deputies of the three orders assembled in the church of Notre Dame to hear chanted the 'Veni Creator.' The hymn ended, the procession formed in the church, and passed out at the great door, crossed the market-place and the Rue de la Pompe, traversed the Place d'Armes, entered the Avenue de Sceaux, which did not, as now, extend in its full breadth to the Place, but was blocked in the middle by buildings; thence into the Rue de Satory, and so to the Cathedral of S. Louis. The French and Swiss guards lined the way, the walls of the houses were hung with tapestries and costly damasks, and the whole length of the streets along which the court and deputies were to walk was laid down with crimson carpets. The balconies were hung with garlands, banners were suspended from the windows, and triumphal arches spanned the road. At intervals, bands of music were placed, and everywhere were grouped orange-trees and exotics from the Versailles palace gardens. Crowds filled every vantage-point; windows, galleries, roofs, presented visions of beaming faces, and as far as the eye could see up the streets appeared heads. The Place d'Armes was densely thronged, and the people were allowed to enter within the rails enclosing the Court of the Ministers, and to cling to every bar, and cluster in ranks on every step of the palace front.

The first in the procession were the five hundred and fifty deputies of the Third Estate in black suits, white falling cravats, and black silk cloaks.

As the head of this sable line appeared, a female voice exclaimed: 'Ah, mon Dieu! there is surely a funeral!'

The speaker was Madame Deschwanden, whom the interest of the day had attracted, along with Madeleine, to Versailles.

'A funeral, ah a funeral!' was echoed by several on all sides; then Madeleine raising her voice answered, 'A funeral, yes. They are burying abuses,' which raised a laugh.

'Who can that be, that little pale man, with parboiled eyes? My faith! he is a cripple, he is deformed, they help him along, or he would not be able to walk. I wonder who he is?'

Madeleine did not know, none of those around knew. It was George Couthon, deputy for the Puy de Dôme.

'And there!'

A thunder of cheers rent the air as a large-built man, his huge head covered with a heap of shaggy hair, a massive forehead, dark well-arched brows and large luminous eyes, but with the lower portion of the face scarred with eruptions, fleshy and coarse, emerged from the church of Our Lady.

'Mirabeau! vive Mirabeau!' was roared by the crowd, caps were tossed into the air, handkerchiefs were waved from every window, and flower bunches fell at his feet, cast by fair hands from the balconies.

His firm-set lips curled with a smile, and with a bow he responded to these enthusiastic greetings.

Presently a running fire of applause arose as a slender pale-faced man with delicate features and an expression of ingenuous good faith appeared. This was Mounier of Grenoble. There passed a man with small face, retreating forehead and sharp eyes, a man with sallow complexion and thin lips, and vivacity and energy depicted in every lineament. No one noticed him on that day, he was an obscure deputy whom none knew—Maximilian Robespierre.

Paris was unrepresented, the elections there had been delayed.

After the Third Estate, separated from it by trumpeters and drummers, walked the nobility. The moment that they appeared, the cheering, which had been continuous on the passage of the Commons, ceased abruptly. The contrast they presented to the Tiers État was significant. Their dress was black, the vest of cloth of gold, and the coat frogged with gold lace. Their cloaks were of silk, their cravats of lace, and their hats of the shape worn in Henry IV's reign, adorned with plumes. Among the nobility, last, and lagging behind, walked the Duke of Orléans, burly, with bad features, wearing large rings in his ears. Instantly a shout arose, 'Vive le Duc d'Orléans!' which ran along the street and roared from the Place d'Armes. The duke laughed good-naturedly, lifted his feathered hat, bowed to the right and then to the left, and laid his hand on his heart.

After the nobles came the curés in their cassocks, short baptismal surplices, and long black cloaks, wearing on their heads the birretta.

A few shouts of greeting rose, not many, but some.

'Oh, Madeleine!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, 'who can that priest be? Look, do look at him!' She pointed to a slender abbé with a face of great beauty and refinement. The smooth broad brow was massive, the eyes large and soft, like those of an ox; the straight nose rather long, and the lips and chin indicative of extreme sensibility.

Some one in the crowd shouted, 'Long live the Abbé Grégoire, the friend of the Jew!' Madame Deschwanden looked round and saw an old man with the features of an Israelite raising his hat above his white head and waving his withered hand towards the priest who had attracted her attention. Percenez, who was close to her, said, 'That curé has in his face the making of a great saint and a great patriot. Long live the Abbé Grégoire!' Then suddenly he exclaimed, 'Ah! there is a friend of the people walking along a little way behind him. Vive le Curé Lindet!'

There were two hundred and fifty-nine curés, delegates to the Assembly. They were followed by the bishops, thirty-eight bishops and eleven archbishops, delegates like the curés and elected by the clergy, but separated from their inferiors by a choir in scarlet and lace, bearing silver cross and tall lighted candles, chanting the 'Exsurgat Deus,' which had been chosen by the master of the ceremonies as an oblique hit at the refractory clergy. The bishops wore violet cassocks, lace rochets, and violet-hooded capes. Their gold crosses glittered on their breasts. As they walked proudly along, not a voice was raised in acclamation. Immediately after the bishops marched the Swiss guard with their band, and then the King in his superb royal robes of state, surrounded by his brothers the Count of Provence and the Count of Artois, and the ministers. As he left the church, the cannons on the Place d'Armes were discharged. This was the signal for universal applause. It was heard running from street to street, rising in a billow of sound from the market-place, rattling down the street to the great amphitheatre before the Palace, where it rolled from side to side, and was passed on down the Rue de Satory, whence it was wafted faintly, and where it expired.

After the King and his group followed the Queen, with madame, the wife of the Count of Provence, the Countess of Artois, the princesses, and the ladies of the court, superbly dressed and covered with diamonds. The queen's hair was rolled into a mountain of curls about her temples, and bound round with a circlet of large diamonds and sapphires. Two long locks fell on either side of her beautiful throat and rested on her shoulders. The exquisite transparency of her complexion showed to advantage that day. The excitement had brought a little brilliant carnation to her cheeks. A chain of large pearls surrounded her neck and supported a pearl cross, which reposed on her bosom. Two crystal drops depended from her ears. Her brooch and stomacher blazed with precious stones. She passed along the street, between the lines of soldiers and the close-packed crowds, and not a voice was raised to salute her. She felt it, and a hard expression over-spread her countenance, she walked more erect, held her proud head up, and tossed it slightly, as the curls teased her.

'How beautiful the queen is!' was whispered.

'And she so wicked!' sighed Madame Deschwanden.

'No, mother,' answered Madeleine; 'she is not wicked, but foolish. She would not give one of those pearls to save a life; she would not deprive herself of a pleasure to lighten a heavy heart.'

'Well,' said madame; 'if you do not call that wicked, it is cousin to it.'

Some one shouted 'Vive le Duc d'Orléans!' and the cry was caught up by about a hundred voices. The queen hated the duke, who was the leader of the liberal party and a renegade from the traditions of his order. He was the people's idol, the abhorrence of the court. The queen would not tolerate his presence, and had refused to accept his homage. This was well known. It was known that his was the name of all others to gall her proud spirit, and the popular detestation of Marie Antoinette found vent in that shout, 'Vive le Duc d'Orléans!'

Instantly a pang of annoyance, a flash of anger obscured her eyes; she bent, as though suffering from a spasm. Madame de Lamballe, her pretty little friend, started forwards from her place in the rear and lent the queen her arm. Marie Antoinette rested her hand upon it for a moment, and then with a defiant air continued her walk.

The royal family was followed by the procession of ecclesiastics belonging to the cathedral, the church of Notre Dame and the King's chapel, vested in their surplices and capes; the choir and acolytes singing and censing around a canopy of crimson and gold, beneath which the Archbishop of Paris bore the Blessed Sacrament, in a monstrance blazing with rubies. On his right walked De Narbonne-Lara, Bishop of Évreux, acting as deacon, in dalmatic of cloth of gold; he was at Versailles as chaplain to the queen. On the left paced the dean of Versailles in tunicle to match. Monseigneur Juigné, the archbishop, was vested in cope of gold brocade, lined with crimson velvet; the deacons and subdeacons held the corners; he was bare headed.

On entering the church of S. Louis, the Blessed Sacrament was elevated to its shrine above the altar. The bands united to play a magnificent triumphal march, as the court took its place. A daïs of purple velvet sown with golden lilies had been prepared for the king and queen; the princes, princesses, the grand officers of the crown and the ladies of the palace grouped themselves around the throne.

The triumphal march ceased, and softly, unaccompanied by instruments, the great choir sang the 'O salutaris hostia' to a simple melody full of sweetness, whilst the fragrant smoke rose in clouds upon the altar-steps around the elevated pyx, which blazed through it like a red sun on a misty morning, and every knee was bowed in adoration.

The Marquis of Ferrières, in his Memoirs, thus recalls the feelings inspired at the moment:—'This simple strain, true and melodious, disengaged from the crash of instruments which choke expression; the regulated accord of voices swelling up to heaven, confirmed me in my belief that the simple is always beautiful, always grand, always sublime.... This religious ceremony cast a gleam over all the human pomp. Without thee, venerable Religion, it would only have been a display of vain pride; but thou dost purify and sanctify, ay, and aggrandise grandeur itself; kings, the mighty of earth, render homage, real or simulated, to the King of kings. These holy rites, these chants, these priests vested in their sacerdotal robes, these perfumes, the canopy, the sun gleaming with gold and jewels! I remembered the words of the prophet, "Daughters of Jerusalem, your King cometh, take your bridal garments, and go ye out to meet Him." Tears of joy flowed from my eyes. My God, my country, my fellow-citizens had become identified with myself.'

The sermon was preached by Monseigneur Lafarre, Bishop of Nancy. It overflowed with patriotic sentiments; but the prelate did more than express his enthusiastic devotion to the good of his country,—he reminded the court of its crimes, its pride, its lavish expenditure, and its exactions. He bade it remember that it was the crown and the court which had made luxury fashionable and had glorified dissolution of morals, and he urged on king, queen, and all whom the Almighty has placed in conspicuous positions, to consider their responsibility to Him who set them there, and he bade them be very sure, that if they slighted these responsibilities or used their place to exalt and sanction evil, a Nemesis awaited them which would be as speedy as terrible.

This sermon, so bold and patriotic, was not listened to without interruption. The queen was observed to turn white as chalk; the king's brothers, notorious for their immoralities, were differently affected; Monsieur glanced at his mistress, Madame Balby, and then covered his face; the Count d'Artois reddened, and beat with his foot upon the stage of the platform on which the throne was placed. The ladies around the queen fanned themselves and whispered audibly to each other. Some of the young nobles moved their seats, and rattled their swords on the pavement; others groaned and coughed, and the preacher's words were lost. He paused, looked towards the king's throne; Louis XVI was unmoved; he, an amiable, simple man, was untouched in conscience by the reproaches of the bishop; he quite agreed with him in his verdict, and appreciated his sentiments. But the queen had thrown all her weight into the conservative side, and conservatism then meant the retention of every abuse under which the country groaned, and the sanction of every vice which outraged morality and disorganized society. When Monseigneur Lafarre looked at her majesty, she met his eye with a threatening glance of indignation. The murmurs increased, and it was evident that the court and nobles were bent on preventing the preacher from continuing his discourse. The deputies of the third estate became excited, and agitation was observed among the deputies of the clergy. Thomas Lindet, responding to a sudden inspiration, sprang to his feet, looked across at the court, and cried:—'Magna est veritas et prevalebit.' A roar of applause rose from the benches on all sides of him and from behind. He sat down, and in perfect silence, without an attempt at disturbance, the Bishop of Nancy concluded his discourse.

It was apparent to every one from that moment that the battle was to be fought à l'outrance.

On the morrow, May 5th, the deputies assembled in the Hall des Menus-Plaisirs, situated in the Rue S. Martin, opening out of the Avenue of Paris.

Considerable changes have taken place in the town and château of Versailles since the period of our tale, and it will be necessary, in order that the events we shall have to record may be fully comprehended, to give a slight sketch of the disposition of the buildings as they then stood. Although Versailles was the place where the king and the court resided, it had not then the neat and cleanly air that it has at present. The streets, the avenues, the squares, even the courts and corridors of the palace were encumbered with booths, and stalls, and wooden caravans, which gave the appearance of a perpetual fair.

The town on the side of the Avenue of Paris was closed by a wooden barrier, placed a little in advance of the Rue de Noailles. The two first buildings arresting attention on entering the Avenue were, on the right, the hôtel erected by Madame du Barry, which was at that time occupied by Monsieur the King's brother, and which is at the present day turned into a cavalry barrack. On the left, immediately opposite, at the corner of the Rue S. Martin, was the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs of the king, now-a-days also a barrack. The principal entrance to the hôtel was from the Avenue of Paris, which admitted into a court of honour, at the extremity of which a grand flight of steps led into a vestibule that opened on the Hall of the Assembly. This hall was built on the side of the Rue des Chantiers, on higher ground, so that its floor was level with the first storey of the Menus-Plaisirs. It was entered also by a door opening on the street; and it was by this door that the deputies were admitted, whilst that from the Hôtel des Menus was reserved for the king. At the extremity of the hall, against the wall joining on to the hôtel, stood the throne, and beneath it the bureau of the president. The deputies were placed on benches. On either side of the hall, behind the pilasters supporting the roof, were galleries, to which the public had admission.

Into this hall, the king with a brilliant suite entered by the state door, at one o'clock in the afternoon. The deputies had been summoned at nine, but were only admitted as the herald summoned them, bailiwick by bailiwick. As each group entered, the master of the ceremonies pointed out to the clergy and the nobles and the commons their respective places. During this lengthy business the deputies remained crowded in a narrow dark corridor, which contributed greatly to increase the confusion.

The herald summoned the bailiwick of Viller-Cotterets; the deputy of the clergy was an unbeneficed curate, the delegate of the nobility was Monsieur the Duke of Orléans. The curé drew aside and bowed, to permit the prince to enter before him, but the latter refused. No sooner had the duke entered the hall than it rang with cheers. The deputies had all found their places at a quarter past twelve. Their benches were disposed in a semi-ellipse, whose diameter was the platform supporting the throne. The clergy sat on the right, near the throne, and the nobles on the left; the third estate occupied the rest of the seats.

When the king entered, the house rose and uncovered, and received him with thunders of applause. The queen was placed beside him on a lower step. The royal family surrounded the king. The ministers, the peers of the realm, and the princes were placed on an inferior stage of the platform, and the rest of the suite placed themselves as they could.

The king having taken his seat, the nobles covered themselves; whereupon, contrary to precedent, the commons also put on their hats. This caught the queen's eye; she made a sign to the king to attract his attention, and then whispered to him hastily. Instantly he bared his head, whereupon all in the hall did the same.

The king opened the States-General by an address, awkward, timid, cold, and colourless. He contented himself with assuring the delegates that the debt was enormous, and that to pay it off was their business.

This discourse was followed by one from Barentin, Keeper of the Seals, paler even than that of his royal master, in which he thanked Heaven for having accorded to France 'the monarch whom it is her happiness to possess.'

The minister Necker next spoke; he showed that the gulf of the deficit was still gaping, that it amounted to fifty-six millions. Of the constitution for France, which was so earnestly desired, he said not a word, and he concluded with declaring that the votes of the deputies were to be taken by order and not by heads.

This was the annihilation of the third estate, which, although as numerous as the two other orders put together, would thus be reduced to one against two.

Necker's speech lasted three hours.

The king rose at half-past four, and the estates were adjourned till the morrow.

CHAPTER XXIII.

'SO! Gabrielle, what do you think?' asked Corporal Deschwanden, a couple of days after the riot at Réveillon's house.

The girl looked up wistfully at him. There was promise of good tidings in the tone of his voice.

'You have to thank my wife and Madeleine.'

'For what?' asked Madame Deschwanden, turning sharply round.

'For having been so provident as to exert themselves to preserve some of Réveillon's property.'

'The mother-of-pearl box!' exclaimed madame. 'Ah! I shall never forgive you.'

'Yes, you will, when you hear all,' said the corporal, positively.

'Well, what is it, what is it?' asked the lady, stamping impatiently. 'You Germans are so slow, I have to fish for an hour before I can catch a minnow. Take a Frenchman! he pours out everything into your lap at the first appeal, and throws himself at your feet into the bargain. But a German, or a German-Swiss, like you! My faith! I have to use a screw for ever so long, and, in the end, I only extract little bits of worthless cork. What is it? Will you tell me? Do you not see I am dying—perishing slowly from curiosity?'

'Curiosity, yes!' said the corporal. 'That is the bane of women. Wife! did you ever hear the story——'

'I'll have no stories. What is the news?'

'The news is for Gabrielle, not for you.'

'My faith! and are not Gabrielle and I one? Do not I enter passionately into her projects? Do I not see clearly that if she succeeds, or even if she fails, her self-devotion, her enthusiasm, which are charming, will make her fortune and mine? Does she not repose her confidence in me? Does she not make an oratory of my bosom, and find a sanctuary in my heart?'

'My good wife and my good Gabrielle, understand now,' said the corporal, in his broken French. 'I took the casket back to the Sieur Réveillon. He is in the Bastille. He fears the people, so he has procured for himself a lettre de cachet confining him within the walls of that fortress, which are quite strong enough to protect him from the mob. And he is comfortable there, being great friends with M. de Launay, the governor. Now that casket contained the jewels of Madame Réveillon.'

'Mon Dieu! you do not say so!' cried Madame Deschwanden, despairingly. 'The jewels! And they might have been mine.'

'They not only might, but would have brought you to the wheel, liebe Frau. Search was being made for them, as their value was very great. How should you like to be broken on the wheel for robbery?'

'But, if it were not for the pain, it would be interesting,' said madame.

'There is the pain, however, and that is terrible.'

'Yes; but the jewels—were they very beautiful?'

'I did not see them.'

'Oh, my faith! I wish I had looked at them. I have no doubt there were amethyst earrings. I had a pair once,—they were made of glass, you know, but they looked real, if you kept your head constantly on the move, and were very vivacious, so that no one should examine them closely. And they were stolen. The thief believed them to be real. They were stolen from me at a ball, and how it was done I never could guess. I never for a moment felt a hand near my face, or I would have slapped, and scratched, and kicked. Mon Dieu! I would have bitten.'

'And I am positive you would have scolded.'

'Scolded! believe me! I would have stabbed the man through and through with my sharp words, till he was little better than veau piqué. I would have amputated his head with my tongue. You do not know what I would have done!'

'I can guess.'

'Never! You do not know what I am capable of when I am roused. To you I am an angel of peace, to those who rouse me——'

'A cat.'

'Fie! And I your wife. Well,' she seated herself on the edge of his chair, and began to caress him. 'What have you got to tell us more?'

'The story would have been told long ago, if you had not interrupted me. The Sieur Réveillon was amazingly glad to recover his box. I told him that he was indebted to you.'

Madame Deschwanden caught the old soldier's face between her hands and kissed it.

'What did you say of me?' she asked vehemently. 'He would think, from the name, that I was a great Dutch frau.'

'I told him,' answered the corporal, 'that madame my wife, living nearly opposite his house, had watched anxiously from the window the destruction of his property——'

'Passionately desiring to render him assistance, but incapacitated by her sex. Did you tell him that?'

'N-n-ot exactly.'

'Why not?'

'Because I did not think it strictly true.'

'Fie! sacrifice your wife to your conscience. Oh, I wish Bruder Klaus had picked a pocket, or stolen a mother-of-pearl box!'

'I told him that you had preserved from destruction the casket which I had the honour of returning to him. He was profuse in his thanks, and he even offered me a turquoise ring for you.'

'Where is it?' asked madame, leaping from the chair; 'show it me instantly.'

'I refused it.'

'Refused it!' echoed the little woman. Then, throwing up her hands, she cried, 'Mon Dieu! what a thing it is to be married to the Ten Commandments!'

'The Sieur Réveillon has promised to call on you and thank you in person for having saved so valuable a portion of his property.'

'Then I shall get the ring, you shall see!'

'And in the meantime he proposes to render me a service.'

'What?'

'He asked me if there was anything he could do for me. I then mentioned to him that Gabrielle, who had been servant to Madame Berthier, now in the Bastille, was desirous of seeing her mistress again, and I requested him to use his influence with the governor to obtain her admission to the prisoner. He replied that leave could be obtained without difficulty, as the lady in question was not a political offender, but was confined on account of her derangement. It is the custom at the Bastille for those who are incarcerated to have their names changed, to facilitate their being forgotten. Thus Madame Berthier's name has been changed to Plomb. M. Réveillon went at once to the governor and procured the order for admission, and here it is.'

Gabrielle caught his hand and kissed it gratefully.

'I am ready to take you to the Bastille at once, if you are willing,' said the corporal. 'Admission is only granted within certain hours.'

Gabrielle, without another word, made ready. She took her basket with the cat in it, which Madeleine had amused herself with re-dying saffron, so that the cat was now brilliantly yellow, and taking the corporal's arm, issued with him into the street.

Madame Deschwanden was in raptures at the idea of hearing from the girl, on her return, an account of her visit. Her husband, on leaving the door, beat his forehead with his palm, and said:

'I was a fool to mention the turquoise ring to her. I have not heard the last of it yet. Whenever she has her tantrums, that ring will be brought up. Alas! would that I had more discretion, I should not have mentioned the ring. I was not in conscience bound to do so.'

Deschwanden led Gabrielle out of the street into the court before the entrance to the prison, occupied by the soldiers. She presented her order, which had been countersigned by a magistrate, and parted with the Swiss corporal at the second gate. She was told to cross a second court, on one side of which stood the governor's house, to the iron grating which closed the huge gate of the Bastille itself. At this entrance she was taken in charge by a turnkey, who conducted her through the long dark vault piercing the block of buildings to the great quadrangle in the centre of the fortress. This court was formerly much larger, but it had been cut in two by Sartines, lieutenant of police in the reign of Louis XV, and a range of offices and prisons, in a style destitute of architectural pretensions, was drawn across the court from the Tour de la Chapelle to the Tour de la Liberté. The front of this new building was decorated with a clock-face, fringed with sculptured chains, and supported by two figures chained together by the neck, the feet, and the waist. These two figures at the extremities of these ingenious garlands, after having moved round the dial, met in front of it, and formed a knot with their chains and limbs, and their parting, recommenced their automatonic movements. The artist, guided by the genius of the spot, had made one of these figures resemble a man in the bloom of his youth, and the other an aged, decrepit man, with blanched hair and bent back.

Around this large court rose six towers, each five storeys high. In the well-court were two more, the tops of which appeared above the roof of the new buildings. Between the towers of Liberty and la Bertaudière was the new chapel, and between the latter and the Tour de la Basinière was the gallery of archives. The ancient gate into the town, now walled up, stood on the opposite side of the quadrangle, between the Tour de la Chapelle, where was the oratory, used by the prisoners till the new chapel was built, and the Tour du Trésor. The guard-house adjoined the Tour de la Comté.

When the famous provost, Stephen Marcel, in 1377, fortified the old enclosure of Paris with new walls and double fosses, to protect it from the Free Companions, who were devastating France, he built a gate at the east side of the town, which was called the Bastillon Saint-Antoine. Under Charles VI, towers were added to this gate, and a fortress was erected on the spot, and called the Royal Castle of the Bastille. It played a great part in the intestine wars of the Bourguignons and Armagnacs, each party attaching equal importance to the possession of the fortress, as it was the key of the city.

The Bastille was not, like the Louvre, and most castles of the Middle Ages, a square, or a parallelogram of crenelated ramparts, with towers at intervals, capped with conical roofs and steeples, gay with blazoned weathercocks, and crested with elegant metal work, but it was an oblong irregular mass of thick double walls, containing rooms, halls, passages throughout their length, flanked by eight towers scarcely detaching themselves from the surface of the curtain, projecting slightly only from the bed of masonry connecting them, and not surpassing the walls in height,—a monument black and sinister, whose appearance and history were alike gloomy.

Under Louis XIV, the Bastille attained its exclusive destination as a State prison. Cardinal Richelieu did not suffer the rust to gather on the hinges of its gates; but it was not till the second period of the reign of the Great Monarch, that this royal château became an awful gulf swallowing up, year after year, multitudes of unfortunates, of every rank and station, persecuted and oppressed at the caprice of the monarch, his ministers, his confessors, and his favourites.

In feudal times, only prisoners of a high rank had been consigned to the Bastille; but, under the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV and Louis XVI, no citizen, however obscure he might be, could consider himself safe from these oubliettes incessantly gaping for victims. The action of the regular tribunals and of the municipal authorities was null in the presence of the Bastille, which was filled and emptied by order of the king, without trial. Lettres de cachet given, not only by his majesty and the ministers, but also by the lieutenant-general of police, consigned often innocent persons to an unlimited imprisonment, without a form of trial; so that often a prisoner was ignorant of the reason of his incarceration.

On the death of Louis XIV, thirty thousand unfortunates were found in the State prisons; their only crime in the majority of cases was a suspicion of heresy.

The lettres de cachet did not fall with as great profusion under Louis XV; but they were given and traded with in the most shameless manner. The minister La Vrillière, the lieutenants of police Sartines and Lenoir, placed them at the disposal of any great personage who had some personal resentment to satisfy, and they were often sold blank, at high prices, to be filled in by the purchaser with the name of a rival, or a relation, and Sartines would send blank orders as a New Year's gift to friends, or to nobles whose protection he solicited. Latude, of whom mention has already been made, was dragged for thirty-five years from prison to prison, to satisfy the resentment of a harlot. Leprevôt de Beaumont was in the Bastille now; he had been there already twenty-two years,—his crime, having undertaken to denounce before the parliament of Rouen that iniquitous speculation in grain, known popularly as the Compact of Famine, by which the corn-factors, men like Foulon, favoured by government, bought up all the corn in the land, and retailed it at their own price, so as to keep up the high rate. Louis XV, interested to the amount of ten millions in the success of this cruel scheme, shared the profit with the monopolists; Louis XVI, too honest to participate in this, but too feeble to prevent its continuance, did not repair the iniquities of his predecessors. The Compact of Famine still continued; by that means, Foulon had accumulated an enormous fortune.

The Bastille still received prisoners without trial. The annual emoluments of the governor amounted to sixty thousand livres. He had, however, but limited authority. Without an order signed by a magistrate, he could not permit a prisoner to shave himself, to hear Mass, to receive visits, to write letters, even to change his linen. Those incarcerated were usually entered under other names. Their relations were never informed of their captivity, nor of their death. If they died, they were buried at midnight, two turnkeys assisting as witnesses. The dying could not receive spiritual consolations, nor be attended by a physician, without a superior order.

Whilst we have been describing the Bastille, the turnkey has been conducting Gabrielle André across the court, then through a door in the new buildings to a corridor, opening on one side into the dismal yard at the back, called the Well Court, from a draw-well in the centre, surmounted by a roof, and decorated with a scutcheon bearing the lilies of France. On account of the height of the walls, the sun seldom lighted the soil of this quadrangle, there was not space for a draught, and consequently the walls were covered with mould and lichens. Fungi sprang up between the interstices of the stones, a forest of little toadstools encumbered the ground at the foot of the posts supporting the roof over the well, and one of these beams was adorned with a huge yellowish-white fungus, somewhat resembling, in shape and size, an elephant's ear, which the warders respected as a natural curiosity. On the opposite side of the corridor to that opening on this cheerless court, was a range of small doors, numbered with cyphers in white.

The jailer stopped at 35, unlocked the door, threw it open, and introduced Gabrielle; then said shortly,—'It is permitted you to be with Madame 35 for one hour;' then he shut and double-locked the door, and Gabrielle heard his retreating steps and the jingle of keys at his girdle become gradually less audible.

The cell into which she was ushered was about twenty feet long by fifteen broad. It was whitewashed, and floored with red-glazed tiles, over which a piece of carpet had been laid near the bed; a curtain suspended from a rod by brass rings screened the couch and the wash-hand stand, and shut off the portion of the room near the door from that lighted by the window. This lower part of the cell, which by the curtain was made into a square apartment, was furnished with a deal table, two chairs, a chest of drawers, and a small fireplace. The room would have been as cheerful as it was comfortable, but that the window was high up in the wall, and too small to admit sufficient air. It was also protected by heavy stanchions, which obscured the light.

At the table, with her back to the door and her face to the light, her feet on a footstool, sat Madame Berthier, dressed in black, busily engaged in constructing cats' cradles.

As Gabrielle entered, the unfortunate lady looked hastily round, and exclaimed:

'Wait! I must get these threads right first. In one moment! See! the cats' net.'

At the sound of her voice, Gabrielle felt a violent agitation in her basket; the lid was forced up, and the yellow puss thrust forth its head, then placed its fore-paws on the edge, looked all round, saw its mistress, uttered a faint miaw, leaped to the floor, and in another second was upon Madame Berthier's shoulder.

The cradle was dissolved instantly; with a scream, the lady sprang to her feet, caught her favourite in both hands, held it at arm's length above her head, and looking up to it, whirled round the cell, singing and laughing, and every now and then kissing the cat, and elevating it again. Her grey hair broke from its fastenings, fell down her back, and flew around, as she spun about the room.

'My Gabriel! my angel! Look me in the eyes and say you love me. Tell me, are you well? Yes; I am sure you are. How beautifully you are dressed in a new yellow coat! Let me see your teeth, are they sound? And your paws, as soft and silky as ever? My Gabriel!' She hugged the cat till it screeched with pain.

In one of her twirls, the unfortunate woman cast herself against Gabrielle, and then, for the first time, she recognized her.

'It is you! Gabrielle, my cat's wife! my friend! How come you here?'

She caught the girl passionately to her heart, and covered her face with kisses. Then, without notice, her laughter and joy were exchanged for tears and grief.

'The Beast!' she cried. 'He has shut you up also. Oh, the Beast, the Beast!' She ground her teeth, curled back her grey lips, her black eyes darted lightnings, and her nostrils became rigid.

'See this!' she continued, as she opened one of her drawers, and drew from it a brown velvet jacket, and flung it on the floor; 'this shall be the Beast.'

She threw herself upon it; with her teeth and nails she worried it as a dog worries a rabbit-skin; she danced on it and tore it, she bit upon it and made her teeth meet through it, she ripped the buttons off with her mouth and spat them about the floor, and then she kicked it round the room and stamped on it, and beat it with her fist, kneeling upon it, with her head forward, and her grey hairs falling over her face and concealing it.

The sight was horrible and revolting, and Gabrielle interfered.

'Madame! dearest mistress,' she said, drawing her hands away from the now tattered vestment, 'you are quite mistaken. Indeed you are wrong. M. Berthier has not sent me here; he does not know that I have come here. I have walked all the way to Paris to see you, and to bring you your cat.'

'My cat, where is he?' the poor woman exclaimed, starting to her knees, and looking round. Then, catching sight of the yellow creature, she held out her hands to him, and addressed endearing terms to him. Gabriel was frightened, and had mounted the table, where he stood with his tail erect, staring at his excited mistress.

The peasantess took the opportunity of a change in the direction of the thoughts of Madame Plomb to remove the garment she had misused, and to hide it.

After the stream of passionate expressions addressed to the cat had ceased to flow with the same copiousness and rapidity as at first, Gabrielle knelt before madame, and laid her hands on her lap.

'Madame,' she said, 'are you tired of being here?'

'Oh, Gabrielle,' answered Madame Berthier, 'it is dreadful. Always the same white, white walls. Always the same red, red floor. There is positively never a bit of colour fit to be seen to refresh one's eyes, except of a sunny evening, when a streak of fire comes slanting in at that window, and it falls on the wall, and paints a line of orange. I sit for hours, and wait for it. I say to myself—a few minutes longer, and then I shall see it. First it comes down on the floor, but the red tiles spoil it; then it begins to crawl, like a brilliant fiery caterpillar, up the chalky wall; I laugh and sing with delight till it reaches the roof, and then it is gone. If you sit just there, you can see a bit of blue sky, but I take no account of that; I wait for the streak of yellow flame. What were you saying to me just now?'

'You are very tired of being here, dear lady.'

'Weary of my life. I cannot bear it. I have no one to take the strings off my fingers; and then, I have been deprived of Gabriel. But I have had another pet.'

'What is it?'

'Ah! I do not see it often. Once a day. It is a toad; it lives in the Court of the Well. I walk there for an hour every noon. I might go into the big court, but I do not care for it; I like the grim well-yard where my pet is. He sits near a stone trough beside the draw-well. He has got a blistered brown back. He is such a droll fellow—but I will tell you something, Gabrielle, between ourselves, I think he is a devil.'

The girl, who was not without superstitious fears, shrank from Madame Berthier, aghast.

'Indeed I do,' continued the crazy lady; 'and I will tell you why. I have felt worse ever since I have known him. Once he looked me in the face with a knowing expression in his handsome eyes, and he extended his long arm and put his cold paw here,' she touched her heart. 'He spread his long fingers over it, and I have felt from that moment something dreadful there. I cannot tell you what, but you shall see some day, when I get out of this place.'

'Do you think you will be released soon?'

'I expect from day to day. Every morning I pack up my clothes, and when it comes to evening I have to unpack them again. But no! why do I hope to get out? Who will trouble himself about me? Will my father? Not he. He never did care for me. Will my husband—the Beast?'

With a scream she sprang into the middle of the room, and began to dance and stamp on the floor where she had mangled the jacket, looking for it with blazing, eager eyes all the while, in every direction.

'Dear madame, be composed!' said Gabrielle, 'I have something to speak to you about.'

The unfortunate lady subsided into her chair, and the girl resumed her place at her feet.

'I want your advice, madame, so much. I wish to do all I can to obtain your liberation. You have heard how Madame Legros wrought during three years, and how she succeeded in procuring the release of Latude.'

'Will you do the same for me?' asked Madame Plomb, her leaden face darkening and becoming purple, as the blood rushed into it.

'Dear mistress, I will do all that I am able to do; I will spare no trouble, no exertion. I am poor, but so was Madame Legros; I am a nobody, but so was she. If she was successful, why should not I be so too?'

'God bless you, dear heart!' said the poor woman, in a tender tone, the wild light deserting her eyes, and the nervous contraction of the mouth yielding to a natural softness. She extended her hands over the girl's head,—Gabrielle was still kneeling before her; and said in the same low tone, 'God bless you, dear child! And sweet Mother Mary assist you, and your patron Gabriel protect you.'

Then she asked abruptly in her usual tone, 'Well! what are you going to do?'

'Madame, I had formed the intention of seeking an interview with the queen, and imploring her to use her influence with the king, to obtain for you an order of release.'

'But I am mad.'

'No, no, dearest madame. I know you better. Ill usage has made you very unhappy; but if you were alone,—away from M. Berthier and your father, in some quiet place, and I were to attend on you, you would be happy and well again.'

Joy irradiated the leaden face. The poor woman laughed and clapped her hands.

'We shall be together in a cottage, with flowers before the door.'

'Surely, madame.'

'And away, far away from Paris and Bernay, where there are trees and mountains. Gabrielle, my father took me once when I was a little girl to a beautiful country where there were great mountains, and snow covered them in the midst of summer; and there were forests there, and people did not talk French. I ran away and hid among the rocks and trees. I was a little girl then, quite a little girl; but they could not find me. I was behind a mossy stone, and I saw them searching, and they never would have found me, unless I had laughed aloud. We will go there. I have not laughed for many years; we shall be able to hide away there, and they would never find us. Of that I am sure. I would not laugh and let them catch me. We shall go there.'

'Where was that?' asked Gabrielle, her mind recurring to the Deschwandens, father and son.

'I do not know. I remember, that is all.'

'Was it,' asked Gabrielle, hesitatingly, 'was it, do you think, the country of Bruder Klaus?'

'I do not know. We shall take Gabriel with us, shall we not?'

'Certainly.'

'And you will be with me always?'

'Yes, I will not leave you, dear, kind mistress, unless you send me away.'

'That I will never do.'

'When shall we start?'

'Oh, madame! you are not out of this hateful place yet.'

'No,' said the poor prisoner, her face returning to its ashen greyness, which, in the Bastille, shut out from the sun, had become more livid; 'no, and I have not said good-bye to the Beast yet.'

'Madame!'

'Ay. To the Beast! Oh for that good-bye!'

She threw up her hand, clenched her fist, and gnashed her teeth. At the same moment voices were heard in the corridor, and the key was turned in the lock.

Gabrielle rose to her feet, madame caught up the cat, fearing lest the returning jailer should refuse to leave it with her, when the door opening revealed the governor and M. Berthier.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE Réveillon riot had caused no anxiety at Versailles; but the Baron de Besenval and M. de Launay had seen in it the germs of a more extended and fiercer explosion, and they determined to have the Bastille placed in such a condition of security and defence, that it might resist a rising in Paris, having its destruction in view. The governor knew better than the court how deep-seated was the popular detestation of the State prison, and he foresaw that the first act of an aroused populace would be an assault on that monument of royal injustice.

At the request of the Baron, M. Berthier visited the Bastille to examine its condition, and ascertain what precautions were necessary. It was on the occasion of this visit that Berthier was shown into the cell of his unfortunate wife.

He had been descending the corridor with De Launay, when the governor, pointing to No. 35, had said, 'Here is the chamber of Madame Plomb,' whereupon the Intendant had requested to be admitted to see her.

We must say a few words about M. de Launay.

Son of an ancient governor of the Bastille, born within its walls, his young heart hardened by the habitual sight of misery and injustice, he was the man of all others a wise king would not have placed in the post he was destined to occupy.

He began life in a musketeer regiment, then he became officer in the guards, and afterwards captain of a cavalry regiment. But the Bastille was his dream, and he was resolved at all costs to become its governor. He had many motives for this: his father, who had held the post for twenty-two years, had left a handsome property, which had been divided between him and his brother, who was in the service of the Prince of Conti. De Launay hoped to quadruple his fortune at the same source whence his father had drawn it.

M. de Maurepas, after repeated solicitation, passed him on to the ministry, after having sounded him and discovered in him the necessary qualities. Then, using his influence along with that of the Prince of Conti, gained over by his brother, he succeeded in drawing his resignation from M. de Jumilhac, the governor at the time, on these conditions:—De Launay paid M. de Jumilhac a hundred thousand crowns, and married his own daughter to the son of the latter, and undertook to make her his heiress. He also promised his brother a pension of ten thousand livres, in consideration of his having obtained for him the protection of the Prince of Conti. This expensive bargain placed the new functionary under the hard necessity of recouping these enormous sums out of the prison and the prisoners.

One of the scandals of the period was the venality of responsible offices, even those in the Bastille. From that of the governor down to the office of turnkey, all were articles of traffic; De Launay sold the latter situation at an annual rent of nine hundred francs.

M. de Launay was installed in his government of the Bastille in October, 1776. He had promised the ministers and the lieutenant of police passive obedience to their orders, their fancies, and their caprices, and he kept religiously to his engagement. Never was there a more cringing, obsequious officer. But, as is always the case with such persons, they revenge themselves for the degradation their servility brings, by severity towards those subject to them. From the moment of his entry into office, the most severe and tyrannical despotism was enthroned in the Bastille; proud and rough towards the subalterns, he was brutal, arbitrary, and odious to the prisoners; and under the excuse of precaution for their safe durance, he surrounded their captivity with a thousand vexations, cruelties, and privations. His favourite virtue was parsimony. To recoup a hundredfold the price of the charge he had bought, he himself measured out the water, the bread, the fuel, and the clothes. When he had not enough prisoners, and the revenues diminished, he complained, and asked for more. Those under his care, he retained under a thousand pretexts, or made against them reports which retarded their release.

The old bastions had been laid out in gardens full of flowers and fruit-trees and fountains, and in these gardens the prisoners had been allowed to take the air. But the Marquis de Launay had turned this ground into fruit and vegetable gardens, which he let; and thus the unhappy captives were reduced to taking the air on the top of the towers of the fortress. This, however, was found to demand too close a watch, and M. de Launay suppressed this privilege also, and those in custody were reduced to the use of the great court. The court, of which a description has been already given, was two hundred feet long by seventy-two feet wide. The walls enclosing it on all sides were a hundred feet high, so that it was little better than a huge well, where in winter the cold was insupportable, and in summer the heat was intense, and was unrelieved by a breath of air. The prisoners took their turns to walk in this court. Whenever any one crossed the court (and this was happening continually, as the kitchens and the lodgings of the officers were in the new buildings erected by M. de Sartines), a signal was made, and the prisoner was required to dive out of sight into a cabinet, without light or air, and remain concealed till notice was given him to come out.

We return now to the point from which we digressed, merely adding, that Madame Berthier, not being in prison for political reasons, and being, moreover, the wife of the Intendant of Paris, was treated in every way better than other prisoners, conformably to her husband's orders. But for this, Gabrielle would certainly not have obtained permission to visit her.

M. Berthier stood mute with astonishment in the doorway, contemplating his wife and Gabrielle André.

'See!' exclaimed madame; 'there, there, there is the Beast! Look, Gabriel, my cat, that you may not forget him. Is he not ugly? Is he not stout, and coarse, and bloated? Look at his hideous eyes!'

'You have got a companion!' said Berthier, at last, with his eyes fixed on Gabrielle. 'How is that, my good friend De Launay?'

'I did not know that you would object,' said the governor. 'You will surely remember that you allowed some of the servants to visit her occasionally, and bring her linen and fruit, and trifles to amuse her. If I am not mistaken, your wishes were express on that point.'

'My dear marquis, this girl is not one of our servants.'

'No,' answered the governor, 'but I understand that she was one till quite lately. If it is your wish that she be removed, it shall be complied with at once.'

'By no means. I do not object. Is she not a charming little creature, my friend? Gabrielle, sweetest! step from behind the curtain. Look how she blushes, how bewitchingly she hangs her head, what hair, what a neck, what lovely temples! Dearest! do not be shy. My worthy De Launay is quite a connoisseur in woman-flesh. Step out and show him your ankles. Now, marquis, what do you think of my taste?'

Gabrielle drew up her head and glanced at him scornfully; her little lips quivered with contempt and rage.

'She is out of humour,' said Berthier, laughing still; 'the rogue cannot twist out of me all the money she wants. She has set her heart on some diamonds. Now you be judge, De Launay, is she not ten thousand times more attractive, bewitching, luscious, in her charming peasant's dress, than in a suit of silk, and with a diamond brooch?'

'Perfectly so,' answered the governor.

'You hear that,' said Berthier, his fat sides shaking; 'you hear that, Gabrielle. It is the verdict of a man of all men the most competent to express an opinion on the subject.'

Madame Berthier now started forward.

'You liar, you coward!' she exclaimed, dragging in her hand the old jacket she had torn. 'See this! I have been mangling it. I thought for a moment it was you, and I bit it, and scratched it, and stamped on it, and beat it. Wait till I have the chance of serving you as I have served this dress. I pray night and morning for the chance, and I dream that it is about to be answered. I dream—' she put one hand to her brow, and looked frowning on the floor—'I dream that I hear voices from all the yards and courts, from all the cells and dungeons—thin shrill voices, all night long, crying out to Heaven;—the voices have waxed louder of late, and deeper in tone, and mightier in number, and I have felt the earth heave, and the walls reel, and the towers stagger. Every night the voices are louder and more numerous, and now they roar like thunder, and soon they will rend this prison, and fling its stones far and wide, and then! then, Berthier, I shall come leaping out from among the falling blocks, and run straight at you. I await my time.'

'She is raving,' said the Intendant to De Launay.

'Raving! yes, made so by you. But ah! though you have shut me in here, I shall not be here for long. Perhaps I may be out very soon. When you least expect me, I may come bounding in upon you, through the door or the window, or breaking my way up through the floor, or tearing my way through the ceiling, or burrowing through the walls to get at you.' She stopped, raised and clasped her hands over her head, and pirouetted round her chair two or three times; then, fronting her husband, she continued with a scream: 'I shall be out soon, very soon, and far away from you and my father, where you will never find me, that I am sure of, for, though I know the place, I do not know the name of it.'

'And pray, Madame Plomb, how are you going to get out?' asked Berthier, in a mocking tone; 'are you going to escape through that window, or dig through six feet of stone wall with your nails and teeth?'

'No,' she answered, slyly; 'there are other ways of getting released.'

'Ah!' said the Intendant, in the same bantering manner; 'you are depending on my well-known affection for yourself, which will not suffer me to remain long separated from you.'

'No,' cried Madame Berthier, laughing cunningly; 'I shall not trust to that.'

'Only one way remains,' observed her husband, rubbing his hands,—'a way as pleasant to both parties as could be desired,—a method whereby I shall be saved anxiety on your account, and be placed at liberty to contract a marriage, to raise, perhaps, my little pet to the position of wife.'

'What do you mean?' asked madame, sharply, fastening her restless eyes for the moment upon him.

Berthier tapped the walls with his knuckles.

'Ah!' said he; 'although whitened over there are hard blocks of granite behind, hard enough to split quickly such a cracked head as yours. Knock your own brains out against these stones, madame, and none will be better satisfied than your obedient servant.'

The unfortunate woman set her teeth. The cat was rubbing its head against her skirt; she stooped and picked it up and held it by the fore-legs against her breast, with the body hanging down. The cat, not satisfied with a position which undoubtedly distressed it, miawed; but Madame Berthier paid no attention to its complaints.

'Indeed,' continued Berthier, 'I have heard—but my good friend will correct me if I am wrong—that more than one captive here has so terminated his confinement, and it was greatly to their credit, I think; it showed a spirit, deserving admiration. Desirous of saving the privy purse the expense of their keep, they freed the crown, by their own act, of all anxiety about them. Certainly it cost a trifle to whitewash over the splashes of blood, where the head had been battered against the wall, but a few sous would cover that.'

The cat squalled, but Madame Berthier disregarded its cries. She laughed and glared at her husband, with her head bent forward, and her grey dishevelled hair falling over her breast and covering the cat.

'If you prefer it,' pursued Berthier, 'there is a strong stanchion in the window, quite capable of supporting your weight, and you could with the greatest facility extemporise a rope, surely out of a coverlet, torn up, or even a garter.'

'No,' shouted madame; 'no, not that way.'

'Then allow me to recommend a fragment of crockery. I have known a man hack through his windpipe with a sharp potsherd; and what man has done, woman may do.'

'No,' screamed the leaden woman; 'not so.'

'Then in the name of wonder, how?'

'Ah-ha!' she cried, advancing towards him, and throwing up the cat into the air and catching it, and swinging it above her head, and then bringing it back to its former position. 'Ah! have you never heard of pardons, of orders for release granted by the king?'

'I allow that I have; but I must assure you, dear Madame Plomb, that there is not the remotest chance of your obtaining one.'

'Not if Gabrielle pleads on her knees with the queen? Gabrielle loves me; she will do that, she has come to Paris on purpose to do that. She has got friends who will help her—we shall see! The queen is good, Gabrielle is earnest. We shall see.'

For a moment the Intendant looked disconcerted. His cheeks, lately puckered with laughter, hung down. He turned his red eyes on Gabrielle.

'Are you really going to Versailles on such a fool's errand?' he asked.

The girl, though much grieved at the poor deranged lady having disclosed her secret to the man of all others from whom it should have been preserved, when thus appealed to answered resolutely, 'By God's help, I shall!'

'In the devil's name, you shall not,' said Berthier, abruptly.

'Hark! what is that noise?' asked the governor, holding up his finger; 'I have heard it repeatedly.'

The Intendant listened; and directly heard a voice shouting in a peculiar, unearthly tone. The voice came from without, as though from some one floating in the air. What the words were that were spoken, they could not catch. Along with that sound rose inarticulate murmurs, which were wafted in through the window.

'Have you done?' asked the governor; 'I must make enquiries. Well, what is it, Guyon?' This question was addressed to a turnkey who came up.

'Monsieur, there is a crowd in the street. There is great excitement. They are collecting from all quarters.'

'What is bringing them together?'

'Monsieur, I do not know.'

'Curse the fellow! go and see.' The turnkey turned off; he had not reached the end of the corridor, before another came from that direction, met him, and ran towards M. de Launay.

'Well!'

'M. le Gouverneur!' said the jailer, 'the Marquis de Sade is congregating a mob.'

'What is he about? Has he got out?'

'Monsieur, you know that since the cannons on the battlements have been loaded, he has been interdicted the promenade there, and that he has been very angry about it.'

'I know, I know, Lassimotte!'

'Sir! he threatened me, that if I did not procure from your honour a favourable reply to his demand, that he should be allowed to resume his walk on the towers, he would arouse all Paris.'

'You never told me of this.'

'No, sir; I knew your honour did not want to be troubled with these messages. If I were to convey to you one-half of those given me——'

'I know; go on with the story. What has he done?'

'Why, you know, monsieur, he is allowed a long tin pipe with a funnel at the end for emptying his slops from his window into the moat. He has reversed the tube, and thus converted it into a speaking-trumpet.'

De Launay clapped his hands and laughed.

'Monsieur, he has been shouting for nearly half an hour to the people in the Rue S. Antoine, entreating them to assist him, crying out that you were assassinating him, that he was being tortured to death.'

'And the people have heard?'

'Monsieur, we did not know what it was that drew the people together. No one suspected for a moment——'

'Has the trumpet been removed from him, Lassimotte?'

'Yes, monsieur; the instant we discovered whence the voice came, we flew to his cell and wrested the instrument from his lips. He struggled to retain it, but Chouard and I took it from him by force.'

'M. Berthier,' said the governor, 'you must really excuse me; this must be looked to at once.'

'I am quite ready,' answered the Intendant; 'this girl had better be removed, had she not? And please remember I have no objection whatever to her revisiting my delectable wife. Madame Plomb, I bid you a respectful farewell, and please set your mind at rest upon the little matter we were speaking about. Gabrielle shall never procure your release, in the way you mentioned, or in any other.'

'Come!' said the jailer to the peasant-girl, 'it is time for you to be out of this. Come with me.'

'See her safely through the gates, Lassimotte.'

'Ay, sir!'

'Beast!' shouted Madame Berthier, before the door closed, glaring upon her husband, and swinging the yellow cat above her head; 'did you want me to dash my head against the walls, and spatter them with blood and brains?'

'Certainly,' answered the Intendant, mockingly, as he bowed with his hand on his heart.

'Or that I should strangle myself with my garters, slung to that stanchion?'

'Let me assure you that you have quite caught my idea;' with another bow, and a step back towards the door.

'Or you would have me hack through my throat with a broken potsherd?'

'Delighted,' exclaimed Berthier, standing on the threshold and throwing his arms apart, and raising himself.

'Then begone,' she screamed. 'I will not see you again, I swear, till I have your life. If you come to see me here, I will hide my face from you. Take that to remember me by—go, Gabriel! avenging angel!' She flung the yellow cat in his face. The beast lit upon his cheeks, with every claw extended, screaming with fear, and clinging with all its might, hung there one instant, then dropped, and darting to its mistress bounded to her shoulder and set up its back and tail, hissing and swearing.

Madame Plomb saw her husband recoil,—saw lines of crimson streak his face, heard his yell of pain, followed by a volley of blasphemous oaths, then the door was shut with a bang, double locked, and she was left to silence and reflection.

Gabrielle in the meantime had been hurried by the jailer to the gates. As she issued from them into the street, she saw that it was full of people in a condition of intense excitement. Every eye was directed towards the towers, with a look of threatening hate. A deep murmur rose from the throng, not loud, but intensely earnest.

Corporal Deschwanden caught Gabrielle's arm. He had been waiting for her.

'Is all right?' he asked, anxiously.

'I fear not,' she answered; and then told him what had occurred.

'Herr Je!' exclaimed the soldier; 'that will never do. If Berthier knows of your plan, he will take effectual means to stop its execution. What is to be done? You are not safe. Potts tausend! I must think of it.'

That evening, an express was sent to Versailles, and at day-break the Marquis de Sade was removed to Charenton. He was the last prisoner to leave the Bastille. He had been confined for horrible crimes of impurity. Being only a moral, not a political offender, he had been treated with a consideration never met with by those who had roused the suspicions of Government. He was allowed the walk on the towers interdicted to others, was permitted to carpet and hang his room with arras, and to have excellent meals, which he paid for out of his well-stocked purse.

That cry of his through the extemporised speaking-trumpet echoed from one end of Paris to the other, and, false as was the statement he made to the crowd about himself, it was terribly true about his fellow-prisoners. That cry roused Paris. The trumpet was but of tin, but it pealed the death-knell of the fortress that had stood four hundred years.

CHAPTER XXV.

WHEN the Corporal and Gabrielle returned to the house, a council was held. Percenez, Nicholas, and the women sat upon the information given them by the old soldier.

Percenez was very decided in his opinion. Berthier, he was convinced, would take immediate measures to preclude Gabrielle from visiting Versailles.

This opinion was not shared by all the others. Madame Deschwanden justly argued, that, unless Berthier were a fool, he would know very well that an attempt at intervention with the queen must fail. 'But then,' she added, shrugging her shoulders, 'he may be a fool—most men are fools!'

Percenez with natural good taste said nothing of the Intendant's pursuit of the girl, and the reason he had formed, on that account, of desiring to place her in a security from further annoyance, now that Berthier knew she was in Paris, and was aware, or could inform himself at any moment, where she was staying.

The corporal rapped on the table.

'Meal-time!' he said. 'We are late; surely we can talk during dinner, and thus avoid throwing the routine of the evening out of gear.'

'Oh the wooden, clock-work man!' sighed Madame Deschwanden, rising and retiring in the direction of the kitchen.

During dinner the colporteur turned the conversation; he had formed his resolution, and he intended to communicate it privately to the corporal.

'And pray,' said Percenez; 'Nicholas, what is that statue you are engaged upon now? I have observed it becoming every day more distinct and life-like.'

'It is a S. Généviève,' answered the young man, slightly colouring; 'you know who she was—a shepherd girl.'

'So I have perceived. For whom are you carving it?'

'For S. Étienne du Mont. It has been ordered long, but I felt no inspiration till of late.'

'Do you carve the figures without copies or models?'

'I generally have a model; my father or Madeleine stands for me, but they will not suit all subjects.'

'And this S. Généviève?'

The young man became crimson.

'I thought I traced a resemblance,' said Percenez, slyly. 'Have you persuaded any one else to stand as a model?'

'No,' answered Klaus, looking down, and faltering; 'I am moulding this figure from an idea in my own mind.'

'I am thankful,' put in Madame Deschwanden, 'that you are at work upon a French saint. Those German saints are a disgrace to the Kalendar. I would not say "Bitte für uns" to them to save my life,—fusty, beer-drinking, tobacco-smoking fellows!'

'My good wife,' said the corporal, solemnly; 'you quite forget that for a considerable number of years the blessed hermit Nicholas von der Flue lived without food. The magistrates of the canton, desiring to verify the fact of his miraculous life, sent officers, who, for the space of a month, occupied night and day all the avenues of approach to his cell, in order that no person might bring provisions. The suffragan bishop of Constance subjected the brother to a similar test; he made him, on his obedience, eat a little bread, but the food caused the holy brother such pains that the bishop desisted. The Archduke Sigismund of Austria sent, for the same purpose, his physician, in order that he might attentively observe Nicholas during several days and nights. Frederick III, Emperor of Germany, also appointed delegates to examine him; but all these expedients served only to confirm the truth. My wife, it is a slander on the memory of Bruder Klaus to speak of him as——but I will not repeat the expressions you employed.'

'What does "Bitte für uns" mean?' asked Gabrielle, timidly.

'It means Pray for us,' answered Nicholas, beaming at her across the table; 'you would not mind calling on a Swiss saint to pray for you, I hope?'

'Certainly not,' answered Gabrielle; 'the prayers of such a holy man as the hermit Nicholas must be of great avail.'

'Bruder Klaus was no ordinary saint,' began the corporal; 'and the most remarkable evidences have been given of the power of his intercession. The walls of Sachselen church are hung with votive paintings.'

'Have pity on us!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, 'and spare us the catalogue of the Bruder's miracles.'

'Switzerland is especially favoured,' said the soldier. 'It is dotted all over with places of pilgrimage. Of course you have heard of S. Meinrad. Ah! he was a great saint. One day he made a fire of icicles, when he had consumed all his fuel. He preached on the Etzel, that is a place of great resort, and he founded Einsiedeln. He had two tame ravens, which fed out of his hand. One winter-day some robbers came and fell upon the saint, intending to plunder his chapel. When he saw they were intent on killing him, he lay down between two tapers which stood on the altar steps, and bade the murderers finish their work. So they killed him, and the candles lighted of their own accord, and when people found the body, the tapers were still burning. But do you know how it was discovered who had killed Meinrad? No! Well, I will inform you. The ravens flew after the murderers, screaming and pecking at them; and the folk recognised the saint's birds, and suspecting that something wrong had taken place, they arrested the men.'

'If you are going to talk of Switzerland, will you be good enough to let Madeleine and me go?' asked madame.

'By all means,' answered the corporal, rapping on the table.

'Ah!' he continued; 'you should see Maria Sonnenberg! It stands above the lake Uri, on a precipice, a little white chapel with a red-tiled roof, and a spirelet—so pretty; and within is the dear Lady who was found in a rose-bush.'

'So was our Lady of La Couture,' exclaimed Gabrielle.

'The Blessed Virgin of Sonnenberg was discovered by a shepherd-lad. His sheep strayed—and he followed them, and, lo! there was the beautiful image in a bush of blushing wild-roses.'

'It was the same exactly with our holy Virgin at my home.'

'How beautiful! Maria sey gelobt!' exclaimed Nicholas, clapping his hands, as a smile shone from his full honest face; 'you see the Holy Virgin loves equally our Switzerland and your Normandy.'

'And then,' pursued the corporal, with his usual gravity; 'there is the Virgin of Sarnen—of the convent there. That is a famous pilgrimage shrine. It came to pass thus:—One Christmas Eve all the sisters had gone to midnight mass, and they left one poor nun very sick upon her pallet in her cell. She was sorely grieved not to be able to assist at the holy mass, and she prayed with her face towards an image of the Virgin and Child. And, lo! as she prayed, the Mother raised the sacred infant, and the Divine Child smiled upon her and gave her the blessing with his little hand. When the sisters returned from the chapel, they found the nun in a rapture; and when she had recovered, she told all that had befallen her. I have seen the very statue——'

'And so have I,' said Nicholas, rubbing his hands.

'Then, again, there is the little chapel of Giswyl. Ah, what a beautiful spot!' The corporal shut his eyes and was silent for some moments; then he proceeded:—'Where stands the church of Giswyl now, was once an ancient castle that looked down upon a small clear lake; but the water was drawn off by a tunnel in 1761, just about the time my Nicholas was born, and now I suppose its site is occupied by green pastures. To the north you see the lovely lake of Sarnen; right and left are fearful precipices, and at their feet a pleasant meadow-land dotted over with fruit-trees. If one climbs the rocks by a little path that threads its way amongst pines and over great fragments of stone, far up in a lonely spot stands a tiny chapel with a little bell-cot, all of wood. Inside is a simple altar, and the walls are covered with votive pictures. Descend a few steps, and under the chapel is a little cell and a basin of crystal water. How comes the poor little shrine in that wilderness, far away from men? I will tell you. In 1492, some thieves broke into the church of Giswyl at night, and stole from it the pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament. The pyx was of precious metal, and the men carried it to the spot where the chapel now stands, then they examined it, and threw the Host upon the grass, after which they fled towards Pilatus. When the robbery was discovered, all the country rose, and one of the thieves was caught. He told where the Sacrament had been cast, and the priest of Giswyl and many of his people ran into the forest to seek it. As they approached the spot—it was evening—they saw a beautiful white light streaming between the pine-boles, and heard strains of enchanting music. They drew nearer, the music ceased, but there, on the grass, lay the Host, like a fallen planet illumining the flowers, the fir-boughs and the rocks, with a wondrous light.'

'Now, corporal,' said Madame Deschwanden, from the window, 'have you done with your fusty Swiss saints? I don't believe a word about their miracles.'

'Not believe, madame!' cried the soldier, wheeling his chair round; 'why, my wife, I have seen miracles wrought with my own eyes. When our Kridli——'

'Kridli! there's a barbarous name!'

'Then let her name be Marguerite, but I must say our Swiss name, Kridli, is the sweetest; so! when she was a little baby, her eyes were sore, and inflamed. We took her to the doctor at Stanz, he could do nothing for her; then we went by boat to Lutzern, and the doctors there said she must lose her sight; then we took her home to Sachseln, and we had recourse to the holy Bruder Klaus. We touched her eyes with the hem of his garment, and on the following day she had perfectly recovered her sight. In gratitude, we named our next child—this boy here, after him.'

'Where is Kridli now?' asked Gabrielle. Nicholas, hearing her mention his sister by her German name, nodded approvingly at her and smiled.

'Kridli is at Lutzern—Lucerne, the French call it,' answered the old soldier; 'she was a good girl, a sweet, simple girl, as fresh as one of our wild roses, as good as an angel.' He looked over at Gabrielle; 'sometimes you remind me of dearest Kridli. Poor, gentle Kridli! it seems to me to be but yesterday that I saw her. She used to have her hair platted and fastened up behind with broad silver spoons—that is the fashion in Unterwalden; and with her large white straw hat, she was enchanting. Poor Kridli!' he wiped his eye. 'Ah! she is happy. She is in such a pretty place. She lies on the south side of the great church of S. Leger, which rises with twin taper spires above the lake. There is a cloister all round the grave-yard, and as you walk in it you look through windows upon the blue expanse of water and away beyond to the Engelberg snow-peaks, and on the right stands Pilatus, cutting sharply against the evening sky. She is happy,' he said, in a low tone to himself; 'she is at Home, she is in Switzerland;' and then he began to hum sadly to himself the song, 'Herz, mein Herz.'

'Is it not time for prayers?' asked Madame Deschwanden, snappishly; 'it is very dark.'

The soldier looked at his watch, started, rapped on the table, and led the way into Klaus's workshop.

As soon as the ordinary devotions were over, Madame Deschwanden and her daughter rose. The corporal and his son wheeled round towards the niche containing the life-sized figure of the hermit of Sachseln, and began their German orisons to the saints of Switzerland.

Gabrielle hesitated for a moment whether to rise or to remain. Her heart had softened to the old corporal, and his legends had kindled devotion towards the wonderful patrons of the Alpine land. She therefore remained, and directed her eyes towards the grave, sad face of Bruder Klaus, irradiated by the tiny lamp that hung before it.

In changing his position Nicholas observed the girl; he looked over his shoulder and nodded, whilst a flash of pleasure lit up his large blue eyes.

It so happened that on the change in the position of the worshippers, the son knelt immediately in front of the image of Bruder Klaus, and that his father was thrown into the background. During the former part of the prayers, the corporal had occupied the most advanced post, that nearest the window and the crucifix, but, in turning towards the hermit, Nicholas was placed in the van. The old soldier, however, still conducted the worship:—

'Heiliger Meinrad!'

To which, in condescension towards Gabrielle's infirmities, young Deschwanden responded with emphasis in French:—

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Gallus!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Beatus!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Moritz und deine Gefährte!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Bonifacius!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Victor!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Bruder Klaus!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heiliger Bruder Konrad Scheuber!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heilige Verena!'

'Priez pour nous.'

'Heilige Odilia!'

'Priez pour nous.'

An interruption, sudden and extraordinary, broke the litany short off. Madeleine rushed into the workshop, and whispered—'The police are at the door; they have come for Gabrielle!'

'Herr Gott!' exclaimed the corporal, starting to his feet; 'what is to be done?'

'Only one thing,' answered Madeleine, passing Nicholas, and darting upon the image of Bruder Klaus. 'Remain where you are, Nicholas, remain, for Heaven's sake.'

She swung the image from its place in the niche.

'Quick! quick, Gabrielle!' she urged; 'come here!' She caught the frightened girl by the shoulders, and thrust her into the recess lately occupied by the patron of the Deschwandens, made her stand upon his pedestal, and said, 'Remain perfectly motionless. Do not move a limb. Do not look up. Fix your eyes on the floor.' Then, turning to her brother, she said: 'Pray, pray on in French before your patroness S. Généviève. Everything depends on you.'

The boy looked wonderingly at her, then at Gabrielle, then upon the ejected hermit, then at his father.

'Do as she bids you,' said the corporal; 'it is Gabrielle's only chance.'

The sound of steps was heard on the stairs.

The corporal stalked out, and stood upon the landing. Madame Deschwanden was before him.

'Ah! Du Pont! are you come at last?' called the little woman. 'You bad fellow! We waited dinner a full half hour. And now! when all is over!—But—my faith! it is not Du Pont, but strangers. I am thunderstruck. But pray come in and take chairs.'

The gendarmes entered the sitting-room, where the relics of the dinner remained on the table.

'You will allow me to pour you out a glass of wine each, before you speak,' said madame, not waiting for an answer, but handing each a tumbler. 'Now, what is it?'

'We have come, with order to bring Mademoiselle André, whom we have reason to believe is here, before M. Berthier, the Intendant.'

'Mon Dieu!' exclaimed madame, 'how vexing! I have been persuading her to wait on M. Berthier; she has some request to make of him, I believe, but I do not know her concerns. Women, however, are wilful. So are men, too—I have been married twice, and I know them. I have had my share of experience, and I should say that obstinacy, wilfulness, pigheadedness are the characteristics of man. But that is neither here nor there. Take some more wine?—No! Well, the girl would not listen to me. She has gone off on foot.'

'Gone, madame, where to?'

'Why, to Versailles, on foot, at this time of night. Did you ever hear anything more absurd, and the country so disturbed? Said I to her, You cannot walk it—you must know she is quite a stranger in these parts, and knows no more the way to Versailles than she does to Strasbourg. If you will wait till to-morrow morning, I told her, I will send Klaus with you—Klaus is my son—you hear him in his workshop muttering his prayers. He is a pious fool. But that, again, is neither here nor there. Well, gentlemen, I said to the girl Gabrielle, If you will go, stop the night at Sèvres. There is a nice little inn there, the "Golden Goose,"—do you know it, gentlemen? It is kept by M. Touche Gripé; he married my cousin, as pretty a girl as you ever set eyes on, but she has grown fat—and he sells good wine, at moderate rate.'

'Will you be so good, madame, as to let me know when the girl left here?'

'At five. Curiously enough, I know the time to the minute, for I was so provoked with her for her obstinacy, that I accompanied her to the Celestins, scolding and entreating alternately; and when I turned back, there was a clock in a watchmaker's shop window at the corner struck the hour. You may have noticed the clock; it is ingenious, there is a door above it, and a cuckoo comes out and sings. I stood and listened to the bird. It was droll. The cuckoo threw open its little door, and walked out, opened its yellow beak, bowed and said, "Cuckoo!" Mon Dieu! I laughed. It went just so—' she bent her body, opened her mouth, and called 'Cuckoo!'

It was impossible for the officers to restrain their laughter.

'Well!' continued madame, 'five times did that absurd creature bow and call. Once more, and I should have died, positively died of laughter.'

'Excuse me, madame,' said one of the gendarmes, 'how was the girl dressed?'

'She wanted to see the queen,' answered the little lady, 'and nothing would do for her but to borrow some of Madeleine's smart clothes. She has dressed herself in a faded rose-coloured silk, and wears a tiny cap with blue ribands on her head. You cannot mistake the dress. It was mine in the dear old times when I was a young bride. Ah! those were times. I made my good man,—I can tell you, he was flesh and blood, and not wood and clock-work,—I made him buy it for me. Oh! how I have danced in that pink silk. It is looped at the sides with rose-coloured bows and some gold thread. When Madeleine,—that is my daughter,—became old enough to wear it, I made it over to her. And now that rogue of a Gabrielle André has wheedled her out of it, that she may appear grand before the queen. My idea is that she will not get into her majesty's presence. What is your opinion, gentlemen?'

'You must allow us to search the house,' said one of the gendarmes, looking first at madame, and then at the corporal.

'By all means,' answered the little woman; 'let me show you the way. Corporal! you need not follow; you can go back to your prayers; I know that your heart is far away, saying "Bitte für uns" to old fusty, beer-drinking, snuff-taking, tobacco-smoking, hawking, spitting Bruder Klaus.' Then, drawing up close to the officers, she said: 'You don't know what it is to be married to a man who is a Jacquemart. Listen! do you hear his son? My husband, as you see by his uniform, is a Swiss, but mind! I am a French woman. Come along, you shall see all!' Then, throwing open the door of the work-room, she said: 'Pray look in at that precious boy Klaus at his prayers. He is a carver of saints; and he is not a poor hand. Some of his images are quite life-like. There is a S. Christopher; there, in the niche, his patroness, S. Généviève; there, a snuffy old hermit, Bruder Klaus. But come along, there is nothing there.'

One of the men, however, remained behind, and looked in every corner, especially behind the S. Christopher. It never occurred to him to direct his attention to the S. Généviève, to whom Klaus was addressing an impassioned prayer:—

'Oh, blessed one! my heart addresses thee; thou alone canst make a poor disconsolate lad happy. Thou, who hast taken possession of the heart of thy suppliant, hearken to my prayer. Turn a gracious ear to my request, heavenly being whom I adore; Angel of Paradise, before whom I bow, obtain for thy servant that happiness which thou alone canst grant.'

The search was hurried and superficial, for the man heard madame ascending the stairs with his companion, rattling away, and making him burst into a peal of laughter, in which her shrill voice chimed.

The men were shown all over the house, and left it, after renewed assurances that Gabrielle had taken the road to Versailles, that she was sure to put up at the 'Golden Goose,' at Sèvres, and that she was equipped in pink silk, somewhat faded, and a hat with blue ribands.

'Now, then,' said Madame Deschwanden, when she had seen the backs of the gendarmes, 'I have sent them to the sign of the Goose, indeed. Nice-looking fellow the taller one, was he not, Madeleine? What superb moustaches! I could scarce keep my fingers off them. And his eyes! They were the eyes of a seraph. They were men, too—men of courtesy and breeding; they saluted me before they left the house, first on one cheek and then on the other, in the most accomplished manner, and not on the mouth, as does a German clown. But go! Madeleine, release S. Généviève, and replace the Bruder. Mon Dieu! I could hardly refrain my laughter, when I saw our good owl Klaus at his devotions, and the Bruder standing on one side and staring in his stolid German fuddle-headedness, unable to make out how he had tumbled out of his niche, and a woman had got into it.'

'What is to be done?' asked the corporal, running his fingers through his hair.

'You need not be anxious,' said Percenez; 'I have already resolved to take Gabrielle to Versailles.'

'But I have told the men—men, indeed! they were angels—that they were to look for the girl on her way there.'

'We can go in a hackney coach. They will not suspect her of being in that. To Versailles we must go, and Gabrielle must see the queen at once, and then return to Bernay.'

'The king and queen are at Marly,' said Madeleine; 'I have ascertained that to-day. To-morrow is my day for taking bouquets to the royal family; I shall go to Marly, and Gabrielle can accompany me.'

'To Marly!' exclaimed Percenez; 'that is better still.'

'Well,' exclaimed madame, suddenly turning upon Klaus, 'has S. Généviève answered your prayers? They were impassioned enough, especially for a German-Swiss.'

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE palace of Marly is no more. It was built by Mansard for Louis XIV, and was architecturally a little pretentious, and very ugly. Louis, finding the great Versailles he had created too splendid a world, built Trianon as a refuge from it; but the world flowed towards Trianon, and then he fled to Marly; not that he hated the world and its pomp, but that every man, even a Grand Monarque, loves to snatch a moment or two of tranquillity, and shake off his starched ruffles and stiff court-dress, that he may stretch his limbs at ease, forget politics, even forget pleasure, and do nothing and think of nothing. Marly was to be the sans souci of French royalty; but care was not to be evaded, it pursued the great Monarch there, and there also it fastened on the little king.

St. Simon relates that in the construction of Marly, whole forests of full-grown trees were brought from Compiègne, and that as they died, they were replaced by others; extensive tracts of copse were converted into lakes and ponds, and then, at the caprice of the king, were reconverted into shady groves, and all to adorn a small villa in a contracted valley, in which Louis might pass a week or fortnight in the course of the year.

To Marly, Louis XVI had been hurried by the queen, that, in its comparative quiet and retirement, she might be able to mould him to her will, or rather to the will of that party whose interests she had at heart.

Much cruel slander has been cast upon the memory of the unfortunate queen; her moral character has been defamed, her virtues called in question. This has been as unjust as it is untrue. Marie Antoinette was a good wife and a good mother. Her fidelity to her husband and her affection for her children should never have been doubted. The hatred which she inspired caused every evil to be believed of her, and those, whose interest it was to stir up disaffection, were not slack in spreading calumnious reports, which everyone retailed and some believed.

Louis, amiable, simple and weak, mistrusting his own opinion, was a puppet in her hands. He loved his wife passionately, and trusted her implicitly.

She, loving pleasure above all things, cared only to be the most brilliant centre of a brilliant circle. She wanted the treasury to be full, that she might lavish gifts on her friends, and live extravagantly herself.

Sometimes she acquiesced in reforms, when they appeared inevitable; more often, when she thought the royal authority was menaced, she restrained the king, and drove away the popular ministers.

The queen was walking on the terrace at Marly, with her inseparable friend, the Princess de Lamballe, a little fair-haired, soft-eyed, pretty creature, and Madame Elizabeth, the sister of the king, who had left her charming villa at Montreuil to assist the queen in turning Louis from the Liberal party towards that of the Court.

Madame Elizabeth was a noble woman, with a firm lip and eye, very like her brother, but with a refinement and a determination foreign to his face. None doubted the purity of her intentions, and her devotion to what she believed to be the right cause, though, unfortunately, she was mistaken in her appreciation of events.

Afterwards, when the king and queen were in peril, and all their friends took refuge in voluntary exile from probable death, she hesitated for a moment whether to follow her aunts or to remain with the prisoners.

'What! will you desert us?' asked the queen. Elizabeth instantly resolved on sharing their fate; and on the 9th May, 1794, her head fell on the scaffold.

'There is my little flower-girl,' said the queen, as Madeleine Chabry appeared with her basket of roses, and Gabrielle near her; 'but do look, sister, at the funny little peasantess at her side!'

'She is a Normande, your majesty,' said Mademoiselle de Lamballe; 'I know the cap well enough.'

'It is picturesque,' observed the queen; 'I should like to examine it closer. Suppose I were to adopt it, and set the fashion?'

The hint was sufficient. Marie Thérèse de Lamballe ran towards the girls, and bade them approach the queen.

Poor little Gabrielle was bewildered by what she saw. On entering the park, her eyes had wandered down the alleys to the fountains and statues terminating them; but when she stood on the terrace and looked down the twelve avenues, each leading to a temple of one of the zodiacal signs, which Mansard had designed in compliment to Louis XIV, who was the central sun in his shrine of Marly, she held up her hands and laughed with delight.

'Hush!' said Madeleine; 'there is the queen.'

'But where is her crown?'

'Oh! she forgot it and left it under her pillow, when she woke this morning.'

Gabrielle folded her hands and stood still, with her large eyes staring.

'See!' exclaimed Madeleine; 'she is sending for us.'

'Her majesty desires you to wait on her,' said the Princess de Lamballe; 'bring your flowers, Madeleine, and let the little Norman girl accompany you. What is her name?'

'Mademoiselle,' said the girl Chabry; 'my cousin is called Françoise Rolin.'

Gabrielle looked round at Madeleine with surprise, but the queen's flower-girl repeated, fixing her eye steadily on her, 'Françoise Rolin.'

'Well, follow me, my girls,' said the princess.

When they stood before the queen, Madeleine bent, as she was accustomed; but Gabrielle, unacquainted with etiquette, looked earnestly in the face of Marie Antoinette.

The queen smiled. The expression of the young countenance was one of simple admiration.

'Oh! how beautiful you are, madame!' escaped involuntarily from the lips of the peasantess.

The queen was pleased; a little colour rose to her cheek, and she held out her hand, which Gabrielle kissed reverently.

'It is not polite to flatter any person to her face,' said Marie Antoinette; 'but, as you have broken rule, I must follow suit, and assure you that you have a charming little face. What is your name, mignonne?'

'Her name, if it please your majesty, is Françoise Rolin,' answered Madeleine.

The queen turned to her and said, sharply, 'When I speak to you, answer me. I addressed my question to this child. Is she any relation of yours?'

'Your majesty, she is my cousin.'

'And where do you live, mignonne?' she asked of Gabrielle.

'Madame, at Bernay.'

'Bernay,' echoed the queen; 'where is that?'

'Madame, it is in Normandy.'

'Ah! you are a brave Norman, then?'

'Yes, madame.'

'How long have you been in Paris?'

'Madame, ever since the end of April.'

'Alas!' said Marie Antoinette, with a sigh; 'you little bird of ill-omen, you came fluttering towards the capital to announce the coming on of care and worry. Who knows but you may have come here to Marly to give omen of more care and more worry, and perhaps of disaster?'

'No, dear, beautiful queen!' cried Gabrielle, looking full in her eyes; 'I should cry my eyes out if I thought so.'

'Why do you call me "dear?"' asked Marie Antoinette, with an accent of sadness; 'your people do not generally express much affection for me.'

'My people!'

'Well, well; I mean the people,—the mob, the lower orders.'

Gabrielle remained silent.

'What brought you to Paris?' again asked the queen; 'have you come like little David, in the naughtiness of your heart, to see the battle?'

'Madame!'

'I asked you a simple question,' said the queen, petulantly.

'Her majesty asked you why you left Normandy and came to Paris,' said Marie Thérèse de Lamballe.

Gabrielle fell at the queen's feet.

'Dear, beautiful madame!' she cried, raising her hands and her eyes, which filled instantly with tears; 'I came to see you.'

The queen surprised, and by no means offended, looked at her with benevolence; this encouraged Gabrielle, who pursued,—'Madame! I had a dear mistress, one so kind, so good, and so gentle; she loved me, and I loved her. I was not long with her, but that was quite long enough for her to have gained my heart; and then, madame, she had no one else to love, except yellow Gabriel.'

'Yellow what!' exclaimed the queen.

'Her cat, madame,—she had dyed it saffron; and she was passionately attached to it. Then, poor thing, she had nothing else to love,—no little child to hug, no sisters to confide to, her mother dead, and her father so cold and hard and dreadful.'

'Why, what was there dreadful about him? Jump up, don't kneel there.'

'Please let me remain here, dear, good queen; I used to kneel before my dear mistress and talk to her, and she would console me in my dreadful troubles.'

'Were your troubles very bad?'

'Oh, madame!' she said, wringing her hands; 'my poor father!'

'What of him?'

'Madame, he hung himself.'

The queen recoiled, shocked and pained. With tenderness, she stooped over the girl, and said, 'I am sorry to have distressed you by asking that question; go on with your story about the mistress. What was she like?'

'Madame, do you mean in disposition or in appearance?'

'You have told me that she was good and kind; was she old or young, handsome or plain?'

'Oh, madame, she was like lead.'

'What do you mean, Françoise, my girl?'

'Her face was like lead,—the colour of lead, blue-grey.'

'My God! how dreadful.'

'And that was why her husband hated her, and teased her beyond endurance. Besides, he was a bad,—oh! such a wicked man.'

'Where is the poor lady now?' asked the queen.

'In the Bastille.'

The queen started, and Madame Elizabeth and the Princess de Lamballe looked at one another. A cold shadow passed over the queen's face.

'Well,' she said, in an altered voice; 'what do you want now?'

'I want to get her out of that horrible prison.'

'Indeed!'

'Yes, madame, with your kind help.'

'Do not count on that.'

'But, madame, when you know all the circumstances.'

'Tell me the lady's name.'

'She is Madame Berthier de Sauvigny, wife of the Intendant of Paris.'

'Oh, indeed!'

'Come here, little girl,' said Madame Elizabeth, stepping forward; 'come with me apart and tell me the whole story, and I will talk to her majesty about it.'

'Do go, Elizabeth,' the queen said; 'but give her no hopes. Now, Madeleine, let me see your bouquets.'

Whilst the queen was selecting a bunch of flowers which pleased her, Monseigneur de Narbonne approached from the house, and stood at a little distance, after having made a formal bow.

'Ah, monseigneur,' said the queen; 'do come here and choose me a bouquet. We want your opinion on their respective merits. I like this one, and Mademoiselle de Lamballe prefers that.'

'Whichever your majesty prefers is sure to be the most beautiful,' said the bishop, placing his hand on his breast and bending.

'No compliments!' exclaimed Marie Antoinette; 'I have had several paid me already by an untutored mouth,' and she nodded towards Gabrielle.

'I have a few remarks I desire to make to your majesty,' said the bishop, with another bow; 'if your majesty will allow me to make them in private?'

'Mademoiselle de Lamballe can be no hindrance to your speaking, my lord,' said the queen; 'you have some news from Versailles.'

'I have,' answered the bishop.

'Good or bad? but,' added Marie Antoinette, shaking her beautiful head, 'of course bad.'

'Very bad; indeed, most serious,' said the prelate.

'And my influence with the king is wanted?'

'My royal mistress, unless that influence which your virtue and your charms unite to make irresistible, be exerted to the uttermost, everything will be lost.'

'What is the news, then?' she asked, somewhat impatiently, for the fulsome flattery of the bishop was too much even for her to endure.

'I have just received news by special messenger from the cardinal, that the clergy are resolved on uniting with the Commons. He says——' the bishop drew a letter from his pocket; 'he says:—"I will do the best I can to protract the business, so as to postpone the vote till to-morrow, but I have no hope of putting it off later. The Abbé Maury is speaking against time, and that demagogue Lindet, your Évreux man, is branching off into all kinds of irrelevant subjects; but I insist, the union will be voted by a majority; I leave it to you to communicate with her majesty and consider whether a bold stroke of policy is not the only resource left us. The Archbishop of Paris and I shall post to Marly the moment we are released." Such is his message; and I venture to express my humble opinion that it contains a warning of the most serious description.'

'And if the union does take place?' said the queen, stamping her foot on the gravel, and plucking at a rose in the bouquet she had selected.

'If the union takes place, everything goes. Remember, M. Necker persuaded his majesty to consent to the doubling of the Third Estate. Therefore, the Commons will have a majority over the two other orders; and remember that, once united with the Commons, more than half the clergy will oppose all privileges and break down all rights, so that the last check is removed from the Assembly, which seems to me to be whirling down-hill into sheer democracy as fast as it can go.'

'Go on,' said the queen, pouting.

'The fault lay with M. Necker at the first, in giving to the Commons a double representation.'

'I always thought so,' exclaimed Marie Antoinette.

'An immense importance and preponderance was given to the lowest house, to those who had nothing to lose and much to gain by a revolution. The popular will, which first insisted on a convocation of the States-General, which then demanded a doubling of the representation of the mob,—the nobodies, clamours now for the union of the orders. The largest body always attracts the smaller ones to it. Now that the equipoise is disturbed, there is of necessity a gravitation towards the compact mass of the Tiers. That house which feels it most is the house of the Clergy, the majority of the members of which are bound up in interest rather with the people than with the aristocracy. The wound opened on the first day of session, and the cardinal had much ado to hold the lips together. Now, healing it is impossible. What course lies open? One only, if the crown and the coronet are not to be trampled under foot by the Assembly.'

'You exaggerate, monseigneur.'

'I hope sincerely that I do, your majesty; but believe me, I am sincere. Judge, I pray you, for yourself. At present, the king is supported by the great body of the nobles, and by the heads of the Church, who are ready to resist any encroachment on his prerogative; but if you allow this breakwater to be blown into the air, the waves of popular opinion will be allowed to burst over the throne with nothing to protect it from violence and to preserve it from wreck. Excuse my vehemence, I speak strongly because I feel strongly. The bough on which you are seated is being sawn through. Necker supplied the saw when he called together the States. Does your majesty ask what is to be done? One thing alone can be done,—insist on the separation of the orders.'

The queen looked down on the gravel and mused. The bishop continued: 'War has now been declared. M. Necker has allowed the orders to try their arms, and now they have proclaimed war and no quarter. He has temporised, he has left the orders to themselves, and by so doing, he has assured the victory to the strongest. I believe he has, throughout, determined that the Third Estate should conquer the others. How else explain his silence on the subject of the separation or union of the houses? His attitude has been one of indecision, and that indecision has been taken advantage of as, I think, he intended. The nobility have declared in their house that the separation of orders is a fundamental principle of the constitution. They have refused to give their pure and simple adhesion to the conciliatory plan proposed by his majesty. On the other hand, the Third Estate has taken a decisive line; it has constituted itself a National Assembly, has summoned the other orders to attend, and has proclaimed itself the sole representative of the French nation. It is a double declaration of war. Each party has taken up a position. The time for arbitration is past, utterly and irrevocably past.'

'I see,' said the queen, sharply, raising her head, and showing a face crimson with anger. 'You would have the king not arbitrate, but give in his adhesion to one side or the other.'

'Your majesty has understood me. He must do that; he cannot hesitate; he must choose his side, with the people or with the nobles. He must yield at once and become nothing, or he must strike a coup d'état and make himself master of the field.'

'Yes,' said the queen, vehemently; 'I am satisfied, it must be so.'

'It is probable that a bold stroke may establish the position of the throne, which has been somewhat shaken.'

'It shall be done,' the queen said, passionately; 'never, never shall it be said of Louis XVI that he flung his crown into the dirt. In a weak moment he yielded to that banking fellow Necker, and he surrendered a part of his supreme, absolute authority to a convocation of the people, and already has he learned to rue it. Well says the Gospel, "give not that which is holy to the dogs;" and what more holy than the royal prerogative,—"lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you."' Marie Antoinette was thoroughly roused, her pride was stung; she walked up and down the terrace with heaving bosom, flushed face, and sparkling eye, turning every moment to the bishop to utter some caustic remark.

'When Mob is king, my Lord, what will become of us, the anointed of God? We shall have to fly the country, and who will take us in?'

'If such a dire event were to happen,' answered the prelate, obsequiously, 'our ancestral castle of Lara should be at your majesty's disposal.'

If the bishop had seen the expression of contempt which came over the queen's face at his absurd remark, he would have instantly withdrawn. He saw her turn abruptly from him and converse with her friend, but he was too self-sufficient to suppose for a moment that he had offended her.

Madame Elizabeth came up, leading Gabrielle by the hand.

'I cannot attend to her story now,' said the queen.

'But it really is touching, and it may interest you,' said the sister of Louis; 'do let her tell it to you in full,—it is quite a romance.'

The queen tossed her head. Madame Elizabeth saw that something was wrong, but what it was she did not know.

'Berthier!' said the queen; 'the wife of Berthier in the Bastille, that is it. Monseigneur,' her lips curled; 'this little idiot has come from—what was the name of the place?'

'Bernay,' answered Elizabeth.

'Has come all the way from Bernay; and what do you think is her object? She has read the fable of the mouse and the netted lion, and she thinks she can get the wife of the Intendant of Paris out of the Bastille.'

'I venture to suggest that she should be driven out of your majesty's presence,' said the bishop; 'this is too audacious, too insolent to be tolerated. We are beginning to discover that the people are utterly lost to the sense of decency and modesty. Let her be turned out.'

'Not if I choose to listen to her history,' answered the queen, sharply, glad to cross her chaplain, whom she despised, whilst she sought to retain him about her.

'By all means,' said De Narbonne; 'but if your majesty will condescend to allow me to make a remark,—I am well, I may say very well, acquainted with M. Berthier, and his most amiable father M. Foulon, Bernay being in my diocese, and my desire ever being to make myself acquainted with all the influential laity in it. I have seen much of those two most estimable gentlemen, and I appreciate their urbanity of manner equally with their moral excellence.'

'That is rather a different account from what we have received from this girl,' said the queen; 'perhaps you are inclined to take too favourable a view of their conduct. What about Madame Berthier? Do you know her?'

'I cannot say that I know more of her than this, that she is a maniac, and as such is obliged to be kept in custody. Berthier himself told me once that she assaulted him with a knife.'

'Madame and Monsieur!' exclaimed Gabrielle; 'you do not know the reason of that. I was there when that took place; she defended me.'

'Defended you!' echoed the queen; 'who did she defend you from?'

Gabrielle became crimson; she hung her head and whispered, 'from her husband.'

'This is insufferable,' said the bishop; 'Berthier is my friend, and I will answer for his conduct. If your majesty were to listen to all the slanders that are cast against their betters and superiors by the rag-tag of the lower orders, you would become a revolutionist.'

'Monsieur! Madame!' pleaded Gabrielle; 'ask Madame Berthier herself if it be not true; ask M. le Curé Lindet!'

'What!' the bishop turned upon her savagely, whilst his red face became purple,—'what about him?'

'Monsieur le Curé received me into his house when I ran away; he knows all about me, and about the truth of what I say.'

'Enough, amply enough to satisfy me,' said the prelate, in a loud voice, as he scowled upon the frightened girl; 'I know you now. Go from this terrace instantly!' He turned towards the queen, composed his face, and said, as calmly as he could, 'Your majesty must really not see any more of that unfortunate girl. On her account, I have had to inhibit one of the priests in my diocese,—the very priest, by the way, of whom the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld speaks in his letter as a demagogue,—a priest elected by the malcontents to represent them in the States-General,—a man without principle and without morals,—a turbulent leveller, and a violent democrat.'

'Good, dear queen!' cried Gabrielle, casting herself once more at the feet of the royal lady; 'do not believe him, listen to me! Pray obtain the release of my dear mistress from the Bastille!'

Marie Antoinette looked at her for one moment with coldness and with disgust, then turned her back upon her and walked away.

Madeleine waited till the queen and her party had passed to the farther end of the terrace, and then running to Gabrielle, she caught her up in her arms, kissed her, and drew her away. 'You have tried your best in one quarter,' she said; 'do not despair, if that be closed to you. Another may open ere long. You have appealed in vain to the majesty of royalty; let your next appeal be to the majesty of the people, and that, I promise you, shall not be in vain.'

CHAPTER XXVII.

THAT evening a cabinet council was held at Marly. There were present M. Necker, Minister of Finance; M. de Barentin, Keeper of the Seals; M. de Puységur, Minister of War; MM. De Montmorin, De Saint-Priest, De la Luzerne, and De Villedeuil.

It was obvious to everyone that affairs had reached a critical point, and that the decision of the king must now turn the scale.

The Minister Necker, seeing that the royal intervention was necessary, had formed a project of sufficient boldness to arrest the development of that Revolution which some began to fear was on the eve of breaking out. He proposed that the king should, in a royal session, order the reunion of the three houses for the purpose of discussing measures of common interest; but privileges, rights attached to fiefs, &c., were to be discussed separately. However, the king was to promise the abolition of all feudal privileges, such as the corvée, mortmain, &c., equal admission of all Frenchmen to civil and military offices by merit, and not by private patronage; also equality of taxation; he was to assure to the States-General a share in the legislation, especially in the measures calculated to touch individual liberty, the liberty of the press, the reform of civil and criminal codes, and in the levying of taxes.

If Necker's project had been accepted frankly, there is no reason to doubt that the establishment of a constitutional monarchy upon the English model would have been the extreme result of the convocation of the States-General; but it was not accepted.

In the cabinet council of the 19th, there was apparent a general disposition to accept the proposal of the Minister of Finance, with slight modifications. The king appeared to be liberally inclined. Necker urged the importance of coming to an immediate decision, as time was of value. A majority of the ministers strongly favoured the scheme, and Necker hoped to see it approved and adopted that night; but at the last moment, whilst the portfolios were being closed, one of the royal servants entered and whispered to the king, who rose instantly, commanding his ministers to remain in their places.

M. de Montmorin, who was sitting by the side of Necker, said to him, 'We have effected nothing; the queen alone could have ventured to interrupt a Council of State; she has been circumvented by the princes.'

When the king returned, after a delay of some minutes, it was to suspend the council, leaving everything undecided, and postpone a final settlement till the morrow.

When the council met again, it was weighted with the Count d'Artois and the Count of Provence.

The conservative party triumphed, and thus deliberately rejected the plank Necker offered them.

To return to Versailles. On the night of the 19th, the king had resolved on closing the States-General till he summoned it on the 22nd to a royal sitting.

At six o'clock in the morning of Saturday, the 20th, M. Bailly, President of the National Assembly, received a letter from the Marquis de Brezé, Grand-Master of the Ceremonies, of which this is a copy:—

'Versailles, 20th June, 1789.

'The king having ordered me, monsieur, to publish by heralds his majesty's intention of holding, on the 22nd of this month, a royal sitting, and in the interim, a suspension of the Assemblies, that the preparations necessary for the halls of the three orders may be put in hand, I have the honour of announcing the same to you.

'I remain, with respect, sir,

'Your very humble and obedient servant,

'THE MARQUIS DE BREZÉ.

'P.S.—I think it would be as well that you should kindly charge the secretaries to look after the papers, lest they should get scattered. Will you also kindly give me the names of the secretaries, that I may ensure their admission? the necessity of not interrupting the workmen requiring me to forbid permission to every one to enter.'

To this the president replied:—

'I have received, as yet, no order from the king concerning a royal sitting, or concerning the suspension of the Assemblies, and my duty is to betake myself to that Assembly, which I have summoned for eight o'clock this morning.

'I am, sir, &c.'

In reply to this letter, the Marquis de Brezé repeated that he had received orders from the king to have the hall prepared for a royal session, and to close it against everyone.

In the meantime, an immense crowd had assembled in the Avenue de Paris and the Rue des Chantiers to see and cheer the clergy as they entered the hall to unite with the Third Estate. The delegates began to arrive at half-past seven, and at a quarter to eight Bailly appeared with an agitated face in time to see a detachment of French guards march into the hôtel of the States-General and take possession of it. Bailly went off to consult some friends, and did not return till nearly nine, when he presented himself at the door of the hall and demanded admittance.

The officer in charge, the Count de Vertan, courteously declined to admit him and the rest of the deputies, having received strict orders from head quarters.

M. Bailly, with difficulty, obtained permission to enter a cabinet adjoining the entrance, to draw up a protest against the exclusion of the Assembly. The Count de Vertan then admitted the secretaries to remove the papers. They found the major portion of the seats removed, and all the avenues of the hall guarded by soldiers.

The excitement without became intense, and the streets rung with remonstrances and protests against an arbitrary authority which had thus insulted the representatives of the people. Bailly, with difficulty, by standing on a flight of steps and shouting, collected the delegates together; he then urged on them to remain till some place suitable for continuing their meeting should present itself.

'To Marly!' shouted some. 'Let us go beneath the walls of the château, and hold our session there. Let us show the proud Court that the Third Estate is not to be humbled with impunity.'

'To Marly!' called others. 'Yes, we will march there at once, and make the king hold his royal sitting amongst us, assembled in the open air.'

'Live the king!' was shouted; 'he is managed by our enemies. The queen poisons his mind, but his heart is with the people.'

'Let us go to the Place d'Armes!' cried others.

'To the great Gallery!' was another suggestion; 'to the gallery where the execution of him who pronounced the sacred word LIBERTY was so lately signed.'

The mass of people began to roll towards the palace of Versailles. 'In another twenty-four hours,' says Grégoire in his Mémoires, 'bullets would have been flying against the old Court den.'

At this moment Bailly reappeared. He had secured the Tennis Court in the Rue S. François of old Versailles; it was Dr. Guillotin's suggestion.

Of all the monuments in Versailles, that old, plain, unfurnished Tennis Court is the most interesting. The Englishman visiting Versailles should not forget that the immense palace is but a monument of despotism;—that its grandeur, such as it is, cries aloud of a pride and selfishness so alarming, that Louis XIV burnt the bills for its erection, not venturing to allow them to be seen, whilst France was starving and sinking under a load of debt; while the Jeu de Paume, as the birthplace of the nascent liberties of France, humble and unadorned as it remains, is worthy of his most reverent regard.

It was a spacious room, without true windows, but with large openings netted over, which admit light, air, and rain. The walls, covered with yellow wash, were festooned with cobwebs, the roof was unceiled; the floor rudely laid with common pavement, and unprovided with seats.

A chair was borrowed from the owner of the Tennis Court for the president, but Bailly declined it. A table was brought in; the secretaries seated themselves at it, and the president stood on a bench. Two deputies stationed themselves at the door to keep it, but were speedily relieved by the keeper of the Tennis Court, who offered his services. Couthon was brought in on his crutches, and to him the seat of the president was given, in consideration of his infirmities. Grégoire, with his beautiful eyes alight with animation, entered, followed by four other curés, Besse, Ballard, Jallet, and Lecesve, in their black cassocks and cloaks. Rabaud-Saint-Étienne, the Calvinist minister, was there, dressed in the uniform of the lay delegates,—black coat, black waistcoat, black knee-breeches, and black stockings. Dom Gerle, the Carthusian, was also there, with shaven head, and white serge habit. Robespierre with his needle eyes, and retreating forehead—Mirabeau shaking his Medusa-like head and locks, and stamping with indignation—Mounier, prim and composed—Buzot, his long face composed into a contemptuous smile, wearing his natural dark hair divided over his brow, his heavy lids lifted a little to dart a scornful glance around—Sieyez frozen as ever.

Bailly, rising, said, in a voice faltering with agitation,—'Gentlemen, there is no need for me to give expression to the feeling dominant in every breast. I propose that we deliberate on the part we should take in a time so beset with storms.'

Mounier, standing on a form, said:—'It seems to me most strange that we, the representatives of France, should find our hall occupied by armed men, that we should be cast adrift in the streets without shelter, that no official notice should have been sent to our president, for I cannot regard the communication of the master of the ceremonies as a notice;—that we should be obliged to take refuge in this old tennis-court for want of a better room, in order that we may continue our labours. I think all this is more than strange: it is a proof to us that the Court party are resolved on wounding us in our rights and our dignities, that they are determined by their intrigues to exasperate the king against us, that they are bent on trampling the liberties of the people under their feet. I propose, in the face of so compact and resolute an opposition, that the representatives of the nation should take a solemn oath to cling together till they have given to France a constitution.'

This proposition was warmly received. An oath was drawn up, and Bailly, mounting on the table, read it aloud:—'We swear never to separate from the National Assembly, and to meet wherever circumstances shall permit, till the constitution of this realm has been established and affirmed on solid foundations.'

Instantly every arm was raised towards Bailly, and every mouth took up the formula; and the mob without burst forth into shouts of 'Vive l'Assemblée! Vive le Roi!'

On the morrow, the road to Marly was thronged with nobles and bishops on their way to the king to beseech him to restrain the audacity of the commons. A small minority protested against royal intervention; it was composed of forty-seven members, the Dukes of Liancourt and of La Rochefoucauld, Lally-Tolendal, the two Lameths, Duport, and La Fayette.

The royal sitting fixed for Monday, the 22nd, was postponed to the 23rd. All kinds of mean intrigue were had recourse to to prevent a meeting of the Third Estate and the union with it of the house of the Clergy on the Monday. The Count d'Artois sent to the owner of the tennis-court and engaged it for the day, so that the Assembly was again turned adrift in the streets of Versailles.

Lindet, mounting a cart which was passing, but which had been arrested by the crowd that encumbered the street before the tennis-court, cried aloud:—

'To the church of S. Louis! Where more suitable to see the reunion of the orders?'

The cry was caught up and flung down the street,—

'To S. Louis!' and directly the mass of human beings began to move in that direction.

It was eleven o'clock before the Assembly was seated in the vast nave and choir of the cathedral church. The court had forgotten to close the churches, and thus the magnificent scheme of the Count of Artois and the Princes of Condé and Conté was defeated.

As soon as a table had been brought in from the sacristy, and the secretaries had taken their places, the minutes of the meeting in the tennis-court were read, and the president read a letter he had received from the king, at two o'clock in the morning, announcing the postponement of the royal session till the following day, and his determination that the great hall of the Menus should remain closed till then.

Several members who had been absent from the gathering at the tennis-court then took the oath and attached to it their signatures.

These preliminaries over, Bailly announced that the Clergy were about to arrive in a body at one o'clock, and formally unite with the Third Estate, and he requested those ecclesiastics who were then in the church to withdraw to the lodgings of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, where the majority of the house of the Clergy were to assemble.

Immediately all those delegates who had taken possession of the seats near the choir vacated them, to leave the place of honour free for the bishops and clergy.

The shouts and applause roaring in the square before the cathedral, like the advancing bore of the Ganges, announced to those within the sacred building the approach of the ecclesiastics. All rose to receive them as they entered and took their places in the choir, when with loud voice each of the one hundred and forty-nine who had signed the declaration of Friday, the 19th, answered to their roll-call, and verified their names. The names of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishop of Chartres, the Archbishop of Vienne, the Bishop of Rhodez, of Grégoire, and of Lindet, who were known to be strenuous adherents to the cause of liberty and justice, were received with thunders of applause.

Then the choir gates were thrown open, and the Archbishop of Vienne, followed by the clergy, descended to the nave to take their places in the National Assembly.

'Gentlemen,' said the archbishop, 'we come with joy to execute the decision of the majority of the deputies of the order of the clergy to the States-General. This reunion is the signal and the prelude to the constant and permanent union which they desire to cement with all orders, and especially with the deputies of the Commons.'

'My lord and gentlemen,' answered the president; 'you see the joy in our faces, you hear by our applause how great is the satisfaction in our hearts, which your presence inspires. That presence here is due to a pure sentiment,—the love of union and of the public weal. France will bless this auspicious day, and will never forget those worthy pastors who have thus announced before their country that they desire above all things—Peace on earth to men of good-will.'

Lindet touched Grégoire's arm.

'We have saved the country.'

'All depends now on the king,' answered the curé of Emberménil. 'We have acted right, as Christians and as patriots. If the king accepts what is inevitable, all will go well; if he allows himself to be forced into war, why then!—--'

'Then what?'

'A Revolution is inevitable.'

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AFTER the interview with the queen, Madeleine reconducted Gabrielle out of the park to the tavern where they had left Percenez.

The little man sat at the door on a bench, smoking, his leathery face void of expression. Behind his back was a pack slung by a thong to his shoulders.

'Eh, well!' said he, as the girls approached; 'since you have been away, I have been doing a stroke of work. I have sold a dozen copies of the Moniteur, eighteen copies of Mirabeau's Lettres à mes Commettants, several of the Journal de Paris, and of the Mercure, besides some little pamphlets which I won't name, and which nobody sees but those who are intended to read them. Well! and what has been the result? Ah! David says, Nolite confidere in principibus in quibus non est salus. You have found out what it has taken France many centuries to discover. Better late than never.'

'She has failed,' said Madeleine; 'and I have told her to look elsewhere for help.'

'Ah!' said the colporteur; 'we shall see. Events march like the seasons. Ça ira, ça ira! But till the time comes, what is to be done with our little peasantess? She must return to Bernay.'

'But how is she to return?' asked Madeleine; 'you cannot accompany her.'

'No,' answered the little man; 'I do not think I can. But go she must.'

'And where am I to go to if I do return?' inquired Gabrielle; 'I have no home at Bernay now.'

'Ah!' said Percenez; 'that is awkward.'

'The roads are crowded with brigands,' said Madeleine; 'we hear of them trooping into Paris from all the country round, and it is not safe for Gabrielle to encounter them alone.'

'That again is awkward,' said Percenez.

'Then what is to be done?' asked Madeleine.

'Under the circumstances,' spoke the little brown man, 'I see nothing else to be done than for me to find a lodging elsewhere, and to take my ward with me. She must put off her country dress, and you, Madeleine, can dress her in your Parisian style, and then she can assist me in selling pamphlets and papers.'

'So it must be,' Madeleine said; 'but I am sorry to lose her. We have already become friends, though so unlike in character and disposition.'

'Please, M. Étienne,' said Gabrielle, gently; 'do you not think we might remain with Madame Deschwanden? Perhaps the police will not return to make search for me again; and even if they do, what can they say to me? I have done what M. Berthier desired to prevent.'

'That is true,' observed Percenez.

'And again,' pursued Gabrielle; 'I shall be near the Bastille and my dear mistress. I cannot, I will not, go far from her.'

'It is too dangerous,' said the colporteur.

'Now, uncle!' exclaimed Madeleine; 'take my advice. Return for this night to our house. I believe there is far too much subject for anxiety to Berthier and all his crew to make them trouble themselves much more about an inoffensive peasantess. If the times were quiet, it would be different; but with Paris in a ferment, it is most unlikely that any further measures will be taken to secure Gabrielle.'

'That is very true,' said Percenez; 'I have begun to think so myself.'

'Besides,' continued Madeleine, 'my mother is dreadfully put out at the prospect of losing you both.'

'I did not know that my sister was so anxious to retain us.'

'Oh yes, she is. She is enthusiastic about it. She vows that she will die of chagrin if you go. Return to the Rue S. Antoine this night, and talk to her about what is to be done. My mother is a woman of resources. I never saw my mother nonplused yet. When she heard that you were afraid of remaining in her house, she said, "Afraid of what?" I answered, "Of the gendarmes." On which she exclaimed, "My faith! as if I were not a match for a whole regiment of them!" And,' added Madeleine, with an air of conviction so ludicrous that it made Percenez laugh, 'she is so, I assure you.'

'I do not know about gendarmes,' said the little man, slyly; 'but I know that the very mention of a Swiss patriot, or of a Swiss saint, routs her immediately.'

'Mon Dieu! who could help it?' exclaimed Madeleine, seriously; 'we are pestered every day with Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, and Walter Fürst; and, worst of all, with Bruder Klaus. I have actually seen my mother, in her exasperation, when the corporal and his son were out, wring the nose of the illustrious Bruder in his niche; but the corporal does not know it, or I believe he would separate from his wife in horror at the sacrilege. The corporal is especially enthusiastic just now, for he has served his time, and he expects his discharge shortly.'

'What does he propose to do then?'

'What but to return to father-land; and my mother is perfectly frantic at the idea. To leave Paris for Switzerland, is to quit civilisation for barbarism.'

It is needful for us to return to Madame Deschwanden, who was in despair at the prospect of losing her lodgers. She had less to do in millinery, at a time of great popular agitation, than suited her wishes, and the chance of making a little money by her brother and Gabrielle was too good an opportunity to be thrown away; and she therefore resolved to retain them, if she could.

To effect her purpose, she dressed herself in her most bewitching out-of-door costume, and sallied forth into the streets, leaving Nicholas at home to attend to the house. She took her way towards Berthier's mansion, bowing and smiling to acquaintances whom she met at almost every step, and stopping occasionally to exchange greetings with her most intimate and cherished friends, who numbered about two hundred and fifty.

Madame was dressed with the utmost care; a little powder and rouge had improved her complexion. Her hair was heaped up into a magnificent pile, from which depended two ringlets that rested à la Marie Antoinette on her shoulders; a lace handkerchief covered her bosom, was crossed over her breast, and tied behind. Her gown was looped up so as to expose a pair of very active, neat little feet in high-heeled boots, which threw madame forward, and made the use of a cane necessary.

On reaching the door of Berthier's house she rung, and asked to see Monsieur the Intendant.

She was admitted immediately to the yard in the middle of the house, where she saw Berthier seated in an easy chair, armed with a long carter's whip, lashing his bloodhounds, which bayed and barked, producing such a deafening noise that he could scarcely hear what Gustave said to him, when he approached to announce Madame Deschwanden.

'Down, you rascally Pigeon!' shouted Berthier; 'will you now venture to touch the meat, Poulet? Very well,' and he drew the whip across the hound's nose. 'So!' as Pigeon sprang forward; 'so, and so, and so!' slashing at it over the breast and belly as the beast sprang into the air, yelling with pain. 'What is it, Gustave? Ha there! Back, you devil!' and he cut the dog Poulet, so that the blood started. 'Well, Gustave! speak higher. You would like your dinner, eh! Pigeon, creep up to it, a little closer; closer still—so—so—and so;' he caught the lash of the whip in his hand, whirled the handle round above his head and brought the end of it, which was weighted, down on the brute's head so as for the moment to stun it. 'Now, Gustave, what do you want? A lady, eh! young and pretty is she, eh? Pardon;' he rose to his feet and saluted Madame Deschwanden, whom he saw at that moment. The corporal's wife smiled, threw a coquettish glance into her eyes, and brushed her ringlets from her shoulders.

'Really,' said the lady, 'those dogs make so much noise, that it is quite impossible for me to speak here without elevating my voice; and,' she added, 'what I have come to talk to monsieur about is not for all the world to hear.'

'What is it, madame?'

'Would you allow me a few moments in private?' asked the little woman; 'there are secrets, you know, which must not be blazed abroad. Perhaps it would not be too great a liberty if I were to whisper a name into your ear. So—' said she, playfully, as he bent towards her, and she raised her lips to his ear; 'Gabrielle! There, you know the name. Well, now a word in privacy. I thought as much. What alacrity, what energy; ah! the master passion, the beautiful passion; it is superb! it elevates man, and it deifies woman!'

Berthier at once conducted the corporal's wife into a small boudoir, and requested her to take a seat. She dropped into a fauteuil, and began to fan herself. The Intendant stood, leaning his arm upon a cabinet, and crossed his legs.

'You may be a diplomatist, you may be a politician of the first ability, you may be a capitalist with the largest income,' said madame, 'but,' and she waved her fan, 'if you do not love, you are nothing.'

'Madame,' asked the Intendant, 'I shall be glad to learn what you know about Gabrielle André.'

'About Gabrielle André,' repeated the little woman; 'quite so; in due time, we are coming to her. Now, what do you take me for?'

'Madame, for the most fascinating specimen of your sex.'

'Quite so. Well, would you believe it, I have a barbarous name, a German-Swiss name, which is a mouthful—a name to tremble at, a name for a horse to shy at, for a dog to bark at, for a cat to set up its back at. And yet I am French at heart. From the tip of my hair to the soles of my feet I am French, French—always French. Hold! There is always something dapper, comely, sweet about a Frenchwoman which you cannot find in the great German frau, who is all fat and lymph, and languor. And the Frenchman, too. He is an object to adore; he is a man sensitive, courteous, gallant; a being to excite the heart, to inspire enthusiasm, to claim devotion; but a German! My faith! I am married, I am sacrificed to a German-Swiss. Do not ask me to describe him; I should expire in making the attempt. The Frenchman is all vehemence, go, fire, and the German is all conscience. But you will tell me that the German has sentiment. I grant you it. But of what nature? It is all of the past, and ours is of the present. We live and palpitate for to-day, the Herr for five hundred years ago. Yesterday is nothing to me; to him yesterday is everything, and to-day is nothing. A German child is to me a wonder; it is not like any French child I ever met. It lives in dreamland, a dreamland peopled with fairies; now a French child cares for no fairies which are not made of chocolate, which it cannot suck.'

'What about Gabrielle?' asked Berthier, impatiently.

'There, now,' said Madame Deschwanden, 'I quite understand about your interest in her. I could not get the same idea into the corporal's head if I were to use a gimlet. But I—I am French, I delight in sentiment, I love intrigue, I worship the noble passion. I can throw myself entirely into your position, and I can feel with you and for you. That is splendid—that is French! Well, then, I say to you, monsieur, you have gone the wrong way to work; you have used wrong methods, you have exhibited barbarous ignorance, you have acted altogether like a German. Where is the delicacy of touch, the subtlety of intrigue, the finesse of action that belongs to one of your nation? I look for it, and I find it not. I repeat it, you have gone the wrong way to work. You have used coarse methods, and you have shown your utter ignorance of the female character. You should not have employed force, that is certain to revolt; you should not have offered a bribe openly, you should have vaguely suggested advantages; you should not have exhibited yourself as a tyrant, you should have acted the martyr. Why!' cried Madame Deschwanden, 'I—I would have rebelled, and spoken, and scratched, and bitten, if I had been blockaded in the brutal, clumsy manner you have adopted in laying siege to Gabrielle. You know absolutely nothing of the art of conducting these little affairs of the heart. Mon Dieu! I—I could have accomplished a triumph in half the time without a quarter of the material.'

'What am I to understand from all this?' asked Berthier, wiping his eyes.

'Understand!' echoed Madame Deschwanden; 'there, again, you exhibit a density of perception perfectly shocking. Allow me to ask you seriously, monsieur, are you a German, or a Swiss? Have you one drop of the tar they call blood crawling through your veins; for if so I give you up, I abandon you, I turn my back on you.'

'Be content,' said Berthier sulkily, 'I am French.'

'And your blood is brandy, volatile, combustible, intoxicating. So be it. I am on your side. Place the matter in my hands, and it is done. I guarantee a surrender in one month.'

'In a month.'

'In a month and a day. Take out your watch, note the time. In one month, one day, and one hour to a minute. See there!' She rapped her fan against her hand triumphantly, and surveyed the Intendant with an air of patronage. 'Never attempt what you don't understand. My faith! you might as well meddle in my millinery affairs as in an affair of the heart, unless you have skill, and that is a gift of nature; it is not every one who is an adept in the science of intrigue. Mon Dieu! I should think not. It requires a delicacy of perception, a fineness of touch, in short, a sensibility which is born with one. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, a poet is not to be manufactured or made as Nicholas chips and chops his saints. My faith! I should hope not. A successful intriguer is so perfectly constituted that I believe he is the most successful of the works of creation. You could not make a triumph of a cap, try as hard as you might, you would botch it. Mon Dieu! Some lovely construction which consumed me with care and enthusiasm, if you put your clumsy hand to it, would be wrecked. So with an affair of the heart. You cannot do it; you are not equal to it; you were not born to it with that delicacy of perception, that subtlety in feeling, that tenderness in touch, in fine, that sensibility which——'

'Will you come to the point?' said the Intendant, angrily.

'Will I come to the point?' echoed madame. 'Look at him, asking such a question. Behold him, ye gods, and stare. Did you ever see such a man? But one has his gift in this way, and another in that. I have no doubt you are the best of sheriffs, but you are absolutely a neophyte in the art of love-making. Ah—bah! no one could make anything of you. I do not say in ordinary matters of business, in cutting off heads, or breaking on the wheel, or consigning to the Bastille, or marching soldiers here, and ordering gendarmes there, in all that, I grant you; but affairs of the heart are quite different from affairs of state and of commerce. You want, to be successful in them, a delicacy of perception——'

'Enough of that,' said Berthier. 'Come, madame. My time is precious.'

'I will not detain you from the dogs one moment longer,' quoth Madame Deschwanden, pouring a little water from a decanter on the table into a tumbler; 'oblige me with a lump of sugar and a drop of orange-flower water. Thank you. It makes one thirsty to listen to another person talking. Well, as I was saying, you cannot manage this affair yourself, you want my help. You must have my help. And, monsieur, I proffer it with enthusiasm. I cast myself zealously into your cause. I lend my assistance to one who is certain to fail abjectly, to one lacking all the requisites essential to success; for I flatter myself that I possess the qualifications in which he is deficient. I make no boast of it, not I. But if Providence has endowed one person with a delicacy, a finesse, a sensibility, and all that constitute a successful intriguer, it is not boasting if she acknowledges thankfully that she possesses these talents. She cannot be blind to them. If she were blind, she would not use them.'

'In short, you will help me?'

'I will do my best. With me to say that, is to say it is done. I do not boast, but I cannot shut my eyes to facts. If I were to do so, you would call me a fool, and justly. I should be a fool. But I make one stipulation,—no, I make two.'

'What are they?'

'Tell me,' entreated madame, throwing passionate earnestness into her voice and gesture, 'tell me, you have no conscience. I am tired of conscience. My faith! what is conscience? It is a kind of flea; you never know where it is. Now it is here, now it is there. You come down with your finger on the spot, and it is gone. And then there is irritation everywhere, and no rest. My husband is a martyr to conscience, so is Nicholas, but Nicholas is the corporal repeated in miniature. Have morals, I say, have philosophy, but crush conscience; it is a pest. And then, I insist, you leave Gabrielle to me. Do not interfere. Let me manage her. I know the ins and outs of a woman's mind; I will so manage the affair for you that you will be full of gratitude to me, that you will overwhelm me with testimonials of your indebtedness. If you interfere, and send your gendarmes to the house again, then I throw it up. I will have no more to say to it, and you may botch your work again. Will you promise me solemnly to let me conduct operations in my own way? Will you promise me not to interfere by so much as lifting a finger?'

'Wait a bit,' said Berthier; 'before I promise anything, tell me where Gabrielle is now.'

'With the greatest pleasure. You know that she has seen the queen?'

'No!' he started.

'Yes, she has. She has seen her and has been refused.'

Berthier drew a long breath.

'She has been refused, and now she is at Versailles.'

'At Versailles!'

'Yes, monsieur. It seems that she has a friend there, one of the delegates to the National Assembly.'

'To the States-General,' corrected the Intendant.

'To be sure, you are right. Well, she has taken up her abode with him. He was an old friend.'

'What is his name?'

'You will probably know him. He is from Bernay, a curé there. His name is Lindet.'

Berthier nodded, and an angry flush over-spread his brow.

'Now you know very well that you cannot, and dare not, attempt to remove the girl from the house of a delegate at Versailles; so I shall do that myself. I shall draw her to my house; but that will take time, as you have scared her with your gendarmes. My faith! if you want to snare pigeons, do you set up scarecrows near your nets?—but let that pass. I shall do my best to bring her to my house, and whilst she is there, entrust her to me; do not show your face in the neighbourhood, do not let a gendarme be seen within my door, and in one month, one day, and one hour, the girl will rush of her own accord into your arms.'

'I see,' said Berthier. 'Yes, I will trust you, and give you the promise you require.'

'That is your only chance,' pursued Madame Deschwanden. 'And then remember, I have cast myself zealously into your cause, I am enthusiastic on your behalf. But why? True, I am always eager to help forward an affair of the heart. But interest, enthusiasm, zeal, sometimes grow cold; they want hope to keep them alive, and they want something also to kindle them. Will you believe it? I have even been accused of being avaricious. I avaricious,—I who lavish money on my friends and expend it profusely on myself! They say I like money. Mon Dieu! who does not? I do not like it for itself; I hate, I abhor the dirty pelf—but, voilà—one must live.'

'Yes,' said Berthier, 'no one serves another without pay, that is reasonable.'

'Pay, ah bah! never mention such a thing!' exclaimed the lady; 'but among friends there is always an interchange of civilities, you well understand. Ah! fie!' he pressed a few gold pieces into her hand; 'what a rude, rough man you are! In these amiabilities there should be a delicacy, a refinement, an——'

'Never mind,' said Berthier, wiping his eyes; 'remember that you are salaried by me for a certain purpose. Wash that fact in rose-water, dress it up, and present it to your mind in whatever costume pleases you best.'

'You are a shocking creature,' said madame, waving her fan at him; 'I am more than half inclined to play you a trick.'

'Take care how you do so!'

'Do not fear me. Intrigue is a passion with me. I revel in affairs of the heart. Ah, my faith! when you come to deal in concerns of the grand passion! then you rise from being human to being angelic; you soar from pots and gridirons, at which you may be cooking; you tower above caps and bonnets, which you may be constructing; you become a giant. Love is woman's world; she exists in this commonplace earth, she lives in the world of passion. Leave me alone, I know what I am about. But what am I to expect?'

'I promise you a hundred louis.'

'I do not touch money,' said madame, with dignity; 'but anything in the way of jewellery—ah! there you have me.'

'Well, then, you shall have jewels to that value.'

'You are very amiable. You enchant me. Come on, then, to your dogs! I know you desire to return to them, and I—I shall be wanted at home. I wish you a very good morning!'

Madame Deschwanden sailed down the streets with the air of an empress. She held up her head, and her smile and bows were tinged with urbanity, the urbanity of some one who having reached a lofty station condescends to notice her old friends and to shed on them some of the bounties it is now in her power to bestow.

When, in the evening, Percenez returned with Madeleine and Gabrielle, madame overflowed. She listened with impatience to the story of Gabrielle's failure, only interrupting it to inquire how the queen and the princesses were dressed, how they wore their hair, and what ornaments they bore.

Percenez told his sister the difficulty about Gabrielle, and said that he hesitated about sending her alone to Bernay, and that he wished to take a lodging in some other part of Paris, where Gabrielle might be secure from pursuit.

Whilst he spoke, the triumphant expression in his sister's face excited his curiosity. At last he inquired, 'What is it, Louise? I am sure you have some news to communicate.'

'Now see!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden. 'Am not I a woman? was not I born with tact, with a delicacy, a refinement, a power of intrigue, in a word, a sensibility of the most elevated description? I have this day accomplished a great work. I have secured Gabrielle from all pursuit.'

'You have!'

'Yes, brother Stephen, you may stare. You men know nothing of a woman's resources. I have done single-handed what you and the corporal and Nicholas would not have effected. I have secured for Gabrielle tranquillity in this house. I have paid the Intendant Berthier a visit.'

'Josephine, what madness!'

'I am a woman, Stephen, and a woman has resources. Ah! see what I have done.'

Then she related with infinite zest her interview with Berthier. She concluded her account with the jubilant remark, 'To think that I have utterly deceived him! Superb! The way in which I have twisted him round my little finger! Majestic!'

'But what do you mean, Josephine?' asked Stephen, much perplexed.

'What do I mean?' echoed madame, raising her eyes and hands. 'Oh these men! Well, I will tell you what I mean. I wish I had a hammer to knock it into your head. I have utterly deceived M. Berthier. He confides in me, he believes that he has secured my services. He has given me money, and promised me more, to persuade Gabrielle to cast herself into his arms. Trusting that I am busy undermining the girl's resolution and morals, he will abstain from attempting violence for one month and one day. At the end of that time, trust me, I shall creep round him again, and, when I have exhausted my resources, then I shall give you the signal to decamp.'

'But, my dear sister, what did you mean by telling Berthier that Gabrielle was at Versailles with Lindet?'

'Mon Dieu! it came into my head. It seemed so probable. It entirely deceived the Intendant.'

'And you received money from M. Berthier!'

'If I had not done so, he would have mistrusted me. Now that I have taken his gold, he believes implicitly in me.'

'I do not like this,' said the colporteur; 'my dear sister, you have not acted rightly; you have told falsehoods, and——'

'My faith!' exclaimed madame, with a scream, as she backed her chair across the room; 'you have a conscience, and you my brother! Oh, mon Dieu! that I should have lived to discover it. Étienne, it will never do; catch it, kill it.'

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE Court party had concerted a scheme of revenge upon the Commons for their act of the 23rd June. The queen sent for her favourite minister, the Baron de Breteuil. He had been minister of state in 1783, and had had charge of the king's house, an important post, for the lettres de cachet fell to this department. The baron had quarrelled with Calonne, whom the queen detested. That was one reason why she confided in his judgment. Troops were massed about Versailles and Paris; fifteen regiments, for the most part composed of foreign mercenaries, were encamped around the capital. The Royal Cravate was at Charenton, Reinach and Diesbach at Sèvres, Nassau at Versailles, Salis-Samode at Issy, the hussars of Berchenay at the Military School; at other stations were the regiments of Esterhazy, Roemer, &c. There were as many as 30,000 men in and around Paris. Sentinels occupied every bridge, every avenue.

The old Marshal de Broglie received the command in chief, the Baron de Besenval received that of the troops surrounding the capital.

Mirabeau thought that the only sure means of intimidating the court was to discuss publicly the measures which it was adopting. He interrupted the business of the constitution by a proposal that the king should send away the troops.

'Sire,' said Mirabeau, 'in the midst of your subjects, be guarded only by their love.'

He pointed out that every day fresh bodies of soldiers were arriving, that the bridges and promenades were changed into military posts, that the sight of adjutants dashing about with orders and counter-orders despatched from the palace or from the house of the Marshal de Broglie at all moments of the day, gave to the town the appearance of being the seat of war.

'More soldiers are shown us menacing the nation,' said he, 'than would be marched against an invading foe, and a thousand times more than would be assembled to succour friends martyred for their fidelity.'

The address to the king, proposed by Mirabeau, was carried all but unanimously, four voices alone being found to oppose it. The answer of the king was equivocal.

He said that the soldiers were there to preserve tranquillity, and not to intimidate the Assembly, and that if the army caused alarm, he was ready to transfer the States to Soisson or Noyon. With this answer the Assembly was forced to remain content, unsatisfactory as it seemed.

The plans of the queen, the Count d'Artois, the Princes of Condé and Conti, and the Dukes of Polignac and d'Enghien, were now complete. The capital and Versailles were invested, and at a signal the army would fall upon them, and trample under foot all opposition. The last blow had to be struck, and Marie Antoinette was the person to strike it. It was to fall on Necker, the prime minister, whom the Court party detested, and whom it could never forgive for having persuaded the king to summon the States-General, and thus to imperil their supremacy over king and country.

On Saturday evening, July 11th, Lindet was walking with the Abbé Grégoire along the Paris road, beyond the barrier at the end of the Avenue.

'What will happen next?' asked the Curé of Bernay. 'It appears evident that the queen intends a coup d'état, but what it will be no one knows exactly.'

'The time for a coup d'état is passed,' said Grégoire; 'on the twenty-third of last month the decisive blow was struck, and it was struck by the Assembly. Consider, my friend, what can the Court do now? The Assembly represents twenty-five millions of men, the court represents a few thousands. The prestige of royalty burst like a bubble on that day in May. The king is the head of a party, a little miserable party, ranged against the vast bulk of the French people.'

'You forget the army,' said Lindet; 'the court can always summon to its aid brute force to crush right and reason, as it has crushed it for centuries with the same means.'

'I question whether it can now rely implicitly on the army. Remember, the army reflects the condition of France; it has its officers and its privates; the former, the privileged, all nobles; and for the rest, the army is a cul-de-sac, there is no possibility of advance, of promotion. And as we groan under feudalism, so does the soldier cry out under the oppression of his officers, who have cheated him of his pay, have cut short his rations, have bullied and insulted him. If the commoners rise against the nobles, and the curés against the bishops, depend upon it the privates will rebel against their officers. We curés have joined cause with the commons, the soldiers will make common cause with us. And then, where are the privileged with the crown, whose cause they defend?'

'And what do you suppose will be the end?'

'If the king listen to Necker, Mounier, and his followers, they will give to France a constitution on the Anglican model; the movement will stop short at that point. If violence be attempted, we shall rush into pure democracy. I am content either way. Possibly we are not yet prepared for republicanism, and a constitutional monarchy will prove a stepping-stone and halting-place before the final plunge.'

'You desire a pure democracy.'

'I desire to see a constitution in which every officer is responsible to the nation, and every individual member of the nation has an interest in the government. What interest have you or I in the king? Absolutely none. He derives his title to the throne through his blood. Of all farces, an hereditary monarchy is the most absurd. An elective monarchy is different. I should not object to a king, if he were chosen by vote of the people; for authority must be conferred by the nation, and must be removable by the nation, so that no man may be made an irresponsible autocrat. Till the nation and its government are so interwoven in interests and responsibilities, that its organization rests on no fictitious basis, but on the common weal, there must be injustice, and there will be rebellion.'

'Stand back,' said Lindet.

The two priests drew back, as they heard the sound of wheels. The night was dark,—so dark that they stepped into the hedge before they were aware.

Two brilliant lights approached at a rapid rate from Versailles, and the tinkle of the collars of post-horses proclaimed a travelling carriage. The crack of a postilion's whip, the rumble of wheels, and the jingle of bells, drowned the noise of an approaching carriage from the direction of Paris. Almost as soon as the curés were aware that they heard the roll of two vehicles, they met, and their wheels were locked. The shock brought both carriages to a stand-still.

The post-boys of the travelling coach and the driver of the small Paris hackney-carriage dismounted, and abused each other with many oaths and threatening gestures.

'Why, in the devil's name, have you not got lamps?' asked one of the postilions. 'And pray, why did you not steer out of the way of our lights, hey!'

'Was I going to drive into the hedge to please you?' retorted the coachman; 'was I going to upset monsieur to gratify you? Was I going to run the chance of upsetting the barouche to oblige you? hey!'

'Are you going to back your horses, hey?'

'Will you do the same with yours, hey?'

'Not till you do so, hey!'

'Nor I till yours move, hey!'

'I will whip you——'

'You will dare, hey!'

'Hey! but I will.'

'Sacré au nom de Dieu!'

'Mille diables!'

'What are you fellows about?' asked a gentleman, thrusting his head out of the travelling carriage; 'cease quarrelling, and unlock the wheels.'

'Bah! what fellows!' exclaimed a head thrust out of the window of the smaller carriage; 'please to inform me when you are ready to start again. I shall put on my nightcap, and take a nap till you have done.'

The postilion removed the lamp from its place in the carriage, and proceeded to examine the wheels. Lindet stepped forward and volunteered his assistance. The wheels were faster than was anticipated.

'Back the horse, and be damned to you!' said the postilion to the coachman.

'I am backing, you pert jackanapes,' answered the other.

'You are not backing sufficiently,' said the postboy.

'Will you make my mare back till she is black in the face, hey?'

'Yes, I will, hey!'

'Then you won't, hey!'

'I dare you to touch her, hey!'

'You dare! hey!'

'Yes, I do! hey!'

'Now then,' exclaimed the gentleman from the travelling coach; 'I insist on a cessation of this wrangling. Loose the wheels at once.'

'Allow me,' said the gentleman from the Parisian barouche. He leaped out of his conveyance, caught the lantern from the postboy, and suddenly, with such abruptness as not to give the other traveller time to withdraw his head, he turned the full blaze of the lamp upon his face.

His hat was off immediately, and he bowed low.

Grégoire touched Lindet on the arm, and pointed to the illumined face. It was that of Necker.

'Look at the top of the coach,' whispered the abbé; 'it is laden with boxes. He is dismissed.'

Lindet looked. The light was immediately averted.

'You are on your way to the place I have left,' said Necker, in a low voice to the other.

'I have been summoned. But whether to replace you or not I cannot tell yet. Bah! what strange meetings there are in the world!'

'I wish you success where I have failed,' said Necker, still in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

'We shall try different means,' replied the other; 'but——take a pinch!' he extended his box, it was of gold.

Necker declined. 'Well,' said the speaker, emptying some into his palm and applying it thus to his nose; 'we must do our best.'

At that moment another head appeared at the window of the little carriage.

'There's my son-in-law,' said Foulon, for it was he; 'just awake. He has been snoring all the way from Paris. Berthier, my boy, brisk up. Here is——'

'Hush, hush! for Heaven's sake,' exclaimed the ex-minister; 'it is most important that nothing should be known of my departure.'

'All right, sir!' said the coachman, approaching Foulon.

'All right at last, is it? Very well. Good evening, monsieur.' He returned to his carriage.

'Will you drive against me again, hey!' shouted the coachman, when he had mounted the box.

'I would do so a thousand times, hey!' yelled the postboy, leaping on his horse.

'You lie, you gherkin!' called the coachman, gathering the reins into his hand.

'You are drunk, you pumpkin!' cried the postboy, cracking his whip.

'A thousand devils! say that again, hey!' roared the driver as the vehicles passed.

'Till death's day. I repeat it. Hey!'

'Shrimp!' bellowed the coachman, turning in his seat and shouting over the back of the carriage.

'Flounder!' called the postilion over his shoulder.

When the two carriages were out of sight, Grégoire turned to Lindet, and said, 'the court has committed suicide. The queen has prevailed upon the king to dismiss Necker, and now she is about to form a ministry after her own heart. Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat.'

Lindet was too much overwhelmed with amazement and dismay to answer.

'In twenty-four hours,' continued Grégoire, 'Paris will explode, and blood will flow. The result of this stroke of policy is certain. Paris will be in arms to-morrow, and the court will take the opportunity of pouring upon the city in revolt its troops of mercenaries. It may succeed; the nascent revolution may be strangled by the iron grasp of the military, and then recommences the reign of tyranny. It may fail, and then the people are lashed into fury, and will not spare the conquered. The stroke is bold.'

'What is to be done?'

'Do not breathe a word of what you have seen. It is just possible that the king may be turned again. I shall go to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Ah! how different he is from the cardinal! he has influence with his majesty. Merciful God! we shall have blood flowing in streams in a few hours.'

Lindet thought for a moment. Then he said, hesitatingly, 'it is one's duty to use every possible means of preventing bloodshed. Shall I seek out my bishop? He is the queen's chaplain, a proud, worldly man, but no fool. He might persuade her to recall this precipitate step, if he were to see the case in the true light.'

'By all means visit him,' said Grégoire; 'no time is to be lost. We are both weak vessels, but God may enable us to stave off a terrible disaster. I desire a republic with all my heart, but, in God's name, let it not be brought about by bloodshed and anarchy.'

They separated at the foot of the steps leading to the palace gates.

Numerous oil-lamps illumined the court of the ministers, and into this Lindet penetrated without difficulty. Having inquired his way to the apartments of the prelate, he mounted the stairs to the corridor in which they were situated, and was shown by a valet into the bishop's sitting-room.

De Narbonne-Lara was not then in his chamber, but the priest was told that he would return to it directly; his wax candles were burning on the table, and his pen was laid upon the paper, still wet with ink, on which he had been writing.

Lindet stood and waited patiently for him. He had not spoken to him since he had been inhibited,—he had scarcely seen him since he had been elected deputy in the place of the bishop and the bishop's candidate. A meeting must prove disagreeable to himself and to the prelate, but it was worth while to undergo it, for De Narbonne, from his acquaintance with German, was believed to stand high in the queen's favour, and to influence her conduct. That violent measures must produce a popular rising was so evident, that he hoped the prospect of the terrible misery which must ensue, when placed clearly before the bishop, would induce him to bend the queen to moderation.

Presently Lindet heard voices in the corridor; and next moment the door opened, and a lacquey ushered in the bishop, Foulon, and Berthier.

Monseigneur stared in mute astonishment at the curé.

Foulon recognised him at once, and addressed him—'Ah, ha! our clerical friend from Bernay. How is the little charmer? I hear she is with you now. Oh that I could buy of you the secret of making love-phylters! Actually, my Lord, the curé exerts such a charm over the bewitching little peasantess, that she has been unable to endure Bernay without him, and has followed him to Versailles.'

'Monsieur,' said Lindet, indignantly, 'a gentleman should not lend his tongue to lie.'

'Excuse me, my good curé; we quite know that you do not wish it to be generally known, and you may rely on my keeping my counsel, but that the girl is with you in your lodgings here, you will hardly have the audacity to deny.'

'I deny it most solemnly.'

'What brings you here?' asked the bishop. 'This is a great impertinence.'

'I particularly desire to speak privately with your lordship.'

'I do not choose to waste my time on you.'

'Monseigneur, I beseech you hear me. You have treated me with great injustice and severity, and I will not deny that I have harboured bitter feelings against you. You must know that it is no pleasure to me to find myself in a presence which has never proved agreeable to me. It is only by an effort that I have overcome my repugnance, and have come here to speak to you.'

'What do you want?' asked the bishop; 'your presence is quite as distasteful to me as mine can be to you.'

'I wish to speak in private.'

'I will not listen to you in private; say what you have to say here.'

'I adjure you, my Lord, give me ten minutes in private.'

'On what subject have you come to visit me? Is it of a private nature?'

'No, my Lord.'

The bishop requested Foulon and Berthier to be seated.

'If not of a private nature, I suppose you to mean to intimate that you desire to talk politics with me?' He threw up his head and spoke contemptuously, as he settled himself into an arm-chair.

'I desire, my Lord, to speak to you in private, and shall not leave this room till you have granted me the interview that I request.'

'That you demand,' said the bishop. 'Well, I have suffered so much from your insolence, that a grain more will not crush me. Follow me.' He rose and led the way haughtily into a cabinet; bowing first to Foulon and Berthier, and requesting them to excuse his absence for a moment.

'I will trouble you to bring a candle,' said De Narbonne; 'I have no desire to be closeted with you in the dark.'

Lindet returned to the table, and, taking up one of the wax lights, followed the bishop with it into the apartment.

'Now, sir,' said the prelate, throwing himself into a fauteuil, 'tell me at once your business, and then begone!'

'Monseigneur,' Lindet said, earnestly, 'I am ready to submit to you in anything without a murmur. I am ready to make to you an apology for having irritated and annoyed you. I will readily and on my knee ask your pardon for any pain I may have caused you, if you will only listen to me with patience for a few moments.'

'I am ready,' answered the prelate, the severe, sullen look fading from his brow; 'submission comes late, but better late than never.'

'Monseigneur,' continued Lindet, 'the subject on which I have come to speak is of public importance. I know that you, my Lord, have the ear of her majesty the queen.'

'Well,' said the bishop, 'I will not deny it; her most gracious majesty is pleased to listen to and to act upon the advice I, her most unworthy servant, tender to her.'

'I know well, also, my Lord, that the influence exercised by the queen upon the king is paramount, and consequently you have in your power the welfare of the nation.'

'Well,' said De Narbonne, every cloud disappearing from his face, 'perhaps you exaggerate a little; but let that pass, we will for the moment suppose it so. Proceed, my good sir.'

'My Lord, at the present instant the fate of France hangs on the turn of the scale; a feather may incline the balance one way or the other.'

'Possibly you are right,' said the bishop.

'M. Necker has been dismissed.'

'Indeed! how do you know that?'

'Never mind how, my Lord, but I do know it. As soon as the news of the change of ministry reaches Paris, the city will be in arms, and not Paris only, but every large town in France will rise. You cannot rely upon the French guard, they are certain to fraternize with the people; the events of the last few days must convince you of that. You know how that only ten days ago the people broke into the prison of the Abbaye, and liberated some dozen soldiers who had been thrown there for having sworn to obey no orders contrary to those of the Assembly. You know that a body of hussars and dragoons was sent against the people, and that they refused to draw their swords upon them, but drank with the mob the health of the nation. Perhaps you may not know, monseigneur, that privates and officers of the French guard are heart and soul with the people, that secret societies have been formed amongst them long ago, and that disaffection has spread also to the regulars. You can only rely on the Swiss and German mercenaries. Monseigneur, if Necker be not immediately recalled, there will be civil war in France,—a civil war between the French people and their brothers the French soldiery on one side, and the Court and its hired foreigners on the other. Are you prepared for this?'

The Bishop of Évreux was uneasy. He knew that what the curé said was true, but the prospect was one he did not like to contemplate in all its nakedness.

'You overrate my influence,' he said.

'At a moment like the present, every one should use what little influence he has to avert a terrible disaster. Pray, my Lord, face the consequences of this mad action for one moment, and consider whether it is not worth your while at all hazards to strain every nerve to undo it before it has produced its effects,—to stamp out the match before it has exploded the barrel of gunpowder into which it has been cast. My Lord, you, if you withhold your voice, will be responsible for the blood which will flow in torrents.'

'Monsieur Lindet,' said the bishop, gravely, but with his hands twitching, for he was frightened, 'sometimes the surgeon has to cut deep to heal a deadly disease. Even supposing the worst were to come to pass which you anticipate, and which God avert! it may be the means of restoring tranquillity to France.'

'My Lord, place the consequences before your eye in every light. A rebellion in Paris is inevitable. The union of the French guard with the insurgents is also inevitable. What is the next step? The military will be ordered to fall on Paris, and drive the people and the guard before them, perhaps bombard the city, certainly cut down and trample under their horses' feet the innocent as well as the guilty. You know, my Lord, that this could not be done without the king's consent. Now, can you calculate with certainty on his majesty giving orders for the massacre of his subjects? If you can, then well and good, the plan will succeed, at all events for a time. But if the king hesitate for only a few days,—if he refuse to permit the exercise of coercive measures on so terrible a scale, then the game is lost, you have roused the whole of France to madness, have forced the whole of the French people to take up arms, you will probably find that the French soldiers will side with them, and the whole of the old framework of the constitution will go down with a crash, and bring crown, coronet, and mitre under its ruins.'

The bishop turned a little pale, and his hands trembled.

'You exaggerate the consequences,' he faltered out.

'Monseigneur, your own common sense, your clear perception of the state of public feeling at the time, must convince you that I do not exaggerate. You,—no, I will not say that,—the Court is resolved on using force to cut the Revolution short.'

The bishop would not speak.

'Yes, my Lord, it is so. Remember, the success of your venture entirely depends on the king permitting the exercise of force. Can you calculate on that?'

De Narbonne started up. His haughty manner had disappeared before the prospect opening upon him. He had been one of the most urgent in his advice to try the appeal to arms. He had never considered the chance of the king refusing to permit their being turned against the people. Knowing, as he well did, the kindness of the heart of Louis XVI; knowing that with all his feebleness of purpose, and readiness to yield to the opinion of the last speaker, he was conscientiously stubborn against violence; knowing that even that very day he had refused to allow the ex-minister to be arrested and sent to the Bastille, though this had been urged by the queen herself, the bishop saw now for the first time that the rock on which the Court scheme was in danger of being wrecked, was the goodness of the king's heart.

The bishop looked at the curé and mused. Lindet said no more.

After a protracted silence, De Narbonne said, in a low voice: 'It is too late; the die is cast.'

He led the way into the other room.

As Lindet bowed his farewell, the bishop held out his hand to him, and said, 'Thank you.'

When the door closed upon the curé, he returned to the table at which Foulon and Berthier were seated, and said:—'The new ministry will have to be composed without me; I am resolved not to serve.'

CHAPTER XXX.

ON Sunday morning, July 12th, Nicholas persuaded Madeleine and Gabrielle to attend high mass at the church of S. Eustache, for the altar of which he had carved a figure of the Blessed Virgin and Child; and, as he considered this his masterpiece, he was exceedingly anxious that the little Normandy girl should see it. He had thrown out vague hints on several previous occasions, but Madeleine had put them aside at once; on this occasion she yielded, to the great delight of Nicholas, whose round face beamed with satisfaction, which he also expressed to Gabrielle by sundry friendly nods behind his sister's back.

Gabrielle had completely won the young man's heart by her delicacy in refraining from joining the two other women in their chorus of disparagement of Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, Walter Fürst, the great Tell, and, above all, of the illustrious Bruder Klaus. Nay, further, she had actually listened to the story of Arnold von Winkelried, without remonstrance, and she apparently derived real pleasure from hearing the old corporal prose over his reminiscences of Switzerland.

'What a magnificent country it must be!' said the girl once to Nicholas.

'Magnificent!' echoed the young man, throwing up his hands; 'oh, mademoiselle, you really must see it some day.'

After mass, and after that Nicholas had pointed out all the principal excellencies of his statue to Gabrielle, who tried hard to see them, in order to please him, they left the church.

'And now,' said Madeleine, 'we have come this long trudge to gratify you, let us go to the Palais Royal and visit my aunt Louison for my pleasure. Gabrielle has never seen the gardens, and, now that we are so close to the palace, we may just as well go on there. I propose we have some refreshment at one of her tables, and then saunter into the gardens of the Tuileries.'

'Very well,' said Nicholas, joyously; 'the day is so beautiful, I shall be delighted. Ah! it will be only too charming.'

'You have become all at once very obliging,' said Madeleine, bluntly.

They made their way to the Palais Royal, where Madame Louison, Madeleine's aunt, kept a restaurant. M. Louison, in a white apron, white jacket and white cap, stood at the head of the staircase, which descended to the kitchen, before which was a bar, with liqueurs and syrups, presided over by madame.

'Well,' said the lady to Madeleine, 'I am ravished to see you;' then, revolving on her heel, she abruptly charged on her husband,—'Coco! what are you idling there for? Down with you into the depths at once.'

'But, mamma!'

'No "buts" and no "mammas" to me!' cried the lady; 'down, Coco, down.'

Immediately the white man vanished into the abyss.

'And how is that angel your mother?' asked Madame Louison. 'Some one said she had suffered greatly from headache, and I have been overwhelmed with distress. I am sure I quite soaked my pillow with tears. Ah! what it is to have a sympathising heart, to feel more for others than for one's self. I have not slept for three nights, thinking of that angel Josephine, and her racked head. Well! what now, Coco?' she twirled round again, as a vision of a white cap and shoulders appeared behind her. 'Ah! you need not come slinking up without shoes, thinking I should not hear you. Down, Coco, down to your duties.' And the white cap and jacket dived once more into the depths. 'And the corporal,' continued the lady; 'that magnificent man, that warrior, that hero, the father of this young man, need I say more?'

'Aunt, his head and heart are in Switzerland still; need I say more?'

'Ah, in Switzerland, that magnificent, that superb country, that land of resources, of wealth, of commerce. Mon Dieu! it is a country!' She said this bowing to Nicholas.

'Aunt,' said Madeleine, 'I must introduce to you a friend, Mademoiselle André.'

'Ah! André,' repeated Madame Louison; 'a name, historical and illustrious; I have known Andrés,—three, four, five, many an André, but all were excellent people. And whence does Mademoiselle André come?'

'From Normandy,' answered Madeleine.

'Don't tell me she comes from Normandy,' said madame; 'of all the provinces of France, the finest, the most superb, the most unfailing in resources, the most wealthy, the most commercial, the most affluent in men of money and talent, and in women,' she curtsied to Gabrielle, 'in women of beauty.' Then sharply, 'Well, Coco!'

'I thought you called me, mamma!'

'No, Coco, you did not think so; down into your hole again, instantly, Coco!' Then turning again to her visitors she proceeded, 'and what may have brought Mademoiselle André to Paris? to Paris of all cities after the charming Norman towns Rouen, and Caen, and Évreux! Ah! I blush for the capital when I think of what the Norman cities must be, abodes of industry and of virtue. Ah! I blush for the capital when I contrast the morals of its citizens with those of Normandy, where all are good, all are virtuous, all,' she curtsied to Gabrielle, 'all are angels.' Then, glancing at Nicholas, she continued, 'and the Swiss, I should say that none of our countrymen were their equals except the Normans, that race of hardy, daring, enterprising incomparables! What will it please you to order, Monsieur Nicholas?'

The young man gave his orders, and madame shouted down the chasm to Coco, who, however, did not appear.

'Ah!' said the lady; 'that is the way with my good man. When he is wanted, he is not within call; when not wanted, he is here.' She caught up a broom and plunged down the stair or ladder or whatever it was which descended to the kitchen, and presently, with a bound, up the white man rose to the surface, followed more slowly and in more dignified manner by his portly spouse.

'Mamma! no mamma! in pity!' he exclaimed, dancing to the other side of the counter in white stockings and slippers down at the heel.

'Will you attend to business?' asked Madame Louison; 'will you at once produce a little breakfast for these customers, will you conduct yourself with propriety?'

'Oh, mamma! I assure you, I was only——'

'No excuse; down, down, Coco, and bring potage à la vermicelle—quick, Coco, quick!'

'Oh stay! in pity!' he pleaded; 'let me look out of the doors for one minute. Oh, what have we here! oh, mamma, you must come and see; there is such excitement, such running to and fro. Come, come, come!'

'This instant, Coco; down, sir, down to your hole!'

But the scene without, in the gardens, was of sufficient attraction to hold Coco immovable at the door, and make him deaf to the orders of his spouse.

'What is the matter?' asked Madeleine.

'Mademoiselle, everything is the matter!' replied M. Louison; 'there is a firework of excitement without. Oh! Camille the good, the facetious Camille is on the table. Mamma, it is too much, I must go.'

And the white cap, white jacket, white apron, and white stockings flitted like a pigeon past the window.

There was so much noise, such a rush of people, that it became apparent to Madeleine, Nicholas, and Gabrielle, that some unusual cause of excitement had occurred; they therefore ran outside, followed by Madame Louison, whose interest, however, was entirely concentrated on her run-away husband.

'Ah! there he is!' she exclaimed, pointing to a white speck in the crowd, 'sapristi! but he shall catch it. Ah, ha! Coco!' she said in a low tone, with a chuckle to herself; 'ah, ha! my Coco! will you do it again, will you, will you?'

At the farther end of the gardens the crowd was densest. Thither Madeleine hurried, drawing Gabrielle after her; Nicholas looked hesitatingly about him and then followed. On a table, at which shortly before some pleasure-takers had been sipping sugar and water, indeed, standing among the tumblers, some of which were half empty, was a tall slender young man, with long flowing hair reaching to his shoulders, very abundant, glossy, and curled. His face was smooth and clear-complexioned, his nose was straight and well shaped, his mouth small and curled with a smile, and at every smile a dimple formed in his girlish cheek. His large clear eye beamed with light. His brow white and polished, without a furrow, was marked with prominent bumps where phrenologists assert lie the organs of satire. He had falling collars over a thick crimson handkerchief folded twice round his neck, tied in a loose bow, and falling to his waist. His coat of sere-green cloth was adorned with huge lappets which folded to his shoulders; his waistcoat was white, and had also lappets.

'It is Camille, the brave Camille Desmoulins!' said Madeleine; 'what is the matter with him?'

The young man was violently agitated. He spoke with vehemence, and the tears flowed from his brilliant eyes. 'My friends! my friends!' he cried, in a clear, bell-like voice; 'Necker is dismissed; Necker, the friend of the people, Necker, the friend of justice and liberty, has been driven away, his ministry dissolved, and who do you think have been appointed in their place? De Breteuil, De Broglie, Foulon, De la Vauguyon, Berthier—men who hate you, men who detest liberty, men of war; De Breteuil the great Blunderer, De Broglie the old Mars; Foulon, who would make men eat hay because his horses eat it; Berthier, who has sold his heart to the devil, who weeps blood. The dismissal of Necker is the tocsin of a S. Bartholomew of patriots. The Swiss and German battalions are ready to fall on us, and to massacre us. For your wives, for your children! To arms, to arms!'

Every sentence had elicited cries and groans.

'To arms!' yelled Monsieur Louison. Immediately behind him was his spouse, broom in hand. 'To arms!' he cried, snatching the weapon from her grasp and brandishing it above his head,—you may see him immortalised in Duplessi-Bertaux' sketch published a few days after.

'My friends!' cried Camille; 'I see there—and there, facing me, with their eyes watching me, the tame tigers of the court, the spies and satellites of the police. Never will I fall alive into their hands;' he suddenly drew a pair of pistols from his pocket and cocked them; 'let all the friends of liberty follow my example and protect themselves, or the prisons will be gorged with the best patriots.'

He was interrupted by cries of enthusiasm; 'we will protect you, we will kill the tigers.' Some men sprang upon the table and embraced him, the tumblers were thrown down and broken, and the sugar and water was poured over the gravel.

'What is to be done?' was shouted; 'how shall we know the friends of liberty?'

'Let us adopt a cockade,' cried Camille; 'then we shall know those who are on our side from our foes.'

'A cockade, a cockade!' was shouted.

'Ah! Camille, dear, brave Camille!' shrieked Monsieur Louison; 'I will protect you. They shall pass over my body before they touch you.' And he beat his way with the broom-handle through the crowd towards the table.

'Coco!' screamed his wife; 'you fool, you ape! The potage à la vermicelle will be burnt.'

'Damn the vermicelle!' exclaimed the white man, stationing himself like a sentinel before the table; 'I tell you, woman, I will shed the last drop of my potage—I mean my blood.'

'Never mind what you mean,' called his incensed wife; 'I will have you down into your hole again.' She struggled after him, but found it impossible to force her way through the crowd, being unprovided with a weapon, and being corpulent, whilst Coco was lean.

'What colour will you have for your cockade?' asked Desmoulins, his clear voice pealing above the hoarse mutterings of the excited people. 'Will you have green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of democracy?'

Some shouted, 'Do you choose, Camille!' Others cried 'blue,' but the call of the majority was for green; 'green, green, the hue of Hope!'

The young man waited, the cries for blue ceased, and presently as with one voice the whole heaving mass of people roared 'Green!'

'Very well, my friends, let green be the colour. Who will provide me with ribbon?'

A few moments after a number of rolls of silk ribbon of various shades of green were handed to him. A mercer's shop in the Palais Royal had yielded up its stock, and, when money had been offered in payment, the mercer had refused it.

Camille adorned his own cap with a rosette, placed it on his head, and then proceeded to attach scraps of green ribbon to the hats which were passed to him, and which M. Louison presented to him in order at the end of his broom.

'The ribbon is expended, my friends,' called Camille; 'fetch me some more.'

'There is no more to be got,' shouted some one in the crowd.

'No more ribbon!' exclaimed Camille; 'well, let us take leaves from the trees and pin them to our caps.'

Instantly lads and men began to climb the young trees and tear down the branches. Each bough was seized upon before it touched the ground, and the foliage was torn off by eager hands. Some of the leaves were trampled under foot, and more were clamoured for. The crowd had been gathering thicker every moment, pouring in from the streets, and the whole garden was densely packed with men and women. The words of the orator were flung along the mob, from voice to voice; the mob swayed and roared, and cheered, like one living body, not as an assemblage of individuals each with a will and thoughts of his own.

In half an hour the trees of the Palais Royal were stripped of their leaves and looked bare and wintry.

From a modeller's shop opening on the gardens, a wax bust of the popular ex-minister was produced, and was passed along above the heads of the crowd. Some one flung a black crape veil over it.

'Forth into the streets,' was called. And the multitude rolled out into the Rue de Richelieu. Suddenly, with a cry of exultation, Madame Louison pounced upon her spouse, and carried him off to her shop. Nicholas caught a glimpse of him ineffectually struggling, like a white moth in a spider's clutches, as the lady drew him down into the hole he usually inhabited. Nicholas drew Gabrielle's arm through his, and she clung to him, otherwise she would have been swept away.

'We must escape as soon as possible,' said the young man; 'do not let go your hold, Gabrielle—I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle André. You must excuse me if I squeeze your arm, but I am so afraid of losing you.'

'Where is Madeleine?'

'Madeleine can take care of herself.'

'But where is she?'

'There—a little ahead of us; she has been drifted forward, we must try to reach her and link her on to us; it will not do to separate.'

'Can we not escape yet?'

'No. Impossible; I wish we could, but the crowd is too dense. We must rejoin Madeleine first, or she will not know what has become of us.'

The sun glared down on the moving torrent of angry life. It was like a viscous stream of lava poured from a volcano; the sun flashed on bayonets, axes, large knives which had been attached to poles and made into rude pikes.

The flashes from the weapons, as the sun lit them, resembled leaping flames above the lava flood. The heat began to dissolve the wax bust, the black crape attracted the heat unnecessarily, and it slowly dissolved into a shapeless mass. Nevertheless it was borne along, its bearers being unconscious of the transformation that was being effected in their idol.

The stream pursued its course along the streets of S. Martin, S. Denis, and S. Honoré, and spread out into a tossing lake in the Place Vendôme, where lived several of the revenue-farmers, but not Foulon, whose house was in the Rue du Temple.

Here was drawn up a detachment of dragoons, which charged the people, and drove them back into the streets that opened on the square. A French guardsman was trampled under the feet of the horses and killed.

Nicholas took the opportunity of the dissolution of the compact mass to disengage himself and Gabrielle from the mob, and to escape with her down the street before the Convent of the Feuillants.

'Where is Madeleine?' asked Gabrielle.

'Madeleine!' exclaimed Nicholas, standing still and looking round; 'I really do not know where she is. But it does not matter; let us go into the gardens of the Tuileries. It was her wish, you may remember, that we should go there after our visit to the Palais Royal, and doubtless she will make the best of her way there in the expectation of meeting with us.'

They entered the beautiful gardens before the palace, and Gabrielle would have admired the flowers at any other time, but her nerves had been somewhat shaken by the excitement she had gone through, and she asked Nicholas to let her sit down on the first seat they came to.

'I am so frightened, Monsieur Nicholas,' said she; 'I fear something must have happened to Madeleine; I heard the people crying out that some one was killed.'

'That was a man,' said the young man. 'I saw the horses tread him down, it made me turn sick and giddy. The hoof of one horse cut open his head just behind the ear, and the skull must have been crushed, for the brain burst out as the horse trod his head down. Did you see nothing of that?'

'No, no; I am thankful I did not.'

'I am rather taller than most of these French fellows; and as the man fell there was a lane formed between the heads, and I saw it all.'

'When do you think Madeleine will be here?'

'I really cannot guess, but I hope before long.'

'And you are certain no harm has befallen her?'

'Harm befall Madeleine!' exclaimed Nicholas; 'that is an impossibility. You never saw such a girl as that is for keeping out of danger herself, though she will go into the midst of what is perilous to other people.'

'Oh,' sighed Gabrielle, 'how I wish that I were out of Paris, and back in peaceful Bernay. And yet that cannot be.'

'I cannot say that I wish it,' said Nicholas, simply.

'But why not?' asked Gabrielle with equal simplicity.

Nicholas looked at her, with his great blue eyes wide open, and nodded.

'There!' said he, pointing to one of the flowers in a garden-bed before them, 'that plant grows wild in my country.'

'Is your country very quiet; or have you such troubles as we have here?'

'Oh no! Switzerland is perfectly peaceful; ever since the great Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, and Walter Fürst, formed their league against the tyrants who held the people in chains, we have been free, and happy, and tranquil.'

'Then you had great troubles once?'

'Yes, there was the terrible struggle for freedom.'

'Perhaps the troubles here are part of our struggle.'

'No doubt; and then, when the bonds are burst, and despotism is at an end, you will have peace.'

'Oh, Monsieur Nicholas! how I wish that time had come!'

'No doubt.'

'And is your country more beautiful than my Normandy?'

'Oh, ten thousand times more beautiful.'

'But you have not seen Normandy.'

'No, but I know enough,' he nodded towards her, 'to be well assured that if you were given the choice between Switzerland and Normandy you would say, Switzerland for ever! You have no lakes.'

'But there are ponds.'

'Ponds!' exclaimed Nicholas, 'what are ponds?'

'And we have forests.'

'Ah! plantations.'

'And we have beautiful hills. Above Bernay there is Mont Bouffey—'

'Mole-hills,' said Nicholas.

'No, indeed,' urged Gabrielle; 'there is a windmill on top of it.'

'A windmill!' echoed Nicholas; 'and you call that a hill, a "mont." Heaven bless you, my dear Gabrielle, a "mont" with a windmill on the top of it! Lord enlighten you! a "mont," indeed! a windmill on top of it. Just heavens! how unequal are men's lots! here am I, who have seen real mountains, and there is Gabrielle, who has never seen anything but a little lump of earth with a windmill on the top of it. I dare say that Mont Bouffey has no rocks.'

'N-n-o,' answered Gabrielle, her childish opinion of Mont Bouffey greatly dashed by the contempt poured over it by the young Swiss.

'A "mont" without rocks, an earthy pimple! To think that you and ten thousands, thousands of other living persons, and persons with souls, too, should never have seen real mountains soaring into the clouds and glittering with eternal snows. It is a thought to make me serious,' said Nicholas, shaking his head. 'It is something to make one feel very grateful to Heaven, that out of millions of poor benighted French, only perhaps the corporal and I have seen snowy mountains.'

He was silent; and Gabrielle, looking furtively into his face, saw that he was making an act of thanksgiving to the Almighty for having given him a privilege which had been denied to so many.

'Wonderful,' mused Nicholas; 'wonderful indeed!'

Then he asked, 'And can you reconcile yourself to die without having seen anything more like a mountain than that pimple with a windmill on the top?'

'Please, kind Monsieur Nicholas, do not tease me about the Mont Bouffey, or I shall joke you about the Bruder——'

'No, no, no,' he interrupted with earnestness, catching her hand, and staring into her eyes with an appealing expression of distress. 'Whatever you do, my dearest Gabrielle, do not joke about Bruder Klaus. That man lived a miraculous life; for years he ate no food, and lived in incessant prayer——'

'Tell me about the beauties of Switzerland,' said the girl, smiling; for she had heard all about the hermit's marvellous life several times already.

'Ah, Gabrielle!' exclaimed Nicholas, enthusiastically, 'you really must see Switzerland, you must indeed. I should be miserable to think that your beautiful eyes should never rest on its glories.'

'But how can I ever see it, M. Nicholas?'

'Oh, you can go there.'

'Indeed I cannot.'

'But you must. Look here,' and the lad turned round, and, still holding the hand he had seized at the alarm about Bruder Klaus, he began to explain a scheme, and indicate it with the finger of his disengaged hand on the back of Gabrielle's. 'You see my father's time of service is over in August; and then we are going to return to Switzerland.'

'Ah, but Madeleine declares that Madame Deschwanden is quite resolved not to go there. And Madeleine is of the same mind.'

'Then,' said Nicholas, 'my father and I shall return.'

'And then I could not go with you two men,' said the girl, laughing gaily.

'Oh!' exclaimed the young man, opening his great eyes very wide, 'that is awkward, I never thought of that.'

'And do you not think it a little awkward sitting here waiting for Madeleine?' asked Gabrielle.

'No,' answered Nicholas, promptly; 'certainly not, why should it be so?'

'The gardens are very full,' said Gabrielle; 'had we not better walk about now, and look for Madeleine, instead of sitting here any longer hand in hand?'

'Very well,' answered Nicholas, rising, but not relinquishing the hand. Gabrielle, however, snatched it from him, and then rested it on his arm.

'Look,' said Nicholas, 'the soldiers are yonder, drawn up at the entrance of the Champs Elysées.'

'I have heard the discharge of fire-arms,' said Gabrielle, 'but not in that direction.'

'Alphonse!' exclaimed Nicholas to a friend who was passing, 'can you tell me what is going on? I was with the mob that marched from the Palais Royal to the Place Vendôme, and was there dispersed, which gave me the opportunity of escaping; it was no fault of mine that I was in the riot.'

'Nicholas, my brave!' said the young man accosted, 'you want zeal. But, to be sure, you are a foreigner. In your own country you would be a patriot.'

'To be sure,' answered Nicholas; 'mine is the land of patriots; have we not Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, Walter Fürst, and the great and glorious Tell?'

'I have heard,' said Alphonse, 'that Tell is a myth—a fable.'

'A myth—a fable!' exclaimed Nicholas, dropping Gabrielle's arm in the extremity of his dismay. 'Wilhelm Tell!' he raised his cap at the name. 'I have seen the place where he shot the arrow; I have seen the spot where his son stood with the apple on his head; I have worshipped before the chapel where he leaped ashore from Gessler's boat.'

'Never mind him now,' said Alphonse, laughing; 'come along with me to the Place Louis XV[1].'

'And tell me what has been going on. Hush! there is the rattle of guns again.'

'Nicholas!' whispered Gabrielle. 'There! look there!'

She pointed to a shutter which was being carried on men's shoulders through the gardens; over it was cast a sheet spotted with blood; the sheet by its folds indicated the outline of a corpse beneath it.

Immediately after, the Royal German dragoons, who had been employed in dispersing the mob, arrived in the Place Louis XV. As they passed the barrack of the French guard, a volley of musketry was discharged upon them from the windows, and several of the soldiers were unhorsed and wounded. At the same moment, a crowd which had filled the Champs Elysées, and some of the promenaders in the Tuileries gardens, rushed upon the dragoons with bottles and stones, which they flung at them with cries of anger and hatred.

'Nicholas, do let us escape,' said Gabrielle.

'Let us work our way back,' he answered. But this was not so easily effected; the firing in the Place Louis XV had attracted towards the end of the garden opening on it all who had been strolling among the flower-beds, and fresh arrivals every moment made the barrier behind them more and more impassable.

'We must wait our opportunity,' said Nicholas; 'hold tight to me. Do not let go, on any consideration.'

'Where can Madeleine be?' asked the girl.

'Madeleine is there!' suddenly exclaimed the lad, pointing towards the statue of Louis XV, which occupied the centre of the great octagonal place. This open piece of ground had been adorned in the centre with an equestrian statue of the king in bronze in 1763, by the provost of Paris. At the angles of the pedestal were four figures of the cardinal virtues, Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude, and Justice, 'over whose heads,' said the wags, 'the king is trampling.' Among other sarcastic epigrams the group had given rise to was this:—

'O la belle statue, O le beau piédestal!

Les Vertues sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!'

Standing on this pedestal, with one arm around the leg of the bronze horse, was Madeleine Chabry, her black hair flowing wildly over her shoulders from beneath a peasant's scarlet cap, which had been handed to her when in the scuffle in the Place Vendôme she had lost her head-dress. Her gown was torn; one of the sleeves, that on the right arm, had been ripped off, how and when Madeleine knew not. She held a staff in her hand, headed with a knife and a bunch of green leaves.

Nicholas and Gabrielle could not hear her words, but they saw her gesticulate violently and point to the gates of the Tuileries, and then towards the soldiers. Those near her, however, caught up her cry, and shouted to the crowd to back into the gardens, for the soldiers were coming that way.

'Barricade them out!' was called from one to another; 'shut the gates!' Then the answer came, 'We cannot; they will not stand back.'

'Ho, there! chairs, stalls, anything!'

'Chairs, benches, there,' was repeated; and instantly garden-seats, benches, and tables, were passed over the heads of the crowd towards the front.

'The soldiers are coming!' was cried again.

Madeleine disappeared from her perch. Next moment she reappeared at the gates, assisting in barricading them with chairs and benches.

The people began rapidly to thin out and disperse in the gardens, as the cry of the approach of the soldiers reached them.

'Now,' said Nicholas, 'back, Gabrielle, we must escape at once.' He forced his way through the mob, dived under seats which were being carried forward to form a barrier, and drew the girl out of the grounds into the streets.

He was not a moment too soon. The sharp rattle of musketry and the shrieks of the wounded reached them as they escaped.

By order of Besenval, the Prince de Lambesc, colonel of the dragoons, had charged the people and driven them behind their barrier. This was speedily demolished; over the broken fragments the German mercenaries advanced with sabres drawn, and the people rolled back before them, falling beneath the horses' feet, discharging stones, stocks, anything that was ready at hand at the advancing line, cursing the prince and the soldiers, but retreating rapidly before them. The line broke into a trot and cleared the garden, leaving behind them trampled flower-beds, fragments of benches, and prostrate men, women, and children, with limbs broken and bleeding wounds.

As Nicholas and Gabrielle fled along the street towards the Rue S. Antoine, they saw that the whole city was in commotion. All shops were being shut except those of the armourers, where a busy trade was carried on. Men and women went about bearing weapons and adorned with the green cockade. Flying past them, not noticing them, with her hair streaming behind her, and the red bonnet on one side, darted Madeleine, crying to all,—'The Hôtel de Ville! To arms, to arms!' A few moments later the great alarm-bell of the Hôtel de Ville pealed over the city its sonorous threatening cry from brazen mouth and brazen tongue:—'To arms, to arms!'

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The present Place de la Concorde.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THAT night few persons in Paris closed their eyes. The sky was red with fires made at all the barriers. In 1784 the octroi wall had been built round Paris, with gates called barrières, at which taxes were levied on eatables and wines brought into the capital. The people, who regarded this tax as an imposition, unjust and intolerable, attacked the gates during the day and again during the night, and destroyed them. The armourers' shops were pillaged, and the streets were paraded by bands of men armed with such weapons as they could get. The Baron de Besenval, finding that resistance was impossible, withdrew his troops from the town, and sent to Versailles for orders.

On Monday morning the electors assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, and thinking it necessary to give their authority a more legal form, they appointed M. de Flesselles administrator of the city. He refused to act without a formal requisition. This was given him, and a number of electors were associated with him to form a municipality invested with full powers. This municipality summoned before it the lieutenant of police, and in a few hours drew up a plan for the formation of a militia corps, to be composed of forty-eight thousand men, who were to wear instead of the green cockade another composed of blue and red, the Parisian colours. Every one with this cockade bearing arms, who was not enrolled in the corps of his district, was to be disarmed and punished.

The provost Flesselles by no means sympathised with this movement, and used every opportunity that presented itself of retarding the enrolment, and the subsequent armament of the body of militia so rapidly formed. He had been that day summoned by the king to Versailles, yet he dared not go there.

The people clamoured for guns. The Garde-Meuble had been broken open in the morning, and its rusty swords and antique armour had been distributed among the mob. But that was nothing. Flesselles promised twelve thousand guns the same day; before the night fell, surely the Marshal de Broglie would pour his troops upon Paris—so thought the provost. Berthier, it was well known, had caused thirty thousand muskets to be imported, and had commanded two hundred thousand cartridges to be made. The people grew impatient. Valuable time was being lost; the mercenaries might be upon them at any moment. The provost then declared that the guns he had promised were on their way to the Hôtel de Ville from the manufactory at Charleville, and waggons were shortly after seen to traverse La Grève, inscribed with the word Artillerie. These waggons drew up at the entrance of the Hôtel, and the cases were borne into the magazines.

The provost then refused to unpack the weapons, without French guardsmen to attend to their orderly distribution. The officers declined to send soldiers for the purpose; consequently, the people insisted on the electors opening the cases. They did so, and found them to contain old linen.

At this sight the people became furious, and threatened the provost, so that to appease them he was obliged to give orders for the immediate manufacture of fifty thousand pikes. As the people could see the fires roar, the bellows go, and hear the clink of the hammer, and see the flash of the sparks, they were satisfied, at least for a while.

In the meantime, the arsenal was besieged by a crowd, desiring gunpowder. They were solemnly assured that it was empty. An invalid and a wig-maker were stationed near it to keep watch. Presently they saw a number of barrels brought out and rolled on board some boats in the Seine. They gave the alarm; the boats were seized, and the gunpowder transported to the Hôtel de Ville, and distributed among the people by the Abbé Lefebvre.

The report spread that five regiments at S. Denis were on the move with forty pieces of artillery; that at Gonesse there were fifty cannons, and at Bourget sixty, and that the troops were advancing.

The terror of the people became excessive. Drums rattled in every street, the bells of all the churches pealed the alarm. Two cannons, one ornamented with silver, which had been found in the Garde-Meuble, were drawn in front of the Hôtel de Ville and loaded. The prison of La Force was burst into, and all the debtors were released. The soldiers of the French guard refused to obey their officers, and deserted their barrack to fling themselves into the arms of the people. Old men, women, and children carried paving-stones up into the attics of the houses, to hurl down on the troops that were momentarily expected to enter Paris; and those able-bodied men who were without arms threw up barricades at the ends of the streets. Others tore the lead off the roofs of their houses and melted it up into bullets.

As the darkness descended over the city, the fear of the people redoubled. All at once it was reported that there was a store of guns at the Invalides. The deputies of one district went immediately to Besenval, the commandant, and Sombreuil, the governor of the Hôtel.

Besenval answered that he must write for orders from Versailles before he could deliver them up. He accordingly wrote to Marshal de Broglie to hasten down upon Paris. The deputies returned with his answer, and it was decided that if, on the morrow, the arms were not given up, they should be seized by force.

M. de Sombreuil had taken precautions some days previously. He had caused to be transported into the vaults beneath the dome of the Invalides all the stands of arms, and these to be covered with straw. As soon as the demand for them was made, he gave orders that the guns should be dismounted, and the locks unscrewed and removed. But the invalids, who sympathised with the popular movement, did their work so slowly, that during the night they had only pulled twenty guns to pieces.

Early in the morning of the 15th, before the day began to dawn, shots were fired against the walls of the Bastille, and De Launay, the governor, mounted to the summit of the towers and listened. He heard the distant murmuring of the city, and the rumble of vehicles in the streets; he saw the red glow of the burning barriers, and the countless lines of light in the black city. There was no mob around the gates into the Rue S. Antoine, so he returned below. He had taken precautions. His cannons were loaded with grape-shot. Six cart-loads of paving-stones, old iron and cannon-balls, had been carried to the top of the towers to crush his assailants. In the bottom loop-holes he had placed twelve large rampart-guns, each of which carried a pound and a half of bullets. His trustiest soldiers, the Swiss, thirty-two in number, he kept below, and distributed his eighty-two invalids about the towers.

From dawn the committee of electors or extemporised municipality had been sitting in the town-hall.

Messengers came from the Faubourg S. Antoine to announce that the guns of the Bastille had been run out and threatened the town.

The committee resolved on sending a deputation to request the withdrawal of the cannons, and that the governor would promise to refrain from hostilities, assuring him on their side that the people of Paris would respect the fortress if he would accede to their request. The three deputies were courteously received by the governor; he conducted them into his house, and regaled them with a sumptuous breakfast. He undertook to remove the cannons turned against the town, and gave orders in their hearing to that effect. Shortly after it was announced that his orders had been executed. The deputation then took their leave, and were crossing the drawbridge lowered to give them passage, when three other deputies, MM. Thuriot de la Rozière, Bourlier, and Toulouse, despatched by the district of La Culture, demanded admittance. It was refused. Nevertheless, Thuriot forced his way into the Bastille, and summoned the garrison to surrender in the name of the country. The French soldiers hung their heads, but the Swiss remained unmoved. De Launay saw by the action and expression of the invalids that his garrison was divided.

When M. Thuriot returned to the people, and they learned from his lips that the governor refused to admit the city militia, shouts of rage arose, and some, thinking the delegate was to blame, attacked him with blows. Forcing his way through the mob, he made for the Hôtel de Ville. The Place la Grève then presented a strange spectacle. It had become the central point to which everything converged. Waggons, carts, cattle, corn, money, weapons,—everything, in short, was brought there. The pikes ordered by Flesselles had all been manufactured in the night, and were being distributed to the new militia. The place was inundated with people rolling in waves from side to side, and running up the stairs of the Hôtel de Ville, and pouring even into the hall of the committee.

M. Thuriot had to beat his way with his fists to the stairs, and then, when he had reached the ante-chamber, he stuck there unable to advance or retire, wedged immovably into the compact mass of human beings who filled it. With his loud, husky voice he bellowed out his mission, and continued roaring till some of the citizen guard forced a way for him through the throng. Thus he arrived, thrust on by those who closed in behind him, in the saloon where sat the municipality then engaged in hearing the case of a lad of fourteen, who was accused of having sold for a crown apiece several national cockades worth a few sous. The excitement of the populace was at its height, so clearly did it perceive the meanness of this speculation. The committee ordered the seizure of the cockades, and the money to be distributed among the poor.

'That is not sufficient,' shouted one of the audience; 'we are not brigands, like those who sacked the house of Réveillon,—we don't choose to be taken for brigands, or thieves, or pickpockets. The cockade is an honourable badge. He who uses it for fraudulent purposes outrages the national honour. Let him be tried and sentenced for treason.'

The motion was applauded, and the young man was ordered to prison.

M. Thuriot then reported what had occurred in the Bastille; but the people listened with mistrust, and continued to cry out for arms.

Flesselles, the president of the committee, tried in vain to silence the multitude; he rang his bell and gesticulated vehemently, but they redoubled their demands.

At that moment, the deputation previously sent by the committee arrived and gave an account of their mission. This second report calmed the tumult, and Flesselles, profiting by the occasion, drew up a proclamation to the people informing them of the good intentions of the governor of the Bastille. MM. Boucher and Thuriot were passed out upon the balcony to read it to the mob, preceded by the trumpets of the town-hall. The trumpets pealed forth the summons, and the noise in the Place de Grève ceased instantly, dying into a breathless calm.

M. Thuriot de la Rozière began to read the proclamation, but he had hardly uttered the opening sentences, before the boom of cannon made the wall vibrate behind him. He stopped and lowered the paper.

A rattling explosion of artillery followed; then a cry rose from a band of people who poured up from the narrow streets to the east,—'Treason! it is the cannon of the Bastille!'

The ranks opened before a messenger, wounded in the arm and bleeding, who fled to the gates of the Hôtel de Ville with the news that the Governor de Launay was massacring the people.

Thuriot tore the paper in his hand into shreds and cast it into the air.

Cries of rage rose from the vast multitude surging in the Place around the statue of Louis XIV. Then from those far in the rear burst a roar like that of a wild beast lashed into fury by its keeper, and a compact body rushed through the general crowd laden with arms, which they distributed to all who wore the patriotic cockade. The arms of the Invalids had fallen into the hands of the people.

Then from all quarters rose the cry,—'To the Bastille!'

CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEN M. Thuriot de la Rozière left the Bastille with the refusal of the governor to receive into it a detachment of city guards, the people drew off from the gate to consult. The answer of De Launay was not of a nature to satisfy them. But what step it was advisable to take was by no means clear. During this moment of hesitation a blacksmith, Tournay by name, leaped from the roof of a perfumer's shop upon the battlement of the wall surrounding the gardens, and which enclosed the whole area of the fortress. Thence he descended to the guard-house, and thence into the first court. He entered the lodge in quest of the keys of the gate, but they were not there; then he demanded a hatchet.

Aubin Bonnemère, an old soldier, flung him one, and Tournay cut, hacked, and broke through the chains, and let fall the first drawbridge. The crowd rushed in and filled the court. The firing began at once from the towers and the loop-holes below.

Bonnemère heading the people ran to the second drawbridge, hoping to succeed with it as they had with the first; but a discharge of musketry drove them back. Some sheltered themselves under the grating, some in the elm-court, leaving several writhing in the agonies of death on the pavement.

At the same time, the fire-brigade arrived with their engines, and began to jerk a stream of water against the towers of the Bastille with the intention of deluging the cannons and spoiling their priming. But the jets would not reach so far, and the garrison laughed at the attempt. The sound of fire-arms had attracted an immense crowd with incredible rapidity, and along with the people arrived numbers of the city militia, wearing their old uniform of the French guard. The mob instantly placed themselves under their orders, elected their officers, and swore obedience to their commands.

It was at this moment that Élie, an officer belonging to the Queen's regiment, knowing the importance of an uniform, quickly changed his private dress for the brilliant livery of his corps, and was at once elected commander of the French guards. Hullin, a gamekeeper of the Marquis de Conflans, mistaken for a soldier, because he wore his master's livery, was elected captain of the workmen.

Several times did the people fling themselves upon the second gate, but each time the discharge of a rampart-gun loaded with bullets drove them back with terrible slaughter.

This was the moment when a deputation from the Hôtel de Ville arrived and sought admission to the fortress. They approached slowly, waving their white handkerchiefs, but in the fire and smoke they were not seen, and the defenders of the Bastille continued to pour from the towers a shower of lead.

The deputies determined to traverse the first court and knock at the gate; but as they prepared to pass under the vault of the portal from the Rue S. Antoine, the people beneath it, armed and firing upon the garrison, signed to them not to approach. The deputies then turned into the Rue de la Cerisaye, hoping to find admission by that entrance to the castle. But there the fight was raging with even greater fury. The besiegers were commanded by La Reynie. The embassy advanced, explained their mission, and implored the people to suspend hostilities. Immediately, at La Reynie's command, the firing ceased, and the deputies renewed their signals and slowly neared the citadel, followed by the people with their arms reversed.

But scarcely had they approached near the gate, when a volley of musketry struck down half a dozen men around the messengers, and the people enraged at this action, which they regarded as perfidy, whereas in all probability it arose from a mistake, recommenced their firing. Finding it impossible to execute their mission, the delegates returned to the town-hall.

In the meantime, reinforcements had arrived. Peillon and the architect, Palloy, marched to the attack at the head of a company of citizens. They were followed by the brothers Kabers, chemists, conducting the corps of their trade; then came Turpin, fusilier of the company of Brache, and Maillard alone, but huge, with a solemn face and black dress,—a gloomy giant. From the direction of the arsenal came up another troop, headed by Geudin, a lad of seventeen. His father was a workman engaged in the citadel; he wished to save his life at the risk of his own.

Shortly after, a second deputation from the Hôtel de Ville arrived, headed by the flag with the city arms, and a drummer. The drum rattled a recall, and the crowd, believing that the signal announced the arrival of the troops, fell back. But when they found that it announced another embassy, they testified their impatience, and assured the deputies that it was impossible for them to cross the court. The deputies persisted, and entered the open space strewn with corpses. The insurgents ceased firing, and the signal of the embassy was acknowledged from the towers by the hoisting of a white flag. But, unfortunately, the towers were manned by French soldiers, and the gates by Swiss; and the latter, unaware of what the invalids had done, discharged the rampart-gun upon the deputies.

At that moment the rumble of the cannon was heard advancing along the Port au Blé.

'The cannon, my friends, the cannon!' bellowed Élie, and the silver-mounted gun from the Garde-Meuble was run into the court and pointed at the gate.

A man named Cholat had brought the guns to the assistance of the besiegers. He had previously visited the powder magazine, and had provided himself by force with sufficient ammunition. These guns were followed soon after by the cannon from the Invalides. Georget, a marine, whose thigh was broken by a ball, seated himself on a heap of stones and directed some novices in the use of cannon how to load and to discharge the piece under his charge.

Three cart-loads of straw had been pushed forward against the imperishable second gate and set on fire. Immediately the rampart-gun, which had already done such havoc, blew a storm of grape among those who crept up under cover of the straw, and dispersed them. The flame and smoke rose high into the air, and concealed the movements of the garrison; the cannon of the insurgents thundered incessantly, and volleys of bullets pattered innocuously against the hard walls of the fortress. One ball from a gun pointed by Élie carried away the cap of one of the pepper-boxes on the nearest tower, and struck down an invalid named Fortuné, the first of the garrison who perished in the action. The crash of the falling roof alarmed the invalids, who fought without heart and with reluctance.

In the meantime, the guard-houses opening on the court had caught fire, and were in a blaze. In one of them was a young and beautiful girl, who had secreted herself in her chamber at the beginning of the fight. The flames drove her from her shelter, and she fled across the yard with dishevelled hair and with face pale with fear.

The people, supposing her to be the governor's daughter, uttered loud cries of 'Seize her! and threaten De Launay with her death, unless he surrender.'

At these words, a score of men fell upon her. In vain did she assure them that she was no relation of the governor; the madmen, drunk with excitement, would have massacred her, had not Aubin Bonnemère forced his way through them and protected her against their blows, exclaiming, 'Cowards! by striking a woman, you disgrace a sacred cause!'

But he was unable to allay the general intoxication of rage. Another discharge of grape strewed the ground with corpses.

'We will not kill her,' shouted a demoniac; 'the fire shall devour the girl. If De Launay will not surrender, he shall see his child expire in the flames;' and laying hold on the young lady, he flung her on a straw bed, and set fire to it. The terrified girl uttered a piercing scream and fainted.

That cry drew M. de Monsigny, commandant of the gunners in the citadel, to the parapet. He looked through an embrasure, and recognised his daughter. The assailants saw him lift his hands in the agony of his fear, and at the same moment a bullet entered his breast, and he fell back into the arms of the invalids.

But Bonnemère had not abandoned the unfortunate girl; regardless of the blows showered upon him, and the opposition he met with, the brave man plunged through the ferocious band that surrounded her, he trod out the flames, and raising her insensible form in his nervous arms, bore her away to a house in the Rue S. Antoine, where she could be in safety, and then returned to his place at the head of the besiegers. Maillard, Élie, and Hullin, finding that the burning straw obscured the view of the drawbridge, and prevented them from taking accurate aim, displaced the carts, and by means of poles strewed the flaming straw about the yard, where it was stamped out by the militia, who now filled it.

They then advanced to the edge of the moat and shouted to the governor to lower the bridge. M. de Flue, the officer commanding the Swiss, replied through the battlements that the garrison would yield if they were allowed to march forth with all the honours of war.

'No,' was the answer; 'no more arms for those who have butchered the people.'

To account for this readiness to entertain the idea of capitulation, we must visit the interior of the citadel.

Upon the death of Monsigny, the invalids had refused to continue the defence. They could not forget that they were Frenchmen, and that those whose blood they were shedding were their countrymen.

De Launay, finding it impossible to hold out, when the majority of his garrison were mutinous, in the insanity of rage and fear, rushed to the powder magazine with a lighted match to blow up the castle and destroy with it the assailants and the besieged. A soldier, Ferrand by name, was sentinel at the door. Divining the purpose of the governor, he refused to give him admission to the magazine, snatched the match from his hand, and extinguished it with his foot.

When the terms of surrender proposed by M. de Flue had been refused, the officer consented to lay down his arms on condition that no harm should be offered to the garrison. A tumult of contradictory answers arose. Some promised what was demanded, others required unconditional surrender. At last, after several minutes of uproar, a scrap of paper was passed though an embrasure in the wall. A plank was run across the moat, but, as there was no resting-place for the end on the farther side, a number of men jumped upon that portion which rested on the pavement of the yard and sustained the plank in its horizontal position, whilst one of the crowd ran along it and reached his hand towards the paper. But whether his situation rendered him giddy, or whether the counterpoise was not effectually maintained, is uncertain; he reeled and fell over into the fosse and perished. The huge Maillard sprang upon the plank in his place, and succeeded in possessing himself of the note which he remitted to Élie. It contained these words:—

'We have twenty thousand charges of gunpowder. Unless you accept our terms of capitulation, we will blow up the garrison and the whole quarter of the town.'

'I accept, on the word of honour of an officer,' called Élie; 'lower the drawbridge.'

But the crowd protested against this capitulation, being exasperated against the garrison for having thinned their numbers with their bullets; and running the cannon forward to the brink of the fosse, they pointed it, and prepared to fire, when a young and beautiful girl, wearing a peasant's scarlet cap, to which was pinned the national rosette, and holding a musket in one hand, and a blue cloak over her other arm, suddenly cast her bonnet upon the touch-hole, and held it resolutely there.

At the same moment the lesser drawbridge was lowered, and Élie, Hullin, Maillard, and Cholat leaped upon it and prevented others from crossing till they had attached it to the ground with cramps and nails; then, flying to the other side, they let the great bridge fall with a crash.

Immediately the French guard marched across, and with great forethought ranged themselves on either side of the bridge, to prevent the crowd, which prepared to rush over it, from forcing one another over the edge into the moat.

The tunnel that opened before them through the massive walls of the fortress was illumined by the ruddy glare of the governor's house and guard-houses, which were in flames, and a streak of fire shone even into the well-like quadrangle in the centre.

A light dusty rain had been falling, so light as not to wet any one, but to draw a silvery haze over the scene. As the insurgents rushed through the portal, the sun pierced this veil and painted upon it a portion of a rainbow above the huge black towers.

One of the first to enter the court of the Bastille was the girl who had prevented the gun from being discharged. It was Madeleine.

In the quadrangle were drawn up the garrison, on the right the invalids, on the left the Swiss.

Some of the people, in their fury, rushed upon them. Élie drew his sword, and stood before the French veterans.

'I have given my word of honour that they shall be untouched,' he cried; 'they are our brothers. Respect your victory.'

But the authority which had been acknowledged in battle was little regarded in the moment of triumph, and the insurgents fell upon the Swiss, against whom they were especially exasperated.

Hullin and Élie continued to cry, 'Spare them. Respect your victory; let no blood be shed by us within these accursed walls!' but the rage of the assailants rendered them deaf to the appeals of their officers.

'Turn their coats!' cried Madeleine.

'Turn their coats; yes, let them be turned,' repeated the brave Élie; and in an instant the uniform of the Swiss was torn off by ready hands and reversed.

'Nicholas, help!' called Madeleine, as she rushed upon the corporal, and rent his uniform from his back.

In the scuffle, one of the guard fled,—the man who stood next to Deschwanden.

A shout of rage burst from the victors, and they turned in pursuit. The man ran towards the great entrance, but it was blocked by an advancing crowd of people; he turned and fled round the quadrangle, with a score of pursuers at his heels. He tried the chapel door, but it was locked, then he doubled and fled towards the new buildings. As he ran up the steps, a dozen hands seized him. With a scream, so piercing that the walls of the great square echoed it again and again, he went down, and was literally hacked to pieces. This man was Beckhard, the gunner, who had produced the greatest havoc among the people by the discharges of the rampart gun near the gate.

The excitement of the chase and the murder had arrested the attention of the mob.

Madeleine and Nicholas had taken advantage of the incident to equip the corporal in the blue cloak and red cap of the girl, and to arm him with her rifle.

'Join us, quick!' she whispered; then aloud in her shrill tones: 'My friends! our brothers are languishing in these dungeons. Let our first act be their release!'

'To the dungeons!' was answered by the people.

'Lead off the prisoners,' ordered Élie; and the Swiss guard, minus their corporal and their gunner, were marched out of the citadel, which they had defended with so much gallantry. As they appeared in the streets, their turned coats saved them from being massacred by the people, for they were mistaken for prisoners who had just been liberated.

Floods of excited besiegers continued to pour into the great court, and the invalids were exposed to imminent danger. Those who had brothers and fathers killed in the siege demanded their blood. They fell upon one of them,—the man Ferrand, who had prevented the governor from blowing up the citadel,—and killed him; then cut off his hands and carried them about on the end of pikes. The butchery of the rest would inevitably have followed, had not the Sieur Marqué, sergeant of the French guard, forced his way, followed by his company, through the mob into the quadrangle, and surrounded the invalids, shouting: 'Pardon, pardon for your comrades, your brothers!'

These words met with an instant response, so versatile is a mob, and a lane was opened through the crowd to allow the twenty-two invalids, and eleven little Swiss children belonging to the foreign detachment, to leave the castle, escorted by the French guard, who continued to cry out as they advanced, 'The people have pardoned; open your ranks.'

In the meantime, Cholat had hunted out De Launay, who stoutly denied that he was the governor. But Cholat knew him, and dragging him along, he called to Hullin and a couple of grenadiers to assist him in conveying him to the tribunal of the electors, to be by them judged.

As De Launay was brought into the quadrangle, a thousand voices cried for his blood. He quaked with fear, and drawing a dagger, attempted to stab himself, but Cholat knocked the weapon from his grasp, not, however, before De Launay had wounded himself in the hand.

Hullin and Cholat attempted to force their way through the crowd with their prisoner between them. Hullin, an immense man, covered him with his person. One of the crowd struck at the governor with a sabre, but only cut his clothes. His captors, redoubling their efforts, succeeded in forcing their way through the gates and reaching the street. In the outer court they were joined by some others, animated by the same desire of saving the governor from the rabble, and bringing him to justice.

But the rush of the tide was against them; they were breasting waves of life rolled towards the Bastille from every quarter of Paris, to which the news spread like lightning that the citadel had fallen. Cholat was torn from the side of De Launay. The great Hullin held his prisoner as long as he could; finding that he could no longer protect him, he put his own hat on the governor's head, and then the blows aimed at the latter fell on his shoulders. But he wriggled his way through the crowd, grasping the prisoner, till he had reached the arcade S. Jean. There the mass of people swayed like a sea in a storm. Twice Hullin fell, and twice he regained his feet. Cholat had fallen. He had eaten nothing all day, and this last desperate effort to save a life had been too much for him. He fainted, and was well-nigh trodden to death beneath the feet of the crowd. Arné, who had taken his place beside the governor, was swallowed up in a whirlpool of people.

In another moment, the head of De Launay was cut off and held up on a pike, amidst the cheers of a brutal mob.

Madeleine, the corporal, thoroughly disguised, and by all supposed to be a leader of the insurgents, Nicholas, and Gabrielle, whom Madeleine had drawn with her, rushed to the steps of the new buildings. They were splashed with blood, where the gunner had fallen. A man had run a ladder against the clock-face, adorned with the chained automata, and was up at it, hacking them and their fetters to pieces.

A tumultuous rabble besieged the door of the new chapel, supposing it to be an entrance to the prisons, and would have burst it open, when it was unlocked from within, and the old chaplain appeared, saying, 'The spot is sacred.' The mob fell back out of reverence; but presently they observed the painting over the altar, which, by a refinement of cruelty, represented S. Peter in chains between his keepers.

'Look,' roared one of the crowd; 'in the house of God, despotism preaches to the captives that nothing but a miracle can deliver them from their bonds.'

'Follow me,' cried another, armed with a hatchet, leaping in. Directly the sanctuary was invaded, and the objectionable painting was removed; but no other injury was done.

In the meantime, the corporal, Nicholas, and the two women, followed by a number of men, armed with guns, hatchets, and pikes, rushed along the passage in the new buildings. Gabrielle conducted them. They reached the corridor in the well-court, between the towers Du Pont and De la Liberté.

'Thirty-five,' said Gabrielle, arresting them at the door where Madame Berthier was confined.

Hatchets, bars, and hammers were at once applied, and the door was forced in.

Before them stood the lady, with the yellow cat on her shoulder, hissing with fright, with erect back and tail.

Gabrielle fell into her arms, without speaking.

'I thought so,' said Madame Plomb; 'we have been expecting the towers to fall every minute. Now come away from here; they have been tottering for days—for years, I believe; come quickly away, or they will bury you under the ruins. I am going, and Gabriel is going, so none of you remain behind.'

Then striding over the shattered door with her cat still perched beside her head, holding Gabrielle's arm, she led the way into the corridor.

'Where is the Beast?' she asked suddenly, turning round on her deliverers. 'Ah! he is hidden. Wait a bit, I must go after him myself.'

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE day of the 14th had been spent at Versailles by the Assembly, in sending deputations to the king which were answered evasively, and by the queen and Madame de Polignac in encouraging the officers, to whom was committed the task of restoring the ancient régime. The queen had walked in the orange-garden within sight of the soldiers, had spoken to and flattered their officers, and had ordered the distribution of wine among the troops.

In the meantime, messages were being transmitted to the Assembly from the Committee of Electors at the Hôtel de Ville of Paris, informing them of the state of the capital, and of the siege of the Bastille. The news of the progress of the insurrection spread through Versailles, and excited various emotions. That which predominated in the Hall of the States-General was vexation, because the work of the Assembly was interrupted by the popular agitation. The courtiers swaggered and laughed over it. That the people should be able to dint the walls of a fortress which had repulsed the Great Condé, was a supposition too absurd to be entertained with gravity.

The king retired early to bed. About midnight, the Duke de Liancourt entered his chamber to announce the capture of the Bastille, and, at his instance, he resolved to visit the Assembly next morning.

The Assembly had reassembled, ignorant of the dispositions of the king, and it resolved to send him another deputation; but when he arrived, without guards, and advancing into the hall spoke frankly and naturally, he was interrupted by bursts of applause.

But the Court had no intention of capitulating to the Assembly. Berthier and Foulon were at Versailles with De Broglie, Breteuil, and the rest of the new ministry. They saw that the crisis had arrived. Force must be employed, or all was lost.

A cabinet council was summoned; Monsieur and the Count d'Artois formed part of it. Every member composing it was anxious, those who least expressed it in their countenances were the old Marshal and Foulon. The Count d'Artois was in a condition of nervous trepidation; he had heard that his name had been denounced at the Palais Royal, along with those of Flesselles and De Launay. The Marshal de Broglie was indifferent, at least in appearance; if the king gave the command, he was ready to blow Paris into the Seine; he was a soldier, and his chief virtue lay in obedience to his superior. Foulon, calm and imperturbable, took snuff, and then dusted his face with his handkerchief; he extended his box to Berthier, who took a pinch with shaking fingers. His father-in-law raised his eyebrows, and a slight curl appeared on his lip.

Berthier wiped his eyes repeatedly, and dropped his handkerchief, picked it up and dropped it again.

The stout, amiable king had a weary, worried expression; his lock-making and hunting had been sadly interfered with by the business of state.

The ministers were singularly agreed. Their plans had been concerted to the smallest detail at De Broglie's lodgings. When each spoke, it was to address the king, and to urge him to adopt decisive measures.

'Sire,' said De Broglie, 'I have the troops massed about Paris. Two fresh regiments have to-day arrived. In my opinion, the people have been allowed to make head against authority too long. They must be restrained. If I may march my battalions upon Paris, I promise your majesty, in twelve hours the rebellion will be at an end.'

'But blood will be shed,' said the king, thoughtfully.

'A little, no doubt, will be spilt,' answered the marshal; 'but what of that?'

'No blood shall flow by my orders,' said Louis, decidedly.

'You are wrong, De Broglie,' observed Foulon; 'the chances are that no lives will be lost; when your thousands appear, bah! who will there be in the streets? The rats will have fled into the sewers, and in good time we shall send the cats after them. Bah! talk of bloodshed! there is not the possibility of that. What is the civilian before the soldier? Nothing. The soldier is trained to cut this way, and to thrust that way, to bang off his gun so, and to charge with his lance so. He has acquired the art of killing a man in some thirty different ways. The civilian knows that; he looks up at the man of war and says to himself, "I am a mere tyro at this art. Whilst I am making up my mind how to begin, whisk, whisk, whack, whack, I am a dead man in four slices. I had better run." And, sire! he runs.'

'You think there will be no loss of life?' asked the king, hesitatingly.

'Think, sire,' repeated Foulon, with admirable confidence; 'I am absolutely sure of it. Consider, there are some hundred cannon and bombs ready at a moment's notice to knock the house of our Parisian rebel into fine dust about his ears. In that house are the beloved wife, and the darling children. A bomb falling through the ceiling may reduce the beloved wife to pulp, and mash the darling children. And worse still, the furniture will all be destroyed, and the linen torn to shreds, and the strong box containing ten years' savings exploded high into the air to fall down the chimney of neighbour B., his implacable enemy. But worse still is the prospect of himself being maimed in a finger, a toe, an eye, or a nose, or of being blown bodily into that most objectionable of places—eternity.'

'But,' hesitated the king, 'if the good people were to oppose the troops——'

'Then,' said De Broglie, 'we must pour a volley among them and send them flying.'

'I cannot make up my mind to it,' said Louis, despairingly. 'Am not I the father of my people? How, then, can I consent to their being mown down by your bullets?'

'Sire,' observed Foulon; 'allow me to remark, without the least intention of presumption, that it is very necessary for a father sometimes to whip his little boys; that, unless he wishes his home to become a bear-garden, he must use the rod pretty freely and pretty resolutely.'

'Sire,' said Berthier, 'I know these ruffians. Assume the upper hand, and they will cringe to you. We must punish them for their audacity. Sire! there is no knowing to what extremities they may proceed unless they are reined up at once.'

'That is quite possible. I dare say you are right, gentlemen,' said the king; 'but yet——' and he shook his head.

'Your majesty must remember that the dignity of the throne has to be maintained,' said the Count d'Artois.

'I will not maintain it by steeping my royal purple in the blood of my subjects,' answered Louis.

'Then, in Heaven's name, sire!' exclaimed the prince, losing all patience, 'throw open the jails and let no murderer, coiner, or robber be broken henceforth on the wheel. Our great ancestor, S. Louis, when trying a criminal, was much inclined by his natural tenderness of disposition to pardon the man; but, happening to open his Psalter at the words, "Feci judicium et justitiam," he resolved to let Justice take her course. Mercy that is not tempered with justice degenerates into weakness.'

'I know,' said Louis, simply—so simply as to raise a smile on several lips—'I know that I am weak.'

'Yes, sire! you are naturally prone to humanity and kindness. But at a moment like this, to yield to the tenderer feelings, when a decided line of action is imperatively demanded, is indeed weakness.'

'Enough,' said Louis; 'you are rather hard on me, Charles.'

'For my part,' muttered Berthier, 'I don't care how many of those Parisian blackguards are despatched. They richly deserve breaking on the wheel, and, to my thinking, a sabre-cut, a bayonet-thrust, or a bullet, is too merciful treatment.'

'You are not their father, M. Berthier,' said the king.

'Sire,' began De Breteuil, in his loud, inflexible voice, 'it is not a question of blood or no blood, but a question of the blood of the rabble or of the court and the ministry. If the measure we suggest, namely, the reduction of the rebellion by fire and steel, be rejected, then nothing remains for us but to tender our resignations, and to provide for our own safety, as best we can. That the brutal mob which has massacred your majesty's servants, Governor De Launay and Provost Flesselles, will hunt us down and butcher us, I have no manner of doubt; your majesty, by condoning those murders, assures to the rabble impunity if they assail us.'

'No, no, De Breteuil, you are wrong there.'

'Pardon me, sire,' he answered stiffly.

'What am I to do?' exclaimed the unfortunate king; 'I wish one of my brothers had been born before me.'

The door half opened, and the queen appeared. She beckoned to the king, and he followed her, closing the door behind him.

'Supposing we fail,' said Vaudreuil; 'I believe that our only chance of safety is to fly the country.'

'If his majesty reject our proposal,' said Artois, 'I fly to-morrow. I have no desire to have my head carried about on the end of a pike.'

'What shall you do?' asked Berthier of his father-in-law.

'I!' answered Foulon, taking snuff; 'I shall die.'

'I shall be off,' said Berthier, roughly; 'I'm not likely to run the risk of being murdered like Flesselles, without the satisfaction of knowing that my death will be avenged.'

'I suppose if we retire, Necker will return,' said De Broglie. 'Well, let his majesty try peace; it has failed once, and it will fail again.'

'Are you aware, marshal,' said Foulon, 'that Mirabeau has been crying out for your head?'

'Let him come and try to take it,' answered De Broglie; 'he will find me his match, old as I am.'

The king returned, his brow wet with perspiration, and his whole countenance wrung with distress.

'Gentlemen,' he spoke; 'I will do what I can. I will do anything you desire of me—except give orders for the attack upon Paris. Happily, no blood has flowed yet by my orders. I swear that none shall flow by my command. My reflections are made; I am ready to follow your advice and that of her majesty in every particular except that which is against my conscience. I have tried to stifle its voice, I have tried to see the force of your arguments, but ever the horror starts up before me of the possibility, nay, I fear the probability of carnage, and of bearing to my grave a brand worse than that of Cain; he was his brother's murderer, how much worse for a father to give up his children to slaughter! I cannot—indeed I cannot—consent.'

'Sire,' said De Breteuil, 'if your majesty has taken that resolution, we have but one course open to us.'

'The queen has been urging me,' said the king; 'and, if it were not against my conscience, I would yield to her.'

'Then your majesty must allow us to tender our resignation,' said De Breteuil.

'This is really very hard,' the king exclaimed. 'Have you only one scheme, and that a bloody one? Why not try conciliation?'

'Sire, we have judged what is the only course open to us to propose; if your majesty rejects that, it is our duty to withdraw.'

'I am very sorry,' muttered the king; 'but it cannot be helped, I fear. Oh that we had come to an end of these troubles!'

When the ministers retired they shook hands. The three days' ministry was at an end.

'I am off,' said De Broglie; 'I shall not jeopardise my neck in France any longer.'

'And I follow you,' said the Count d'Artois.

'I shall take refuge in Belgium,' said Berthier.

'And I—' observed Foulon; 'I shall prepare to die—take a pinch of snuff.'

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MADAME PLOMB returned to her husband's house, and was greeted by the hounds with exultant barks and gambols.

Her confinement had made her more crazy than ever, and Gabrielle had insisted on attending her to the door, and would have remained with her, in spite of her own fears, had not Madame Berthier refused to permit it.

'No, my dear,' said the poor lady; 'suppose the wolf be here in bed with a great frilled nightcap on; and when you go up to him, mistaking him for me, and say, "Oh, what great eyes you have!" he answers, "To see you the better, my dear;" and when you say, "Oh, what white teeth you have!" he rushes out upon you roaring, "To eat you the better, my dear—" That will never do; we must kill the wolf first, then you shall stay with me.'

'Madame,' said Gustave, 'your honoured husband is at Versailles.'

'At Versailles, is he? Pray, what is he doing there?'

'Madame,' answered the porter, 'he is one of his gracious majesty's new ministers.'

'Then his gracious majesty is going to eat up the people,' said the poor lady. 'Gustave, have the dogs been good?'

'They have been devils, madame,' exclaimed the porter, shaking his fist at them. 'They have leaped and barked all day long, and all night long as well. How is a person to sleep, if at his ear are chained fiends whose throats are never tired of emitting frightful howls? Ah, you ruffians!' he cried, again shaking his fist; 'I will scoop out your eyes, and pour boiling lead down your throats. I will heat the poker red hot and make you swallow it; I will take the skin off you with a file, that I will, sacr-rr-rr-rr-rr-rr-é.'

'Where is Adolphe?' asked madame.

'Alas! the good Adolphe is at the point of death.'

'What! here?'

'No, madame, he is no longer in M. Berthier's service.'

'In whose service is he, then?'

'In that of your most illustrious father.'

'Pray, when did he change his place?'

'About a month ago, madame.'

'And what is the matter with him now?'

'Alas! he is dying of a fever. I am desolated with grief; but what can one do? He is young; he is ten years younger than myself. I am tough, and strong, and wiry, and leathery. Ah! let a fever dare attack me. I will not yield to it. Madame, it is my belief that people die of diseases because they have not the pluck to fight against them. As I said to Adolphe, "Resist, man, resist; don't yield to the nasty insidious complaint; refuse to admit that you are ill; say to yourself, I never was better in my life. Shower contempt on the fever, spit upon it—and it will flee from you." But Adolphe is a poor fellow, he has no spirit; I could not stimulate his resolution, he yielded at once; and then, of course, the disorder obtained the mastery. Why, madame, suppose I were to succumb to these hounds; suppose I were to run away the moment they leap against me; suppose I were to scream out when they bark; they would fall on me and mangle me, and tear my throat and suck my blood. But I resist them, I threaten them, I cast ferocious glances at them, I swell with wrath against them; I arm myself with a redoubtable whip, and they slink before me into the kennels. See!'

Gustave dived into his lodge and rushed from it in another moment armed with a whip like a Russian knout.

Charging with blazing eyes, whirling his scourge above his head, and thundering forth exclamations of rage, and threats of horrible tortures in store for the hounds, he sent them flying to their holes with their tails between their legs.

'See, madame!' he exclaimed; 'that is the way to treat disease. Rush out upon it, throw yourself into a paroxysm of rage; curse, swear and blaspheme! It is better than ten thousand pills, powders, and draughts, provided by twenty millions of doctors.'

'When was M. Berthier here last?' asked madame.

'On Sunday, he has not returned since; and indeed,' he added, with some hesitation, 'I fear that it would hardly be safe for him to show himself in Paris at present. You will excuse me, madame, for hinting this.'

'Why not safe?' asked the poor woman; 'do others hate him as much as I do?'

'I fear that monsieur is not popular with the Parisians. They are flushed with victory, and incensed against my master. The mob has already assembled once or twice before the house, but I have assured them that he is at Versailles, and they have retired. But their attitude was threatening. I only wish I had had a few soldiers here, and we should have bayoneted them all the way up the street, and fed the dogs for weeks afterwards on their carcases. Ah, ha! Pigeon, Poulet! how you would have danced to taste man-meat, to lick up human blood! You would want some taking down afterwards to bring you to proper obedience! Sapristi! that you would!'

'Madame,' said Gabrielle, 'if Monsieur Berthier is unlikely to return here, let me remain with you for a few days.'

'Are you sure he will not venture here?' asked the lady of Gustave.

'See, my good mistress,' replied the man, drawing her into his lodge, and leading her to the window; 'will you do me the favour of looking out, and turning your head a little to the left?'

'Well,' answered she, when she had complied with his request; 'I see nothing remarkable.'

'No, madame; but you see a plaster-cast dealer at the corner?'

'Yes, I do; but what of that?'

'In half an hour his place will be taken by a seller of quack medicines, and that man will remain there till dusk. As soon as the bell goes at six, a man in a white blouse with his hands in his pockets will take the doctor's place, and will pace up and down till midnight, when he will disappear, and another man will occupy the same post. At day-break there will be a colporteur selling pamphlets.'

'And what does that mean?'

'It means, madame, that a strict watch is kept upon the house; and that, if monsieur were to return, it would be reported all over the town. I think I know the faces of some of these sentinels. The plaster-cast dealer lost his betrothed some few years ago. I need not tell you, madame, what had become of her, and the man found out and vowed vengeance on the Intendant, for which threat he was imprisoned. The quack doctor's little daughter was supposed by many to have been decoyed into this house. Anyhow she disappeared, and the father came here to make inquiries. I had orders to turn the dogs loose upon him. I do not know the other men. The colporteur's face I think I have seen at Bernay, but I cannot be sure.'

Madame Berthier laughed and danced round the yard.

'This is charming!' she cried; 'others are after the Beast. We will hunt him down, shall we not, Pigeon, dearest; shall we not, my treasure of a Poulet?' Then whirling up to Gabrielle, she caught her in her arms and said, 'Yes, stay here now with me; he dare not come to the house, or, if he does, I will deliver him over to the dogs and the men, and they will tear him in pieces.'

'Will you allow me, dear mistress, to run home to Madame Deschwanden's, and bring a few of my things?'

'Certainly,' answered the crazy lady; 'but be quick, for I have many things to show you and my seraph Gabriel. And I will keep his curiosity on the stretch till you return.'

Events of importance had followed the capture of the Bastille. The National Assembly sent a deputation, consisting of Bailly, Lafayette, the Archbishop of Paris, and the stout half-Irish Lally-Tolendal, to the Hôtel de Ville to announce the reconciliation effected with the king. Their presence caused the liveliest joy; and the electors proceeded to confer on Lafayette the command of the national guard, as they now called the newly-organized militia, and to choose Bailly to be Mayor of Paris in the place of the unfortunate Flesselles.

Whereupon a Te Deum was voted; and the multitude of French guards, soldiers of the line, and militia, together with a crowd of citizens, marched to Notre-Dame, where the ceremony was performed with due splendour.

The city had settled down into something like calm. The barricades were not removed, nor did the sentries cease to pace their distance. The feverish excitement had subsided, but anxiety still remained dominant. Would the king suffer the forty thousand men round Paris to remain inactive, and make no attempt to punish those who had broken open his fortress? In spite of the royal promise that the troops should be withdrawn, they remained at their posts.

The court, which had at first refused to believe in the fall of the Bastille, when all doubt of the fact disappeared, made light of the circumstance, for they trusted in a few hours to recapture the citadel. But when the king, obstinate for once in his life, refused all solicitations to employ force, then they felt that their hopes were at an end, and the Count d'Artois, the Condés, the Contis, the Polignacs, Vaudreuil, De Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc and others, absconded from France. Necker had left the Polignacs in power at Versailles; they were the first to announce to him at Basle the ruin and dispersion of the three days' ministry. De Breteuil hung on a few days longer, and then emigrated, to act as Louis XVIth's secret minister at foreign courts. Berthier was nowhere to be found, and with him had disappeared all the officers charged with the administration of provisions. Foulon was reported to be sick to death, poisoned by his own hand, in his stately mansion in the Rue du Temple.

Gabrielle was sitting one morning with Madame Plomb in the window, and the poor woman had recurred to her dream of a flight to the land of rocks and mountains.

'You know that it is a promise,' said she; 'you assured me that when I escaped from that hateful prison, I should go to the place where I was when a child.'

'But where was it?' asked Gabrielle.

'That I cannot say distinctly. I remember the mountains glittering with snow, and the roar of the falling torrents. I remember the blue lakes——'

'Dear madame,' said Gabrielle, interrupting her, 'your words remind me of what Nicholas and the corporal are continually repeating. You must mean Switzerland.'

'I am not certain,' answered Madame Berthier. 'There are so many mountains in the world. We have ranges of snowy peaks in the south and in the east, and there are the mountains of Auvergne. How can I say that it was not the Pyrenees or the mountains of Dauphiné that I remember?—Why are you blushing, child?' This was asked abruptly as Gabrielle drew her face from the window, and looked down at the needlework on which she was engaged.

Directly after a servant announced that there was some one at the door who wanted to speak to Mademoiselle André.

'Show him up here,' said madame. 'Do not stir from your seat, Gabrielle. I must see what it was that made you blush.'

The door immediately opened to admit Nicholas, who on entering stood shyly, hat in one hand, and a little statuette in the other.

He looked first at Gabrielle and then at Madame Plomb, with his large eyes full of bewilderment.

The leaden lady smiled.

'Is this the M. Nicholas of whom you so often speak?' she asked.

Gabrielle became crimson. Nicholas at the same moment radiated joy and nodded to the girl.

'This is the M. Nicholas Deschwanden who can tell you all about his land of mountains and lakes,' she said.

'That is capital,' exclaimed the lady. 'Sit down, young man, and tell me all about Switzerland.'

'Ah! good madame, how could I tell you all in one breath? Switzerland would take a lifetime to describe. And again, what description can adequately express its glories?'

'You have snowy mountains there,' said madame.

'Snowy mountains!' echoed Nicholas, his eyes lighting up. 'Oh! if you could but see them, standing half way up the sky, with their bases lost in blue shadows, and the evening glow—the Alpenglüth, we call it—upon their heads. Madame, since I have been in Paris, I have met some philosophers who deny all those things which I have been taught to believe. I have heard them pronounce Heaven and Paradise to be a fable; but no one looking at our Alps of an evening could doubt in Heaven and Paradise; they are a Revelation,—a witness of a better life and a better country. I am clumsy to express myself, but I feel it there,' and he laid his hand on his heart. 'Ah! good madame, it is a wonderful sight to behold the golden crimson light fade off the snow, and then there steals over the icy peaks a greyness like death, a ghastly chill that lasts for a few moments, as though they knew that they were not eternal.'

'And the lakes,' said Madame Berthier. 'I remember one as blue as heaven, with white water-lilies on it.'

'Was it a pond in France?' asked Nicholas, looking at Gabrielle.

'No. I have been among mountains and lakes.'

'Have you been in Switzerland?' asked Nicholas, eagerly.

'I do not know. I remember when I was a little child that I was in a beautiful land; but whether it was Switzerland or not I cannot tell.'

'We have such lakes,' said Nicholas; 'little heavens lying among the rough mountains, like still souls, such as that of Gabrielle, amongst the wild spirits surrounding them. There are water-lilies on our Sarnen See. But that is not equal to the lake of the Four Cantons, shaped like a cross, and the Catholic cantons cling around it lovingly.'

'Are you not all Catholics in Switzerland?' asked Madame Berthier.

'No,' answered the young man, sadly. 'Some of the cantons are Protestant. Oh, madame, is not that sad? and in those parts you cannot travel without tears. Love, faith, religion, are dead. Above the Lake of Thun, on the edge of a precipice, is a little cave in which lived a thousand years ago a blessed hermit.'

'Not Bruder Klaus, surely,' said Gabrielle.

'Bruder Klaus! no. It was the blessed Beatus. He was a British missionary, and he converted all that portion of Switzerland. I have visited his cave. From the mouth you can look over the beautiful lake to the snowy heads of the Jung-Frau, the Mönch, and the Eiger. Oh! the scene is so lovely. But no pilgrims visit the cave; the people around have forgotten their benefactor along with the faith he taught them. It is sad. I wept in that cave, and prayed for the re-conversion of those cantons which had fallen into heresy.'

His bright, honest face became clouded with sorrow.

Madame Berthier looked at it, smiled, and changed the subject.

'What is that little statuette in your hand?'

The lad coloured, and extended it to her.

'If you please, madame, I bought it for Mademoiselle André. It seemed to me so long since she left our house, and yet it is only three days, and I was sure that she wanted something, but I could not exactly tell what. I thought about it all day. I felt a voice within me say, "Gabrielle has need of something, you must take it to her." I felt impelled to come here, but I did not know for what purpose. At last it flashed across my mind that she must desire a little image of the Blessed Virgin for her devotions.'

'In other words,' said the lady, 'you felt miserable without Gabrielle, and hunted about for an excuse to come here?'

Nicholas stared at her. This was a new light in which to view his sensations. There might be some truth in it, he admitted to himself, and then his eyes fell.

'Oh, madame,' said he, 'you should see our beautiful lake of the Four Cantons. There is not a promontory that does not end in a little white chapel with a red roof, containing a sacred figure; there is not a rock jutting out of the water which has not its tiny shrine upon it. Oh! it is so pretty, so religious, so happy! I remember one just opposite the arm of the lake that points towards the south, it stands almost on the blue water, a white sunny speck, and when you row up to it you find it to be an arcaded niche, enshrining a statue of S. Nicolas von der Flue, the hermit, in his brown serge habit, staff in hand, with his sad, pale, earnest face looking out towards the hazy ridge, on the flank of which he dwelt so many years in prayer and fasting. And as you near the next prong of rock thrust out of the waves, you see a bower of hazels, in which snuggles another tiny chapel, open only to the water, overhung by a bush of flowering elder, with braids of crimson wild rose wavering against the white walls, and blue salvia and pink willow-herb clustering about the sides; whilst before the statue of the Blessed Virgin bearing her Child, that it contains, the sparkling ripples incessantly bow and whisper their litanies.'

'How beautiful!' exclaimed Madame Berthier; 'I must ask my father whether it was Switzerland that I remember.'

'Your father!' repeated Nicholas, looking blank; 'what can you mean, madame? do you not know——?'

'Know what?'

Nicholas looked at Gabrielle, and signed that he wished to say something to her in private.

'What do you mean?' again asked Madame Berthier.

'May I say a few words to Gabrielle first, outside the door?'

'By all means,' answered the poor lady, laughing.

The girl hesitated, but Nicholas winked and nodded to her, and contrived to express by cabalistic signs the importance of the communication he desired to make.

This did not reassure Gabrielle, who hung back more reluctantly than before; but her mistress insisted on her following Nicholas, and the young man, taking her arm, drew her into the passage.

'What is it, Nicholas?' she asked; 'I wish you would not be so mysterious. You quite frighten me.'

'Do not be angry, my dear friend,' he replied, 'it is about that poor unhappy lady I want to speak to you. I expected to find you alone here.'

'Then why did you come?' asked Gabrielle.

'I did not know that there was a prospect of finding you alone when I started,' pursued Nicholas; 'but I heard that M. Foulon was dead. Dreadful! it is reported that he poisoned himself, but that may be only a report and worthless. As I came here, I passed the funeral procession.'

'But, Nicholas, my mistress knows nothing of this.'

'How strange! She is his daughter. Has she not been told that her father is dead?'

'No. She did not know of his illness.'

'That is wonderful,' said the young man. 'But possibly the family were not aware that she had left the Bastille.'

'They must surely have known that.'

'Anyhow,' continued Nicholas, 'I saw the funeral on its way through the Rue S. Honoré to the church of S. Rocque. The cortège is splendid, and is passing through all the most important streets. Several carriages follow the hearse. No expense seems to have been spared.'

'Are you sure of this, Nicholas?'

'Perfectly,' answered the young man; 'I went myself to the mansion in the Rue du Temple, where the entrance-doorway was converted into a chapelle ardente, hung with black and adorned with the armorial bearings of the deceased.'

'What is to be done?' exclaimed Gabrielle.

'I think you ought to tell madame. I was dismayed when I entered and found her here. I cannot understand it. I will wait whilst you inform her. I will remain outside. Go in, Gabrielle.'

'I dare not.'

'Why not?' asked madame from within. 'I have heard all. You foolish children; you should speak lower. I am quick of hearing. My father dead! My father being buried! Well! I will attend his funeral, though not invited. Perhaps Berthier is there, and has kept the secret from me. Alas! I do not love my father, but I am sorry that he is dead. Come, my children, let us go to the church; I must see him once more.' She threw her bonnet and veil upon her head and prepared to sally forth.

'You see I am always in mourning,—always ready for a death. The cat cannot come. He is in too gay a costume. He must be put in trappings of woe when we return.'

On her way to S. Rocque, the poor woman became very excited, having convinced herself that Berthier had purposely kept her in ignorance of her father's death, and she turned first to Gabrielle and then to Nicholas to denounce him. By the time she had reached the railing before the flight of steps leading to the church, she had worked herself into a fit of madness.

The street was packed with spectators, who observed a sullen silence. Foulon was intensely and implacably hated, and he had been given over at the Palais Royal, by the popular orators, to the vengeance of the Parisians. The starving people, who during the last few days had suffered severely owing to an increasing deficiency of supplies, could not forget that this man had been one of the greatest farmers of the revenue, had made an enormous fortune out of the compact of famine, and had throughout his life been callous to the distress of the poor. His speech at Bernay, 'Wait till I am minister, then the people shall eat hay, my horses eat it,' had been repeated in the capital.

If Foulon had appeared in the streets alive, surrounded by a troop of soldiers, the exasperated mob would have burst through the iron ring and have strangled the life out of him. Now he was dead, they respected his body.

Madame Berthier, observing the crowd outside of the church, turned to those nearest her, and asked,—

'Have you come to see my father buried? I am his daughter, and they never told me of his death. But that was Berthier's doing.'

No one answered her except with scowls.

'Let me pass,' said she to the Suisse at the gate; 'do you know that my father is being buried, and I was not told that he was ill or dead? Was not that cruel? Not that I loved him much. How could I? He never loved me. But I want to see him. Let me pass, good man.'

She was admitted, and mounted some of the steps. At that moment the coffin was borne out of the door, over which black drapery strewn with little silver flames had been suspended.

Her position in comparative isolation before the gloomy trappings and the coffin and mutes on one side, and the mob of spectators on the other, excited Madame Berthier's brain, and springing to the platform on which the body of her father rested, she turned to the people and addressed them, throwing up her veil at the same moment, and displaying her hideous leaden face.

The vision produced a murmur of horror and disgust.

'Ah ha! good souls,' she screamed; 'pray for the unfortunate. Did you love the dead? Answer me.'

There was no response for some moments. She repeated her question, and then one man shouted: 'Does the corn love the wheel which turns on it and crushes it? No, we hate him.'

A groan of rage and detestation was then the general reply.

'Well,' said Madame Berthier, 'I do not care for him. I did not love him, and I do not love him now. He treated me very badly; he mocked me for my leaden looks, and bade me buy love, as I could not win it with my beauty. Will such jests make a child love her parents? Yet I do not hate him; I keep all my hate for my husband. Do you know Berthier de Sauvigny?'

The answer was a roar.

'He is my husband. Ah ha! you hate him, do you?'

'Hate him as we hate hell,' was bellowed.

'Do you hate him more than I do?'

'Ten times more.'

'No, that is impossible. You may kill him, you may bury him, and I will dance over his grave. He shut me into the Bastille, and kept me there a prisoner. Ah! poor father,' she cried, reverting to the coffin; 'ah! you shall be prayed for after death, for you have much to answer for that you committed in life.' She wheeled round to the mob, extended her arms, and cried: 'You are good, you Parisians. When my father and my husband shut me up in that terrible dungeon, you came and tore it down and liberated me. Foulon has wronged you. But he has gone to his account. Pray for the unfortunate!'

She raised her hands above her head, and began to dance with small steps on the pavement-stone on which she stood, without leaving it. All at once she burst into a peal of laughter and exclaimed: 'Do you know, good Parisians, what I did to Berthier?'

Some of the officials of the church and those belonging to the undertaker, advanced to remove her. But the crowd were in the humour to listen to her and to observe her, and they shouted to them to touch the lady at their peril.

'Do you know, good people, what I did?' she asked again. 'No, you cannot guess. He came to visit me in my cell, and I cast my yellow angel—my cat, into his face, and it tore him. I saw the streaks of blood. Ah ha! I hate him.' She knit her hands; her eyes glared like those of a tigress, she became rigid in every limb. 'Promise me, good people, if you find him, you will kill him. Hang him to the lantern, and make him blue like me. I have seen a dead man dangling from a beam—and his face was like mine. Let Berthier become M. Plomb. Promise me not to spare him—swear to me.'

The answer was thundered by several thousand voices—'We swear.'

'Will you curse him? See!' she ran to the church door and tore down a long strip of crape powdered with silver flames, and threw it over her like a cope—'See!' she cried, 'I will be your priestess, leading your curses and your prayers. Curse for me, Berthier de Sauvigny!' She lifted one arm. Her bonnet had fallen, and her ash-grey hair fell wildly about her flame-strewn vestment, which she held about her with her other hand. 'Curse him wherever he be. Cry out anathema!' She mounted the bier, and stood before the coffin. 'Curse him waking, and curse him sleeping.'

The people, falling in with her mad humour, or carried away by the wildness of the scene and her actions, responded,—

'Anathema!'

'Curse him eating, and curse him drinking.'

'Anathema!'

'Curse him in his moments of laughter and mirth, and in his times of sorrow and fears.'

'Anathema!'

'Curse him when he is flying from his enemies. Shut the way about him with curses, that he cannot escape.'

'Anathema!'

'Blind his eyes, that he may not see clearly whither to flee.'

'Anathema!'

'Stop his ears to good advice, and open them only to that which is evil, to the counsel of Ahitophel.'

'Anathema!'

'Curse his hands, that they may fail him in the last struggle for life.'

And the people roared 'Anathema!'

'Curse his feet, that they may fail him when he turns to fly.'

'Anathema!'

'And now,' she continued, lowering her arm and descending from the bier, 'you are good, pray for the unfortunate.' She placed herself before the coffin, faced it, and extending both her arms like a priest at the beginning of the Credo, she cried, 'Pray for the dead, that his sins may be blotted out, and his iniquities be forgiven, Miserere!' The versatile crowd responded, falling on their knees:—

'Miserere!'

'Eternal rest give to him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him!'

'Miserere!'

'I must see his face,' said Madame Berthier, casting aside the black crape and throwing the pall from the coffin. 'I must see my father once more; and I must give him his last kiss. Open the coffin.'

Again the officers interposed; but the poor woman would listen to no reason. 'Berthier in his malice would not tell me that my father was dying, he did not announce to me his death, lest I should kiss him. Let me take my last look, my last kiss. I insist. Have I not a right, do I not draw my blood from his veins? Why am I not to see him?'

She was thrust aside by some of the undertaker's officials with some violence; but the mad creature was as resolute as were they. She turned to the people and appealed to them for help. 'They will not let me see my father. They kept me from his bedside when he was ill; they held from me the news that he was dead; and now they refuse me a last look, and a last kiss. Help, good people! you, who set me at liberty when I was locked up in the Bastille; you will not suffer these hirelings to stand between a daughter and her father!'

The appeal was not made in vain; the Suisse at the gate was thrown down, and the mob poured up the steps to the assistance of the poor lady. In the meantime, an attempt was made to remove the coffin into the church, but a sturdy butcher intercepted his body between it and the door, and frustrated the attempt.

A ring was formed around Madame Berthier and the coffin, and it was observed that several of the mourners immediately decamped with precipitation.

On the coffin was a silver plate, inscribed with the name of Foulon, and a list of the offices he had held, that of minister during the eventful three days, not being omitted.

'Open the coffin for me, good people. You shall see my father. He is not very terrible now.'

'A turnscrew,' was called from man to man; and presently one was produced, and the coffin-lid was slowly and laboriously removed.

'Now,' said Madame Berthier, taking hold of the napkin spread over the face of the deceased, 'I bid you all look with me on the countenance of my poor father. He was a bad man, I allow, and a hard man upon the poor, but then, he is dead now, and has gone to his account. You have prayed God to have mercy on his soul; I am sure when you see his dead face that you will be prepared to bury your resentment in his grave. Behold!' she drew the napkin aside, looked on the face of the corpse, started back, uttering a cry of dismay:—

'This is not my father! This is poor Adolphe!'

The crowd pressed forward and stared long at the dead man, satisfying themselves of the deception. Not a word was spoken, not a murmur arose. All pushed up to the corpse, gazed on it, and then looked into the eyes of those around them.

'My father is still alive!' exclaimed madame. 'Praised be God.'

'Madame,' said a man into her ear, 'before the week is out he will be dead.'

CHAPTER XXXV.

BERTHIER had fled in the direction of Belgium, on foot; travelling by night, hiding in barns or in clumps of trees by day. He had passed two nights without sleeping. At Senlis he was recognised by a baker from whom he bought a loaf; but, by the time the news had become public, he had disappeared. A courier was immediately despatched to Paris with the announcement that Berthier was in the neighbourhood; and the magistrates asked instructions as to their conduct, should he be brought before them. The following evening after dusk, the fugitive entered a small tavern by the road-side, near Compiègne, and asked for supper. He was much altered since he had left Paris. Sleepless nights and anxious days had deprived his complexion of colour, and had reduced it to a pasty hue. His large cheeks hung limp, his red lips had turned purple. His hair, undressed and disordered, held particles of hay and straw entangled in it. A large, broad-brimmed hat covered his brow, and was drawn over his eyes, which troubled him more than heretofore. He held his stained handkerchief between his fingers, he had washed it in a stream by the road-side; it was not thoroughly dry.

The tavern was lighted by a resin candle in a holdfast attached to the jamb of the fireplace, it spluttered and guttered upon the hearth and yielded an uncertain light.

The proprietor of this house of refreshment sat upon a bench outside his door, conversing with a couple of peasants, and smoking a pipe; whilst the wife, a little shrivelled-up old woman, with a handkerchief tied round her head and knotted behind, bustled about the kitchen preparing soup and stew with the assistance of a flat-faced, radiant girl, who tumbled about as though walking on skates, and never stood upright.

M. Berthier requested to have his food served separately at the end of the long table. He did not remove his hat, but sat with his hand to his brow and his elbow on the table.

Presently the flat-faced girl rolled and staggered in with a bowl of potage for each of the guests,—the usual very thin broth in which float scraps of untoasted bread, and the surface dotted with globules of oil, with which foot travellers in France must be familiar. Then the little dried-up woman ran to the door and called imperiously to the three men outside, 'Come on, come on, the potage is served;' whereupon they clattered in, in their sabots, and fell like sacks into their places.

'There you are, sir,' said the wizen hostess, thrusting a bowl of potage before the ex-intendant; 'you will find it superb.'

'The day has been hot and the sun scorching; I have walked far,' said Berthier, wearily.

'From what place does monsieur come?'

'Never mind,' answered Berthier angrily, 'I am too hungry to answer questions; if you answer one that a woman makes, you must answer a thousand.'

The old woman retired muttering.

The peasants, between their spoonfuls of soup, continued the conversation in which they had been engaged outside the door.

'He has not been captured yet?' asked one of the men.

'No, Pierre; but he was seen at Senlis. Do you know that baker, named Michaud, in the square before Notre Dame, at the corner? Well, he went in there to buy a brioche, and the good man knew him; he had seen him when he superintended the buying of the corn in Artois. He did not say much then; he just mentioned it to some of his acquaintances, and they spread the news through the city. But the magistrates do nothing.'

'Why should they, Jean?' asked the other; 'hawks do not prey on hawks, and you will not find magistrates over-zealous in bringing other magistrates to book.'

'And which direction do you think he has taken now?'

'I expect he is on his way to Clermont, and so by Amiens to Lille.'

'Who will arrest him, Pierre?'

'Who but the people?'

'And is he so very bad?'

'He is one of the famine-mongers,' answered Pierre; 'he has made a vast fortune out of speculations in corn. He is a man who has fattened on our misery. He was one who sought to drive the king to massacre his people. He supplied the troops with an incredible number of cartridges, with which he designed that the canaille of Paris should be swept away.'

'And if they catch him, Pierre, what will they do with him?'

The other shrugged his shoulders.

'For my part,' said the innkeeper, 'I don't like popular judgments. Let us have criminals tried by the proper courts.'

'But how so, when the judges are the culprits?'

'I don't like it,' repeated the host.

'Suppose the innkeepers all sold bad wine, and the wine-drinkers rose in a body and produced a notorious adulterator of grape-juice, would they be satisfied with the judgment upon him pronounced by a committee of peculating taverners, eh?'

'You won't make me like it,' said the host, slapping the table.

'He might get to Lille this way, might he not?' asked Jean.

'Ay, he might. And he could hide about in the forest, waiting his opportunity to escape with facility.'

'I doubt if he could be caught if he hid away in the forest.'

'No, they could not catch him, unless they had dogs.'

'What, hunt him with dogs, like a deer!'

'Ay, with bloodhounds.'

Berthier rose from his seat, and laid a piece of silver on the table.

'Where are you going?' asked the little hostess.

'I cannot eat any more,' answered he; 'the soup is thin, the cooking is execrable. Here, take this, I must be off.'

He drew the hat farther over his eyes, and made towards the door. The old woman caught the resin flambeau from its holdfast, and running before him, threw the light into his face.

'Do you say my potage is thin,—is execrable? You did not see the beaux yeux (the oily globules), you did not taste them—no! execrable!'

Berthier brushed past her and went out, muttering a curse.

'Ah!' shrieked the indignant lady after him, 'you despise my potage, you do not admire the beautiful eyes of fat floating on its superb surface. I don't admire your eyes, neither, I tell you. I don't admire eyes set in red-hot sockets. Eyes, indeed! you're a nice choice personage to pour contempt on the magnificent eyes in my potage.' Then, turning to the peasants, she appealed to them. 'I will ask you, gentlemen, to observe your soup. Are there eyes on it; in abundance, eh? or are they scarce, eh? Does the potage taste execrable? does it look execrable? does it smell execrable?'

'Who is that fellow?' asked Pierre.

'Who is he?' repeated the hostess; 'Mon Dieu, how do I know? Do you think I care? do you think I shall concern myself for one instant about a ragamuffin who is so ill bred as to despise my potage; who sees no eyes in my soup; who tastes none; who nevertheless—' she looked into Berthier's bowl; 'who nevertheless has eaten it all up, and not left a sippet of bread behind for the cat?'

'What did you say about his eyes, madame?' asked Pierre.

'What did I say?' repeated the old woman; 'I said that he was not the man to criticise my eyes.'

'But what of his own?'

'What of his own!' echoed the hostess; 'if they were half as superb as those in my potage, he might be thankful, and offer votive wax ones at Notre Dame de Bon-secours. Ah! I have known sore eyes healed there. There was little Babelou, Pernette's daughter. The lids were closed about them like those of a young puppy, and so inflamed. It pierced the heart to see them, and they vowed to Notre Dame and took the child there, and she came back healed.'

'But what about the stranger's eyes? Were they sore?'

'Were they sore?' retorted the old woman. 'Do you call that sore when the eyeball is set in a ring of red? Is one with eyes such as that a fit person to talk of thin soup, of deficient eyes in the potage, of——'

Pierre sprang up with a howl like that wherewith the dog greets the moon.

'It is Berthier,' he yelled; 'follow me, Jean. Leave your clogs here;' and he kicked his wooden shoes under the table.

'Give us a glass to stimulate us for the run, host! Now, Jean, come along. Sapristi! if we catch him, it will be better than a thousand suppers.'

In the meantime, the unfortunate Berthier was running along the road. He was weary, and faint from want of food, and could not run fast, or for long.

The night had set in; along the west lay a belt of light, white and ghastly, where the sun had gone down; and over head a few stars looked out. To his right lay a mass of blackness, which he supposed to be the forest of Compiègne. He passed a solitary church surrounded by the dead, and a light burning in the grave-yard to scare away witches and fiends. He seated himself on the steps before the cross at the gate of the cemetery, and felt for his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his brow. But it was not in his pocket. He remembered to have placed it on his knee when he sat at supper. Doubtless he had dropped it under the table in the tavern.

The tramp of running feet approached, and in fear he sprang up and recommenced his flight.

Pierre and Jean shouted, but he did not answer. His face swam with perspiration, and he smeared it over his cheeks with his cuff, as he tried to wipe them. He strained every nerve to run, setting his teeth; the wind whistled through them as he drew his breath. He stood still, unable to continue his flight, without a break for recovering his wind. His breast laboured. His brain was on fire, and his heart beat violently. The temples throbbed as though a hammer were striking on them. The measured tread of the runners drew nearer; and for a minute Berthier could not run. But just as they hove in sight through the darkness, he bounded forward, and attempted to leap a gate at the road-side opening into a field, but which was fastened. He fell, unable to clear it, and in falling sprained his foot. In another moment the peasants would be upon him. His only resource was to roll into the ditch, half full of water, and overhung with briars at the side.

'He has made for the wood!' shouted Jean.

'Sacré! we must be quick, or we shall miss him!'

Berthier heard both the men climb the gate.

'I know he has gone this way,' said Jean; 'I heard the rattle of the bar as he touched it.'

'Over with you,' shouted Pierre; and both jumped into the field and ran across it.

Berthier heard their calls becoming more distant. He remained immersed in mire, shivering with fear, till they returned, cursing their ill luck.

'Once in the woods he may elude a thousand,' said Pierre, as he climbed the gate on his way back.

'What is to be done now?'

'We must on to Compiègne, and announce to the people there that he is in the forest.'

'Sapristi! I wish I had my wooden shoes.'

'I wish we had not missed him; and all through old mother Picou's gossiping magpie tongue.'

Berthier listened as the two men retired, and then he slowly raised himself from the ditch into which he had rolled. Fagged, with his ankle strained, he felt unequal to a long flight; his only chance lay in being able to escape the vigilance of an aroused peasantry in some nook of the forest.

He therefore pursued the road till it entered the gloom of the trees, when he made for the first gap in the hedge, and dived into the pitch blackness beneath the foliage.

He groped his way along, resting occasionally, and then starting up and pushing forward in his fear. Sometimes the rush of birds rising from their perches among the boughs startled him, and sent the blood to his heart. A wild cat hissed and a night-hawk screamed. Some animal stole past him through the underwood; what it was, Berthier could not guess, but the rustle in the leaves produced by its movements filled him with fear.

He came out upon a path, and was frightened to see a phosphorescent line drawn along it. Wood-cutters had been removing old decayed timber during the day, and the traces were luminous at night.

Hearing a dog begin to bark furiously, he conjectured that he was approaching a farm, so he turned into the woods again. Taking the pole-star as his guide,—he could distinguish it occasionally through the branches overhead, he struck due east, wading through fern. Sometimes he caught his feet in the brambles, sometimes he stumbled over tree-roots or fallen boughs, and fell upon his face.

The ground rose and he mounted a hill, then descended into a valley, mounted another rise and went down into a hollow, where a sheet of water reflected the sky and the trees. In the surface he saw the lightening of the dawn reflected. He bathed his face and hands, and then crept under an oak with his eyes towards the east, waiting for morning to break and the sun to return.

At last the day awoke, and with it the birds, the insects, and the church bell.

The wretched man fell asleep, and did not open his eyes again till past nine. He was refreshed, but stiff and hungry. The place where he was seemed to him too exposed, and he crawled away into the dell under a mat of bracken.

Towards noon his hunger became intolerable, and he deserted his place of concealment, and crept cautiously through the wood, looking for—he knew not what. Presently he came upon a broad path, and in it he saw a priest pacing slowly along reading his breviary.

Berthier hesitated whether to show himself, but a cracking branch against which he leaned attracted the curé's attention, and he directed his eyes towards the point where the fugitive stood. Seeing that he was discovered, the intendant came forward, and presented himself before the priest.

'Who are you?' asked the curé with some surprise.

'Never mind who I am,' answered the unfortunate man; 'I am pursued by bloodthirsty ruffians, my life is sought, and I am obliged to hide. That is enough for you to know. Take my purse, and, for the love of Heaven, bring me some food.'

The priest looked at him with interest and compassion.

'I will assist you,' he said; 'keep your money, you may want it. Who you are I can guess. I will bring you a loaf and leave it behind that sycamore, but do not show yourself again. You must remain concealed in the forest for a few days, and each day you shall find food at the foot of the tree I indicated. When it is safe for you to fly, I will give you notice. Hist!'

Berthier heard shouts; he turned and escaped into his former hiding-place.

The priest resumed his recitation of Sext with the utmost composure, and continued his walk.

Shortly after a troop of peasants, armed with scythes and pitchforks, rushed down the road, chattering, and fired with excitement.

They touched their caps to the curé, who removed his shovel hat and bowed low, without, however, withdrawing his eyes from the book.

'Eh, well! Michel,' said one of the peasants; 'what will you do tearing on in that style? Let me ask Monsieur le Curé if he has seen the fellow.'

The priest continued murmuring his psalms:—

'Fac cum servo tuo secundum misericordiam tuam: et justificationes tuas doce me. Eh! what now, Vacherot?'

'Has Monsieur le Curé seen a man about here?'

'What sort of a man?'

'The fellow is M. Berthier, the ex-intendant of Paris, and he is flying the country.'

'What do you want with him? let him fly.'

'It will not do to suffer him to escape, Monsieur le Curé. Have you seen him?'

'All I can answer you is, that he has not gone this way;' and the curé's forefinger pointed up his sleeve.

'We will hunt elsewhere,' said the peasant. 'Come along, Michel.' And in another moment the rustics were out of sight.

For two days the search was maintained; but Berthier succeeded in eluding his pursuers. He found bread and meat and wine every morning at the place indicated. On the third morning a scrap of paper was attached to the loaf, with the inscription traced on it in pencil, 'Fly east, the pursuit has abated.'

In fact, the country people, tired of wasting their time without a prospect of remuneration, and beginning to disbelieve the report given by Pierre and Jean, returned to their agricultural labours. But Nemesis was at hand.

Directly it was known in Paris that Berthier had been seen at Senlis, his wife started in her light carriage, taking with her the two hounds, Pigeon and Poulet, and accompanied by one of the electors, M. de la Rivière.

At Senlis it was reported that Berthier had been seen in the neighbourhood of Compiègne. At the tavern where he supped, Pierre and Jean and the hostess described his person to the elector.

'It is he,' cried madame; 'we are on the track. You saw his eyes, then, good woman?'

'I saw them plain enough,' she answered; 'I don't want to see them again.'

'And do you know what I want to do?' asked the crazy lady; 'I want to shut them for ever.'

'Which direction did he take?' asked M. de la Rivière.

'He fled into the forest.'

'How long ago?'

'Three nights.'

'Has the forest been searched?'

'We have done our best; but how can fifty thousand acres be thoroughly searched? We want dogs.'

'Here they are,' exclaimed madame, joyously. 'Now, Poulet, and you, Pigeon, you shall have a glorious chase after the wild beast. You shall go straight as arrows after him; you shall track him in all his wanderings, and you shall fall on him and pin him to the ground. Ah! I wish I had brought something of the Beast's here for the hounds to sniff at, to let them know what they are to chase.'

'Madame,' said the little hostess, 'the fellow dropped his handkerchief under my table, when he called my cooking execrable.'

'Bring it here,' ordered the mad woman.

'Yes, that is his!' she cried, when the discoloured kerchief was shown her. 'It is his blood,—faugh! I know its look, I know its colour, I know its scent. Give it to me.'

'Hold, madame,' interposed Pierre; 'let us conduct the dogs to the entrance of the forest.'

We must go back to Berthier, who seated himself in his thicket when he had read the note, and consumed the food provided for him by the priest. The wretched man felt, for the first time since he left Versailles, relief from the agony of suspense. In a few days, if he could only reach the frontier, he would be safe; and every day that took him farther from the capital diminished the probability of his capture.

'Here, then,' said Berthier, tossing off the last drop of the wine, 'here's to my safe escape into Belgium. That priest has been a good fellow; I have a mind to leave some gold in his bottle, as a return for his kindness.' He looked into his well-furnished purse. 'No,' he said; 'I shall want all myself, if I have to remain long in a foreign land. The curé must do without.' Then rising, he threw the poor priest's bottle away, stretched himself, and began stealthily to advance eastward.

He had not taken a step forward, before he heard the baying of some hounds. The note was peculiar, and was familiar to Berthier. His pale face became white as clay.

'My God!' he groaned; 'can it be!'

He began to run, tearing the branches apart, and crashing through the fern.

The baying approached. He uttered a cry of terror, and throwing aside his cloak ran at his utmost speed. Breaking into a forest path, he raced along that. His hat came off, but he disregarded it in the delirium of terror. The scent of burning wood entered his nostrils without being observed; he sped past a charcoal-burner's heap without noticing it. The man attending the fire sprang up and shouted. Berthier turned his head, and saw two hounds leap out of the wood and bound along the path with even gallop, easily, gracefully, at arrowy speed.

His foot catching in a rut, he stumbled; picked himself up again and ran on. Everything swam before his eyes. A roaring as of the sea sounded in his ears.

The hounds drew nearer, nearer, nearer, lessening the distance between them at every bound.

Then Berthier saw it was in vain for him to fly. He caught at the branch of a tree, and endeavoured to lift himself upon it and scramble beyond their reach. The bough bent with his weight. He threw up his feet, to clasp the branch, clinging with his arms, but could not catch the wood. The hounds were beneath him, leaping at him. His arms had not the strength to lift him. The teeth of Poulet entered his calf. He fell to his feet, and ran on, but Pigeon was before him bounding at his throat. He broke off a portion of a bush, a hazel-branch covered with leaves, and thrashed at the dogs with it, but could not hurt them. He backed to an oak and defended himself with his branch and feet, shrieking for fear.

Then Poulet flew at his throat, and he fell; Pigeon danced over and round him, yelping.

The charcoal-burner, begrimed with coal-dust, came up, brandishing a cudgel, and beat off the hounds, standing astride over the prostrate man.

'A thousand livres if you save me!' groaned Berthier.

'A thousand devils!' roared the peasant. 'I will but save you from being torn to bits by these brutes, that I may deliver you over to justice.'

The hounds were furious; they rushed and snapped at Berthier's limbs, at his hands, his feet, at his head, just as they had been wont to rush and snap at their food whilst he beat them off with his whip.

The pain of their bites, the horror of his position, the fear of what was in store for him overcame him, and he lost consciousness.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

IN the afternoon of July 23, Berthier was brought into Paris through the Porte S. Martin, attended by a mob, many of whom had followed for twenty leagues.

He was in his own private carriage, with M. de la Rivière at his side. Madame, in one of her fancies, had chosen to sit outside.

The mob danced before him and raged behind him. A hideous procession was formed. A brass band led the way, followed by national guards, and soldiers from all corps which they had deserted, marching arm-in-arm, chanting with full lungs:—

'Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!

Les aristocrats à la lanterne!

Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!

Les aristocrats on les pendra

La liberté triomphera

Malgré les tyrans, tout réussira.'

The top of the carriage had been broken in by the people, that they might see the hated Berthier better. He sat, white, quivering, in a dream; seeing faces peering at him from above as men climbed behind the cabriolet and looked down on him, from each side, as they thrust their heads in at the windows to stare at him. He heard them hoot and curse, but he scarcely heeded them. Sometimes blows were aimed at him, but Étienne de la Rivière protected him. A fiddler mad with the general excitement climbed up behind the vehicle and beat at Berthier with his violin. The elector broke the instrument on his arm, and then the musician struck with the handle. M. de la Rivière stood up and thrust the fiddler from his perch, and he fell back and disappeared among the crowd that followed.

Madame Berthier, on the box, had adorned her head with a yellow turban, and bore a pole, to which was fastened an orange streamer; this she waved, and at the same time shouted joyously, 'We have him here caged! It was all my doing; I hunted him down with my dogs.'

Banners, rudely extemporised, were fluttered before the carriage, bearing inscriptions such as these:—'He has devoured the poor.' 'He has drunk the blood of the widow and the orphan.' 'He has cheated the king.' 'He has betrayed his country.'

As the broken vehicle passed through the streets, pieces of sour black bread rained in at the top and at the windows, whilst the people howled, 'Take that and eat it, it is what you have given us to eat.'

At the fountain Maubuée the procession was arrested by a tide of people rolled out of La Grève, whither the news had reached that Berthier was entering Paris.

That morning, at nine o'clock, Foulon had been brought to the capital. Some of his servants probably had let the secret escape that he was staying in the château of M. de Sartines, late lieutenant of police, at Viry, near Fontainebleau. Thither, accordingly, some of the electors, followed by a troop of people, had hastened. They found the old man walking in the park. On being arrested, he entreated the electors who seized him to do him the honour of taking a pinch of snuff.

The people, in spite of the remonstrances of his conductors, fell upon him, put a truss of hay on his back, adorned him with a nosegay of nettles, and a collar of thistles. 'You wanted to give us hay,' they said; 'you shall eat some yourself.'

Thus equipped he was led to Paris, and brought before the committee in the Hôtel de Ville.

It was decided that he should be imprisoned in the Abbaye. But La Grève was full of people, and it was questionable whether he could be conducted thither in safety.

If Lafayette had been there, it was thought that the people might have been calmed; but he was absent, and the municipality were in uncertainty what to do. The crowd became more excited, and clamoured for Foulon.

Bailly, gentle, and unfit for such a position, descended to the square to entreat the mob to respect the Hôtel de Ville and the accused; but his voice was scarcely heard, and no attention was paid to his remonstrances.

The crowd forced the few guards before the door from their places, and followed the mayor up the stairs into the great hall, where they bellowed incessantly for Foulon.

After some hesitation, the electors produced him. The old gentleman was perfectly composed. Observing a female in the crowd before him, he detached one of the nettles from his bouquet; and, with a courteous bow, offered it her, saying, 'I am sorry to be unable to offer you a choicer flower, mademoiselle, but pray accept the wish, and overlook the insignificance of the herb; and I will thank you to remind those around you that certain plants cannot be touched with impunity.'

'You are very calm, monsieur,' said one of the guards.

'Sir,' replied Foulon at once, 'crime alone can be disconcerted. Take a pinch of snuff.'

'Why did you want us to eat hay?' shouted some of the crowd.

'Because I eat it myself,' replied Foulon, 'in the shape of beef. Cows eat hay—and I eat cows. Can I wish you anything better?'

M. de Poizc, one of the electors, then addressed the people, urging upon them the illegality of precipitately condemning the accused, without giving him an opportunity of summoning witnesses to prove his innocence.

'Let everything be done in order.'

'Yes, in order,' the mob shouted.

'Every culprit must be first judged,' continued the elector.

'Yes, judged first and hung after,' was answered.

'That comes in order, does it not?' some one cried, and there rose a laugh.

'Gentlemen,' said a M. Osselin, 'in order that a man should be judged, he must have judges. Let us send M. Foulon before the proper tribunal.'

This proposal was met with cries of dissatisfaction.

'We will have him judged at once.'

'We will not let him go before tribunals which are sure to acquit him.'

'The judges are his friends.'

Such were some of the cries that rose upon the proposition of M. Osselin. That gentleman, without losing his presence of mind, replied, 'Well, if you do not like the ordinary judges, it is indispensable that you should nominate others.'

This suggestion did not meet the end proposed by its author.

The mass of the people called repeatedly, 'Do you judge him, you electors!'

'No,' answered M. Osselin; 'we have no authority either to judge or to make judges. Name them yourselves.'

Again M. Osselin was mistaken. He had calculated on the people hesitating to form a criminal tribunal; but with one voice they proposed the curés of S. Étienne du Mont and of S. André des Arcs.

'Two judges are insufficient!' cried M. Osselin; 'there must be seven.'

Then, after a little difficulty, the people agreed upon five more.

'Very well; now you have seven judges,' said M. Osselin, who laboured to save Foulon, and for that purpose raised difficulties; 'you must have also a secretary.'

'You shall be secretary.'

'And a procureur du roi.'

'We name M. Duveyrier.'

That gentleman, forced against his will to act as prosecutor, asked what charges were brought against the accused.

The people shouted in reply that the prisoner impoverished the land to enrich himself, that he wanted to make the peasants eat hay, that he had counselled the king to bombard Paris.

'We bring a capital accusation against him,—of treason towards the nation.'

'If the accusation be capital,' said the two curés, rising, 'we refuse to act as judges.'

'It is capital,' the people shouted.

'We are forbidden by the canons of the Church to shed blood,' said the curé of S. Étienne du Mont, 'therefore my brother priest and I refuse to act as judges.'

A storm burst forth. Some cried, 'The priests are right;' others thundered, 'We are being hoodwinked; they want to save the prisoner.'

The clamour for judgment on the unfortunate Foulon became deafening. The electors began to fear for themselves.

'Gentlemen, we want two judges in the place of the priests,' said one of them.

'We name MM. Bailly and Lafayette.'

'But M. de Lafayette is absent. What is to be done? shall we wait for him, or will you name some one as a substitute?'

'You judges name your coadjutor.'

But at that moment Lafayette came in and seated himself at the bureau of the electors.

With some difficulty silence was impressed on the crowd in the hall, and then Lafayette addressed them.

'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I cannot blame your anger and your indignation against this man. I myself have never esteemed him; I have always regarded him as a rogue, and I believe in my heart that no punishment can exceed his deserts. You wish him to be sentenced; we have the same wish, he shall be sentenced and punished; but he has accomplices, and it is important that we should know their names. I am going to order him to be conducted to the Abbaye; there he shall be tried and condemned to the infamous death he has so richly deserved.'

'Yes, yes!' was the unanimous response; 'send him away to prison. Bring him out.'

Foulon looked round, opened his snuff-box, poured the rest of its contents into his palm, and applied it to his nose.

'This may be my last snuff,' said he collectedly to those who stood by him. 'I have now none to offer you, I grieve to state.'

A man at that instant forced his way before the bureau, and exclaimed, 'You electors are mocking us. What need is there of judging a man who has been judged these thirty years?'

Instantly a rush was made at Foulon, and he was dragged by a multitude of hands along the hall. In vain he struggled; in vain did Lafayette cry to the people to hearken to reason, in vain did Bailly ring his bell and address the mob. Their enemy was within their grasp, and he was swept away from the tribunal.

'Bah!' said Foulon; 'you will sting your hands with the nettles.'

He was drawn through the door; it was like the vortex of a whirlpool, and in this portal the life was almost crushed out of him by the press. As he was thrust into the open air and sunlight, he looked up at the sky, then cloudless and of the deepest azure.

'Stand back!' said he; and disengaging his arm, he flung his bunch of nettles in the faces of those before him. 'Eat them, you rascals,' he said, and laughed bitterly.

His appearance was hailed with repeated thunders of—'To the lantern!'

'Make him ask pardon of the nation,' was shouted.

'Give me space to make my bow,' said Foulon, calm as ever, though a rope was being attached to his neck.

'Ask pardon of the nation!' was repeated.

'I exceedingly regret, great nation of French,' said the old man, bending ironically, and laying his hand on his heart, 'I deplore, with all my heart, that Providence and the stupidity of your king prevented me from having literally made you munch thistles like an ass.'

A scream of rage from those around him was the response.

Instantly he was seen, high above the people's heads, dangling to the lantern, but only for an instant. The rope broke and he fell. He was again run up, and again the cord gave way. Then his head was hacked off and elevated on a pike.

At that same moment the news flew through La Grève that Berthier was entering Paris by the Porte S. Martin, and the crowd, to a man, rushed in that direction.

At the Fontaine Maubuée, the two crowds clashed. He who bore the head of Foulon ran forward amidst the cheers of the mob that accompanied Berthier. In the madness of her own excitement, Madame Plomb did not observe him, and he passed her when her head was turned in the opposite direction. Her yellow flag engrossed her attention; it was a streamer a couple of yards long, and as she brandished it the silk twisted itself around the horses, for sometimes she used it as a whip. Every time the mob shouted, she stood up, whirled her flag, and shouted also.

The people were unable to make her out, with her long black gown, her ash-grey face, blazing eyes, and saffron turban. They supposed she was masked, and represented the genius of Death, and some applauded her: 'Behold Berthier conducted to judgment by Death.'

At the moment that the procession began to move on, a man hastily dressed in a black ox-hide, his face covered with lamp-black, and the horns of the ox on his head, holding a pitchfork, leaped upon the box, and forced the driver to yield his place to him.

Instantly vociferous cheers greeted this new adjunct to the spectacle.

'He is driven to destruction by Death and the Devil!' was cried; and the mob danced and screamed around the coach.

It was then that he who bore Foulon's head on a pike had the brutality to thrust the ghastly object—the dead mouth of which was filled with hay—into the carriage for Berthier to look at.

The miserable man's eyes glazed at the sight, and he smiled a ghastly smile.

Then the bearer of the trophy sprang up behind the carriage, holding his pike aloft.

The band recommenced their martial strain. The soldiers took up the chant, the banners fluttered forward; the devil blew a hideous blast on a cow's horn, and Madame Plomb waved her flag: thus the procession advanced.

Arrived before the Hôtel de Ville, M. de la Rivière with difficulty drew Berthier out of the vehicle. The unfortunate man was sick, faint, and dizzy, and he probably would have been unable to walk, had it been required of him, but a compact body of guards surrounding him bore him forward into the great hall of S. John.

Without being conscious of where he was, or what was being done, he felt himself forced before the bar.

Silence was enforced, and then the procureur, recently appointed by the people, began to speak.

Berthier raised his hand, and all noticed how it shook.

'I am tired,' he said; 'I have not shut my eyes for two or three nights. Let me have a little repose, I pray you.'

'No; no repose for you, till you have been sentenced,' cried the assistants.

'At least give me a chair.'

One was handed to him, and he fell into it, the picture of wretchedness. His eyes were lustreless, his complexion dull and dingy, and his hair limp. His great cheeks hung down like the dewlaps of a cow. He had not shaved for a week, and his mouth and chin were covered with a coarse growth of short hair. When he put up his shaking hand to wipe his eyes, he exposed a dirty hand, and ruffles at his wrist draggled and soiled.

'What is the charge you bring against him?' asked M. Duveyrier.

'He supplied the army with ammunition to butcher us.'

'He has made his fortune by the compact of famine.'

'He has kept back provisions from the city, when the poor were perishing for want of bread.'

'He stole from me my betrothed,' said a young man in a white smock, and with the marks of plaster on his hands and in his hair. 'He destroyed her fair fame, and she drowned herself in the Seine.'

'He robbed me of my little daughter,' cried a quack doctor, stepping forward, 'and I have never seen her since.'

'Monster!' yelled an old woman, shaking her fist in his face, 'where is my little Antoinette?'

'We will only hear crimes against the nation,' said Bailly, the mayor. 'Confine yourselves to these.'

'Why did you bring the troops round Paris? Why did you keep back the corn?' the people cried.

'I have obeyed superior orders,' answered Berthier, huskily. 'You have my papers; examine them.'

'I accuse him,' cried a shrill voice, and Madame Plomb tore her way towards the front,—'I accuse him,—I, his wife!' she said. 'He has been unfaithful to me. He has filled his house with profligates, he has kicked my cat, he has called me the leaden woman, he has shut me up in the Bastille—me, his wife, in the Bastille!'

The crowd groaned, and then hooted.

'Look here, Beast,' she said, letting her streamer hang down above his head; 'is not this like a scythe? am not I Death? The people call me so! See! I suspend the scythe above your head; come on! the devil is waiting for you without; come on!'

'Come on, come on!' roared the mob.

'Were you able to escape in the forest?' she asked.

He did not answer, but looked at her with filmy eyes.

'No,' she replied to herself, 'no, you were not able. I shut the way with a curse. Did your eyes help you? No; I blinded them with a curse. Did your ears assist you? No; I stopped them with a curse. Did your hands do you good service? No; I paralysed them with a curse. Did your feet bear you swiftly along? No; I lamed them with a curse. Come with me; I must hand you over to my friend the devil.'

Bailly sprang to his feet, rang his bell repeatedly, cried to the people to listen to him, but could only obtain a half audience. He laboured to calm this unbridled multitude possessed by rage; he exposed with eloquence that prudence, necessity, reason demand that the life of the accused should be spared till he had been given every opportunity of exculpating himself from the charges laid against him. He showed that before he could be convicted every attempt should be made to discover his accomplices. But his eloquence was in vain. The people were starving, and one of the causes of their hunger was in their power. Some of these people had not eaten for two days, and hunger makes all animals, man included, ferocious.

'I commit him to the prison of the Abbaye Saint-Germain,' said Bailly, in despair. 'Guards, you are responsible for his safety. Guards, attend to me; let him be injured at your peril. Close your ranks about him, and keep off the mob. You are responsible,' he again cried, trembling in his alarm; 'remember!'

With Berthier and the national guard the rest of those in the hall poured out, leaving the electors alone, listening to the hideous rout outside.

On the steps the crowd grappled with the soldiers for the victim; they were thrust this way and that way; they were tripped up; they were blinded by their hats being drawn over their eyes.

Foremost was the plaster-cast maker. He gave a great shout,—his hand was on Berthier's collar.

The next to seize him was the doctor.

'Where is my daughter?' asked the old man, in a scream.

The prisoner did not answer.

'Don't kill him!' shrieked the doctor, as the young man smote at him. 'Spare him till he has told me where my little daughter is. My darling Veronique, where is she? Tell me, Berthier, tell me.' He shook him violently.

'Give me back my Antoinette!' screamed the hag who had accused him in the hall.

'Sacré, let me go!' cried Berthier, struggling with the plaster-cast dealer.

'Answer me, man, for the death of my friend Matthias André!' exclaimed Étienne Percenez, leaping at his throat.

They stumbled down one of the steps, and the doctor fell; Berthier recovered himself, and wrenched a musket from one of the guard, and with it defended himself, madly striking right and left.

The plaster-cast dealer seized a pike, and smote at him with it; the blow fell on Berthier's fingers, and he dropped the gun, screaming with pain. Knives were unsheathed, and the infuriated people rushed in upon him.

'Stay, stay!' cried Madame Plomb, uncoiling the long yellow strip of silk from her head. 'Strangle him; I have promised him this.' She threw the coil about his throat, his hands went up into the air; his feet were tripped up, and he fell.

'Stand off, stand off!' yelled his wife; 'let me kiss him.' She stooped over the suffocating man, whose eyes were shot from their sockets, and whose face was dark with congested blood.

'He is like Gabrielle's father,' exclaimed madame, laughing.

'How his feet spurn, and his hands clutch at the steps! Ah, ah, Berthier! I salute you. You are purple,—leaden like me.'

Then the mob fell upon him with knives and bayonets, and the unfortunate woman saw nothing but a writhing knot of people, splashing in blood, that spouted between their trampling feet, and poured down the steps.

'Ah, ha! madame,' roared a butcher, catching the poor lady by the arm, 'see, see! you have your vengeance on them both now.' He pointed to Berthier's head, at that moment elevated on the end of the pitchfork belonging to the man masked in the black ox-hide.

'Yes,' said madame, 'the devil possesses him now.'

'And your father, madame?'

'What of him? He is not dead, you know. That was poor Adolphe they buried.'

'Pooh!'

Dancing above the sea of heads was a face stiffened in death, with the mouth crammed full of blood-sodden hay.

Madame Berthier gazed wildly at it for a full minute, following it with her eyes.

Then she uttered a scream, so piercing that it was heard in the hall by Bailly and the electors.

'Who have killed him? Show me the murderers!'

'Madame,' said the butcher, 'you have been his murderer. You have killed them both.'

She turned with another cry, thrust her hands into her dishevelled grey hair, and starting forwards, fell down the steps, struck her head against the stones in falling, and would have been trodden to death by the raging crowd, in their eagerness to approach the corpse of Berthier, had not Percenez sprung to her assistance, stooped and raised her in his arms.

'Help me, friend,' he said to a guard, 'let us place her in safety.'

So they bore her, stunned, and with her temple bleeding, to the home of Madame Deschwanden.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

FOR a fortnight Madame Berthier remained delirious with brain fever. At the end of that time she began to recover, but her memory was impaired. She remembered nothing of her confinement in the Bastille, nothing of her pursuit of Berthier and of the subsequent events. Only hazily did the form of her husband present itself to her mind; it was a note which cyphered, and therefore disturbed, the harmony of memory.

Her former freakish predilections for the colour yellow had suddenly changed into aversion. It was somehow connected with an event which had disappeared from the range of her thoughts; and, as a thread leading nowhere, it irritated her without her being able to account for it.

The cat also was forgotten. She did not allude to him once. But she distinctly knew Gabrielle. Perhaps if the yellow Gabriel had been brought to her she would have recognised him. She did not know when she had made the girl's acquaintance, or where she had first met her; but she knew her face and her name.

Her great delight, on her recovery, was to listen to the corporal and Nicholas conversing about their native land. She paid the greatest attention to their words, laughed childishly, and smiled at Gabrielle.

But especially was she gratified with the song, 'Heart, my heart, why art thou weary?' Nicholas played it to her on his flageolet, and the corporal sang it, till the poor woman knew it by heart.

One day she was sitting in the window, propped up with pillows, looking out at the roof-tops, and the blue sky over them. No one was in the room; but Gabrielle, who had left it for a few minutes, on returning found her singing in a plaintive voice, and crying softly,—

'Heart, my heart, why art thou weary,

Why to grief and tears a prey?

Foreign lands are bright and cheery;

Heart, my heart, what ails thee, say?

That which ails me past appeasing,

I am lost, a stranger here;

What, though foreign lands be pleasing,

Home, sweet home, alone is dear.'

Then, turning to Gabrielle, she asked when they were going.

'Where would you go, dear mistress?' asked the girl.

'Home, to native rocks and sky,' she answered; and then sang,—

'Through the fragrant pine-boughs bending,

I should see the glacier shine;

See the nimble goats ascending

Gentian-dappled slopes in line.

See the cattle, hear the tinkle

Of the merry-clashing bells;

See white sheep the pastures sprinkle

In the verdant dewy dells.'

'Do you know, Gabrielle,' said the lady, interrupting her song, 'the cow-bells are the most beautiful music in the world? Call Nicholas here. He will tell you the same.' As she insisted, Gabrielle was obliged to go to the young man's workshop, and summon him.

'I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Nicholas, but madame is resolved to hear from you that cow-bells make beautiful music.'

'There is no music like them!' exclaimed the youth, becoming at once enthusiastic; 'you should hear them of a summer evening, when the cattle are being driven home to be milked. It is the maddest, merriest clatter in the world. You really must hear them. It is worth going all the way to Switzerland to hear them. I will go to madame instantly.' Rushing into the room to her, he began at once,—'Madame! there is nothing like them. To hear them at a distance, a tinkle here and a tinkle there, as the cattle are being driven from the pastures,—it is like silver music rippling down the sward in countless rills; then the cows unite in the path, and you have fifty twinkling, tinkling notes rushing together; and when they come close to you it is overwhelming,—it is like children's thoughts in play set to music.'

Madame Berthier clapped her hands.

'Gabrielle, when shall we hear the cow-bells? I am dying of impatience.'

'In October, madame, my father and the rest of us return home. Oh, what happiness! The corporal and I have been studying a map, and my father is bent on going by the Jura, and Pontarlier. Then you come winding through the mountains among rocks and pines; that is a sort of first taste, to give one zest, to prepare you for what is to come, lest you should die of over-happiness. And then, then, then,' the lad's great eyes grew bigger, and light danced in the blue irises,—'Then all at once, at a turn of the road, just when least expecting it, or trying not to expect it, for you are hungering all the while—what is that—that ragged line, half way up the sky, so faint, and blue, and silvery? Is it a bank of clouds? No, it is too still for that. It is the Alps, the Alps, the Alps!' He clasped his hands to his eyes, which began to fill. 'And down below your feet lies the lake of Neufchatel, a broad mirror, still and blue, like the sky; and you see the vineyards sweeping down to the very edge of the water, and the old brown towers and steeples of the city against the glistening water. But above them all—there, whither your heart and soul stretch away, there they are, the dear, dear Alps!'

Madame Berthier was nearly as excited as Nicholas.

'And then,' he continued, 'to see again our mountain-flowers. The gentian, we call it himmels-blau, that is, heaven's-blue,—to see the slopes of short grass sprinkled with them, the little azure one and the large dark one, as thick as stars in the sky. And close to the snow you will find the little crocus, myriads white and violet, where the thawed ice has burnt up the grass. And the meadows full of white anemones and golden balls; and the buttercups white and purple, and the primulas in marshy land. Oh, madame! do you know the Alpine rose? Dear Gabrielle, you must come with me, if only to see that! Think, up among the mountains a patch of grey rock, and above it a bush blazing with crimson flowers, and they are sometimes red as blood, and sometimes pale pink like your own sweet cheek—but not as it is now, it has grown red. Then the leaves are glossy green, like the myrtle, and underneath a russet-brown, the colour of the shaggy goats. You have tracts of these glorious flowers, and beside the silver-grey old rock they are so lovely. You would say the mountain blushed to think how beautiful it was.'

'Gabrielle!' cried madame, in ecstasy, 'I shall die, unless I go quickly to see the Alpine roses.'

'And the pinks,' continued Nicholas; 'lovely little red pinks in tufts, and sometimes their leaves are snipped, just as mother cuts the paper for the candlesticks, and of a tender lake tint.'

'When are we going, Gabrielle?' asked madame.

'We start in October, I hope,' said Nicholas; 'my father's time is up then.'

'Yes,' said the convalescent, 'we will all go then, Gabrielle and I.'

'That will be charming,' exclaimed the young man, 'will it not, mademoiselle?'

The girl did not answer.

'Yes,' continued the lady; 'we shall all go together, and then you, Nicholas, and Gabrielle can live with me; you know I have money.'

'My dear madame,' said the girl, becoming scarlet, 'let us talk of something else.'

'But I cannot, dear Gabrielle; I can think of nothing else, and it is such surpassing delight to me to hear the corporal and Nicholas talk. It will be so nice, too, for you and Nicholas.'

'The corporal, and Madame Deschwanden, and Madeleine will all be there,' said the girl, hiding her face that she might not encounter the nods and smiles of Nicholas.

'Don't be so sure of that,' said the little lady of the house, bustling into the room. 'Switzerland again, of course. I go there! not a bit, and get lost down a chasm in a glacier. Mon Dieu! fancy that, and I might at the moment have on my best gown and best bonnet. Climb your mountain peaks, indeed! you will see me put my head out of the top of one of these chimneys first, and cry "sweep, sweep!" Deschwanden may go, and you may go, Nicholas, if you like, but I remain at Paris. Would you have me migrate to the land of barbarism, at my time of life, and at a time, too, when the metropolis is a scene of the most charming incidents? My faith! It is as good as a play to see what is going on here—and you would tear me away between the acts, make me shut up the novel at the first volume! You are much mistaken if you think you will get me to Switzerland.'

'But what is to be done, mother?' asked Nicholas; 'my father has set his heart on returning to his father-land, and I verily believe it would be his death to have to forego what has been his desire for many years.'

'Let him go.'

'But he cannot leave you behind.'

'Why not? Let him imagine I am dead. Let him say to himself, "I am a widower once again; I am free as a bird, I will spread my wings, and seek a distant clime." Pretty bird he'd make, though! You Germans have no neatness, no delicacy and buoyancy of construction. You are great hawks—penguins, who never rise. But we French are ever on tiptoe, ready to soar; we only want a breath of gas in our bones, a few feathers on our backs, and you would find the sky swarm with us, laughing, chattering, wheeling here and there, coquetting, always polite, always graceful, and never flying beyond sight of la belle France.'

'But my father cannot in conscience——'

'Stay! never mention that word in my hearing. There it is, that is the mischief of it. Conscience is the lead that keeps you always in one position. I thought to have died of laughing. I saw in a shop window a range of dolls,—fat things rounded off below, without perceptible legs. You knocked them about, and they rocked to and fro, and always righted in the same position. I rushed into the shop, and I said—"Oblige me, those are German toys, are they not?" "Madame, you are right," was the answer I received. Well, Nicholas! I thought at once of you and your father, leaded with your dreadful dumpy conscience. My faith! why does not this precious conscience keep the corporal from going to Versailles?'

'What do you mean, mother? he is not going there.'

'Yes, he is. He has received orders transferring him there; he has to attend in the palace, as one of the guard. If he is so fond of me, let him refuse. You say he can't,—he is ordered there. Well, there is no help for it, he leaves me. Now let him suppose he is ordered off to Switzerland; there he goes. I will order him off. Right about face, quick, march!'

'Surely, mother, you will not be so heartless?'

'Ah bah! I shall do well enough here. I can't go to Versailles after him, can I? Well, and I won't go to Switzerland with him. That is my mind. I have my business and my pleasure here in Paris; I could not live away from either. Ask a nightingale to visit and admire the beauties of the bottom of the sea! invite a minnow to soar to the stars! expect a rose to throw its roots into the air and thrust its blossoms under the soil! Pshaw! This is just as sensible as asking me to plunge into your lakes, ascend your Alps, and bury myself in your mountain gorges under avalanches and glaciers and Heaven knows what besides.'

'Where is my father now?'

'He is out. He has to remove at once to the Swiss battalion at Rueil, and thence he will be sent with a new company to attend on the royal family and guard the palace. You see the French guard have at Versailles, as here, merged themselves in a national guard, so I fancy the Court prefers to be defended by foreign troops. Here he comes!'

The corporal entered and saluted Madame Berthier and his wife, then he went up to Gabrielle and patted her gently on the cheek. Nicholas gave her a knowing nod, as much as to say, 'you are a great pet of my father's.'

'Are you transferred to Versailles?' asked Nicholas; 'mother has just disconcerted us with that announcement.'

'Yes,' answered the corporal; 'I have been ordered to the barracks at Rueil for a week, and after that we are to be sent to Versailles; the Swiss guard at the palace is about to be reinforced.'

'It will not be for long,' said Nicholas.

'No, only till October,' answered the corporal, brushing up the hair on either side of his head; 'and then—' he rubbed his hand; 'then we set our faces homewards. I shall be free.'

'And I daresay you will not be sorry for it,' said Gabrielle, gently, lifting her eyes to his face.

'No, my dear, I shall be rejoiced. It does not please me to have to range myself against your countrymen. A civil war is a terrible thing, and I am half French myself.'

'You half French!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, with a shrug of the shoulders and a curl of the lip.

'Yes, wife, I am; not only because of my union with you, but also because I have spent many of my best years in this land, chiefly, however, because I entirely sympathise with the struggle that is begun. Had not we the same sort of thing in our land? There was Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, and Walter Fürst——'

'Enough of them,' said madame, with an impatient stamp.

'Corporal,' asked the convalescent lady, 'are you going to return to where the cow-bells ring, and where there are Alps half way up to the sky?'

'Yes, madame, please God, and with the help of blessed Klaus!'

'And you will see the pinks, and the gentians, and the roses of the Alps?'

'I must, indeed I must,' exclaimed the corporal. 'Ah, ha! Nicholas, in October, three months more!'

'We are all going together,' said the poor lady; 'we all want to hear the cow-bells, and see the Alpine roses.'

'That will be perfect,' answered Corporal Deschwanden.

'Then Nicholas and Gabrielle can keep house for me.'

'That will crown all,' said the corporal, brushing up his hair over the right ear, then over the left, then above his brow.

'Gabrielle!' cried madame; but the girl darted out of the room.

'Nicholas,' said the invalid; 'I want Gabrielle, will you kindly fetch her for me?'

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A LAST arrow remained in the quiver of the Court party.

The course pursued by the National Assembly after the reunion of the orders, proved to the aristocracy that a revolution could alone reinstate them in their ancient prerogatives and save them from disappearing as a class in the rising tide. They meditated a revolution accordingly, to be thus executed: the king and queen were to escape from Versailles and take refuge in the fortress of Metz, then powerfully garrisoned, and the head quarters of the army; when there, they could dissolve the Assembly, reduce Paris, and re-establish the ancient régime.

With their usual recklessness and folly, the members of this party allowed their plot to become public; they boasted and threatened, and enrolled members in the conspiracy, exasperating and alarming the popular party to such an extent that it became apparent to every one that a few days must decide whether the revolution was to be begun by the nobles or by the people.

The king and his family must not remain at Versailles, that was the conclusion of each party. Was he to be taken to Metz or to Paris? In the first case, the country would be plunged in civil war; the other alternative made the extinction of the aristocracy, as a class, certain.

In the meantime, the French guard had been dismissed from their attendance on the royal family, and the palace was placed under the protection of the Swiss and the body-guard alone.

A Flanders regiment was introduced into Versailles, and two hundred chasseurs of the Trois-Évêchés, from their barracks at Rambouillet, and the same number of the dragoons of Lorraine.

On the 2nd of October a dinner was given by the body-guard to the newly-arrived Flemish regiment, in the theatre of the palace. The stage was occupied by the officers, seated at a horse-shoe table; in the orchestra were the bands of the corps, and in the pit the tables of the soldiers of the Flemish regiment, the chasseurs, and the dragoons of Lorraine.

After the feast had lasted some hours, the king and the queen appeared in the royal box. Instantly an unanimous cry of 'Long live the king! long live the queen!' arose from the hall. All the banqueters rose, and the soldiers of Flanders and Lorraine, delighted to see the royal family, whom they hardly knew, overleaped the balustrade of the amphitheatre to approach and cheer them.

The king, moved by these tokens of affection, left his box and went round the table on the stage followed by the queen, who held her daughter by the hand, whilst the dauphin was carried by an officer of the guards.

In the midst of the general enthusiasm, the band struck up the air of Grétry,—'O Richard, O mon roi! l'univers t'abandonne!'

When the royal family retired, they were followed by the officers and soldiers drunk with enthusiasm and wine, and assembling in the marble court under the king's windows, they repeated their cheers, and promises to die in his defence. White cockades were distributed by the ladies of the court, and a national badge having been shown to the excited soldiers was greeted with scorn and was trampled under foot.

Next day followed another feast, and a similar display of zeal for the cause of the queen against that of the nation.

On the 4th, as might have been anticipated, Paris was in an uproar. The people felt instinctively that not a day was to be lost. The aristocracy might at any moment snatch the king from Versailles, carry him to a fortress, surround him with troops, and from thence make him dictate laws and destroy the scaffolding of the new constitution, in the erection of which the National Assembly was laboriously engaged. If the Court party were allowed to steal a march on the people, all was lost.

The most inflammatory harangues in the Palais Royal assisted in exciting the general conflagration. The scenes preceding the seizure of the Bastille were renewed; but there was no fortress to be captured on this occasion,—it was the person of the king must be secured, that the democracy might place him in the revolutionary vortex, might keep watch over him, and disperse the clique which dragged him into schemes antagonistic to the wishes and welfare of the nation.

On the morning of the 5th, all Paris was in movement; but that which determined its march on Versailles, was the famine.

In spite of the efforts of the committee of subsistence established by Bailly, corn, and flour especially, arrived in small quantities.

At four o'clock in the morning a crowd besieged the shops of the bakers. For hours the people remained patiently en queue; then they began to fight to obtain for money a loaf often insufficient to fill the mouths that clamoured for it at home. The wretched quality of the bread added to the fury of the populace. Little more was needed to produce an explosion. The account of the scenes which had been enacted at Versailles fell like a spark upon these inflammable tempers, and the fire blazed forth in an instant.

'Let us bring the baker among us!' cried Madeleine, who, like the rest, had been waiting for the morning's provision of bread.

'Yes, we must have the chief baker here,' shouted several others.

Madeleine, without another word, seized on a drum, and rattled it vigorously. The women trooped round her, and in a moment she was at the head of a legion of famished, furious women, some of whom had not tasted food for thirty hours.

'Let us march to Versailles,' cried several; 'let us besiege the great bakehouse.'

'Lead on, you girl with the drum!' cried others.

'Whither shall I lead?' asked Madeleine.

'To Versailles!' was the general shout.

'We will tell the Assembly that we starve,'—'we will bring the king to Paris, and he shall see how hungry we are,'—'we will surround him, and protect the good papa from our enemies and his.' Such were some of the cries that arose.

'Let us go to the Hôtel de Ville!' called another.

'Yes, yes, to the Hôtel de Ville first,' the mob clamoured.

It happened just then that Madame Deschwanden and Gabrielle were passing. The little lady saw Madeleine at once, and she ran to her, arrested her in her drumming, and asked, 'My dear! for pity's sake, what is the matter?'

'Mother, the poor things are starving; and the great nobles at Versailles are going to carry our king off to Metz and make war on the people; then we shall have famine and war together.'

'That will never do,' said madame; 'no one will want new caps, and I shall be out of work. But why are you drumming?'

'Mother! we are going to the Hôtel de Ville first, and then on to Versailles to bring the king to Paris.'

'Nonsense, Madeleine.'

'We are going to do it,' said the girl bluntly; 'the men are cowards,—see what the women will do.'

'Oh ecstasy! oh raptures!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden; 'what sport! it is as good as a play. I shall accompany you, and Gabrielle shall come too.'

'What, to Versailles?' asked the little peasantess in dismay; 'I pray you let me remain behind.'

'No, come with me, I will protect you; the day is fine, and we shall have a charming expedition, and shall see such dresses. Ecstasy! raptures!'

In vain did Gabrielle plead; Madame Deschwanden linked her arm within her own and drew her along.

Onward drave the concourse of women—shop-girls, milliners, portresses, servants, market-women—till they reached the Place de Grève. The cavalry of the national guard were drawn up there; the women charged them, and with a volley of stones drove them back, for the soldiers could not make up their minds to fire upon them.

They would have burnt the Hôtel de Ville, in their ravenous wildness, because it contained no bread, had not the solemn, gigantic Stanislas Maillard, one of the conquerors of the Bastille, arrested them. He beat a drum and obtained a hearing. He offered to conduct the crowd to Versailles, and the women, liking his appearance and knowing his name, put themselves under his order. In half an hour the army of women was in marching order; they drew with them the cannon of the Place de Grève, and were armed with sticks, cutlasses, and a few guns.

Whilst this troop of women marched to Versailles, Paris was in ebullition.

Early in the morning, the alarm-bell had been rung by the fellow now in command of the men who marched after the women. He had been caught in the act and hung, but his bull-neck had saved him, and the women had cut him down. The national guard, assembling first in their districts, betook themselves in a mass to the Hôtel de Ville and filled La Grève, crying, 'To Versailles!' A deputation of grenadiers sought out Lafayette, who, along with the municipality, used his utmost endeavours to arrest the movement. One of these men addressed the general, told him he was being deceived, that it was time that things should be brought to a climax, that the people were wretched, that the source of the evil was at Versailles, and that they were resolved on bringing the king to Paris.

Lafayette resisted, descended to the square, harangued the grenadiers, but his voice was drowned by cries of 'To Versailles! to Versailles!'

For several hours he attempted by speeches and by signs to control the military mob. Then he turned to re-enter the town-hall, but his grenadiers barred the passage. 'Morbleu! general,' they said, 'you shall stop with us; you shall not abandon us.'

At length an order was transmitted to him from the municipality requiring him, 'on account of the urgency of the circumstances and the desire of the people,' to transport himself to Versailles. The general mounted his white horse, put himself at the head of his battalions, and gave the command to march, which was received with acclamations.

It was then six o'clock in the evening, and the rain had begun to fall.

We must return to Versailles.

The ministers had been informed of the march of the women of Paris, and M. de Saint-Priest wrote a letter to the king, who was out hunting in the wood of Meudon, urging him to return immediately; and M. de Cubières, their esquire, was despatched with it, whilst detachments of the body-guard were sent in different directions to protect the king's return. At three o'clock M. de Cubières found the king and gave him the note. 'What!' exclaimed Louis, 'the women of Paris are coming to ask me for bread. Poor creatures, I would supply them without giving them the trouble to come for it, if I had it.'

A few minutes after the return of the king, the women arrived at the barrier.

In the meantime, the regiment of Flanders armed, and the body-guard mounted their horses; the latter took up their position in the Place d'Armes before the grating that enclosed the court of the ministers, whilst some invalids, the Swiss corps, together with the Flemish regiment, formed a line of battle on the left, and the chasseurs and the national guard occupied the right. A body of dragoons was sent down the avenue of Paris to take up a position before the hall of the Menus-Plaisirs.

These dispositions were no sooner taken than the women entered Versailles.

The Count of Luxembourg asked the king for orders to give the body-guard. 'Nonsense,' replied Louis XVI, 'orders against a band of women! you are joking.'

The women were no sooner in the town than they invaded the court of Menus-Plaisirs, and demanded to be admitted to the Assembly.

Maillard and half-a-dozen women were alone admitted, after some difficulties had been made; one of these was Madeleine with her drum, and another was Gabrielle, who clung to her. A third bore a tambourine at the end of a long pole.

'We come,' said Maillard, sword in hand, his black suit splashed with mud and tattered, 'we come to demand bread, and the punishment of the body-guard who have insulted the national cockade. We are good patriots; on our road we have torn down the black cockades, and I will have the pleasure of tearing one before the Assembly.'

Whereupon another man, he with the bull-neck, told his story, how he had been nearly hung that morning for having rung the alarm-bell. 'We will force every one to wear the patriotic badge,' he said. Thereupon murmurs arose; turning towards those who uttered these sounds of dissatisfaction, he asked, 'What! are we not all brothers?'

Mounier, the president, replied calmly, 'No one in this Assembly will deny that all men are to be considered as brothers; the indignation you resent was aroused by your menace of using force. Speak with respect where you are.'

Thereupon the women began to cry out for bread. The president assured them that the Assembly was distressed to learn the state of famine in which the capital was plunged, and that it would use its utmost endeavours to obtain a free circulation of corn, and provide for the regular supply of grain. He told them that their presence at Versailles was of no earthly use, that it impeded the debates, and could not relieve the scarcity of provisions.

'That is not enough,' said the great Maillard; and the women exclaimed again, 'Bread, bread!'

A member then proposed that a deputation should be sent to the king to inform him of the starving condition of the capital. This proposition was accepted. The Bishop of Langres took the president's chair, and Mounier set out, moodily, at the head of a deputation, followed by the women in a crowd.

The rain fell in torrents, and the avenue of Paris was a lake of mud. Followed by the wild band of females fantastically dressed, some in rags, some armed, shouting, singing, cursing, Mounier and the deputies made their way towards the palace. Body-guards were patrolling and galloping about, and mistaking the president for a leader of the insurrection, and wanting to disperse the multitude, they galloped through the deputation and their suite, scattering them and splashing them from head to foot with mire.

By this time the ragged army of men which followed that of the women had entered the Place d'Armes by the avenues of Saint Cloud and Paris, armed with sticks, pitchforks, and a few muskets. The women, rolling into the place in floods, were mingled with the crowd of men, and vented their rage against the body-guard in invectives. As the different detachments of these guards, which had been sent in quest of the king, arrived and joined those before the court of the ministers, they were attacked and insulted. A pike flung against a guard galloping to rejoin his squadron, fell between the legs of his horse and threw it down. The soldier fell, and the populace crowded round him to seize him, when he was rescued by M. Desroches, captain of the national guard, arriving at the moment with his company. He attempted to capture the young man who had flung the pike, but the people rushed between him and the youth and facilitated his escape.

Whilst this was taking place, the regiment of Flanders was the object of the caresses of the women. Théroigne de Méricourt, covered with a scarlet cloak, penetrated the ranks of the soldiers, flattered them, and entreated them not to oppose the people. A great many women, plucking up courage at the immobility of the guards, who had orders not to use their arms, advanced to the very feet of the horses and tried to creep between them into the court before the palace.

All of a sudden, a party of women, headed by a man named Burnout, in the uniform of the national Parisian guard, rushed upon the mounted body-guards. The horses, frightened at the noise, and the charge of Burnout, sabre in hand, swerved, and allowed him to pass. But, separated from the women who were unable to follow him, he found himself alone between the railing and the soldiers. He was immediately pursued; but he escaped in the direction of the national guard, who, it will be remembered, were drawn up on the right of the body-guard, with whom they were on the worst possible terms. Burnout received several blows with the flat of the sabre, and fell over a bucket; this caused the French guard to raise the cry that the body-guard were massacring one of their men; whereupon a musket was fired by one of the national guard, and the arm of an officer in pursuit of Burnout was broken. The commander of the national guard, Lecointre, a violent partisan of extreme revolutionary measures, at once sought the officers of the body-guard, to learn from them what were their intentions. They replied that they had no wish to fall out with the national guard. Then he hurried to the regiment of Flanders, which had been already tampered with by the women, and asked them how they purposed to conduct themselves towards the people. The soldiers replied that they would not fire upon them, and they gave Lecointre and his guards some of their cartouches.

During this time Mounier and his deputation passed through the lines of the guard before the grating, were received with honour, and admitted to the court along with twelve women, of whom were Madeleine and Gabrielle. Five women were alone permitted to see the king. Madeleine thrust herself forward—Gabrielle remained behind, in the ante-chamber. She was weary, faint, and hungry. Madeleine had drawn her along with her against her wishes, and the poor girl had been frightened and miserable all day.

She took the opportunity of sinking into a chair; and then, overcome by her weariness, her tears began to flow. M. d'Estaing happening to pass through the ante-room at the moment, saw that she was crying, and coming towards her said kindly, 'My child, you are weeping because you have not seen the king.' Then he took her by the hand and led her into the royal apartment, where were the king, his ministers, and the deputation.

'Why did you come to Versailles?' asked M. de Saint-Priest of Gabrielle.

'Sir,' she answered, 'I was forced into the troop;' and she looked reproachfully at Madeleine.

'We have come to Versailles,' said Madeleine, 'to inform the king that his good town of Paris wants him. We are afraid that some people will take him from this place and carry him to Metz, and we have come to bring him home with us.'

'They are hungry,' cried Mounier; 'the women clamour for bread.'

'But you should have asked bread of the municipality,' said Saint-Priest, addressing Madeleine.

'We went to the Hôtel de Ville,' she replied, 'and we found no one there.'

The king, whose eye had rested on Gabrielle, saw that she was deadly pale. He asked her if she were ill.

'Sire,' she answered, 'I am tired and faint.'

The king filled a goblet with wine, and took it to her and made her drink. She thanked him with a speaking look, and tasted it; but at the same moment every object swam before her eyes, and she fainted away. When she returned to herself, the king was stooping over her. He gave her smelling-salts, and sprinkled water on her brow. Madeleine fanned her and she recovered.

Louis gave a written order for the immediate supply of food to Paris, and handed a copy to Madeleine, who rushed down the court, shouting 'Long live the king!' She held Gabrielle's arm in hers, and passed outside the railing, and between the soldiers to the crowd, to show them the order.

Instantly it was discovered that the copy was not signed, and they were constrained to return to the king and request his signature.

When they reappeared, the women outside were in a state of violent exasperation; they had taken it into their heads that Madeleine had been bribed; and they cried out that the king had given her twenty-five louis-d'or. In vain did the girl empty her pockets to show there was no money there; they then assaulted Gabrielle. A great commotion arose. Some cried out, 'These girls have betrayed us. They have sold us to the queen!' and a thousand voices screamed, 'Hang the traitors!'

What caused this sudden transition of feeling,—whether it arose from the jealousy of those who had failed to obtain admission, whether it was that Madeleine appeared too enthusiastic in her praise of his majesty, or whether the tumult had been excited by a malicious slander,—it is impossible to say. Certain it is, however, that a crowd of wild, ravenous amazons attacked the two girls with their fists; a garter was knotted round Madeleine's neck, and she was dragged off towards the nearest lamp, and would infallibly have been strung up to it, had not the guards interfered and rescued her. Gabrielle in the meanwhile was in the grasp of a furious termagant, who fastened her hands round her throat and attempted to strangle her. Frantic women around shrieked to her to deliver up the money which she had received from the king; her dress was torn, and her hands were wounded in struggling with the infuriated savages; her consciousness was beginning to leave her again, as the pressure on her throat tightened, when a stout arm swept her assailants to right and left, a hand seized her, and she was rapidly drawn away from the place of danger. The crowd was closely wedged together, and she and her deliverer disappeared from those who were incensed against her, amongst a throng who knew nothing of what was being enacted a few ranks beyond them. Her conductor worked his way through the people, and in another moment, with an air of relief, he exclaimed, 'Praised be God and Bruder Klaus, we are safe now!'

'Nicholas!' exclaimed Gabrielle, 'how came you here?'

'When I heard you were with Madeleine, I followed. I have kept as close to you as possible since I saw you leave the hall of the Assembly. It was well that I did so.'

Gabrielle was sinking from fatigue and fear.

'Oh, Nicholas, I cannot endure any more. I shall die here.'

'No, no,' exclaimed he; 'lean against that wall.'

'Here!' he cried to a priest who was passing, 'M. le Curé, help!'

'What is the matter?' asked the priest, stopping.

Gabrielle suddenly revived, and exclaimed with an accent of appealing distress,—'M. Lindet, help me!'

'Who are you?' asked the deputy for the clergy of Évreux.

'She is called Gabrielle André,' answered Nicholas; 'can you do anything for her? She is worn out, faint, and ill.'

'Follow me,' said the curé; 'she shall have rest and refreshment in my lodgings; I know little Gabrielle well.'

Nicholas lifted the girl in his arms, held her very tight to his breast as he carried her, and did not deposit her till he had reached the priest's door.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BY the fire-side, after having partaken of some food, Gabrielle recovered.

Lindet insisted on giving up to her his room and bed, and on sitting through the night in the kitchen with Nicholas.

The darkness had set in, and the rain continued to fall. The streets were still in commotion, and the young man who was anxious to know what had become of Madeleine, sallied forth in quest of her. He found the whole town in disorder. Women and men, armed with pikes, hatchets and cudgels, pursued and insulted the body-guard, which had received orders not to retaliate. The drum rattling in every street summoned the national guard to the Place d'Armes. But many of the guards, unable to sympathise with the exasperation against the body-guard, fomented by Lecointre, withdrew to their homes.

After the departure of the women, Mounier had remained at the Château. He firmly declared to the ministers, that the National Assembly required of the king his frank acceptation of the articles of the constitution and of the rights of men. He pointed out to them that at such a time of popular effervescence, it was most important that there should be no hesitation or prevarication; and that a refusal would drive the Parisians to measures of the utmost violence. He promised, if the king would sign the Declaration, to announce the fact to the people as a singular benefit, and he was convinced that it would greatly tend to diminish the popular excitement.

The king thereupon reassembled a cabinet council, and Mounier awaited the issue.

In the other parts of the palace the liveliest anxiety prevailed. The cries of rage vomited by the populace against the queen made it necessary to provide for her safety, and orders were given for preparations to be made for her departure, along with the dauphin, to Rambouillet. Five carriages issued from the royal stables, and drew up at the iron gates before the Orangery, and those of the Dragon. The Swiss opened the former gates, but the national guardsmen of Versailles rushed to them and shut them again, and refused to permit the Dragon gates to be opened at all.

The order to retire had been given at night-fall to all the troops drawn up in the Place d'Armes. The regiment of Flanders quitted its position and withdrew to the court of the Grandes-Ecuries. The body-guard defiled in turn; one detachment followed the avenue of S. Cloud, to betake itself to the Hôtel de Charrost, but the largest portion directed its course down the avenue de Sceaux, towards their own hôtel. Mud and stones were cast at them, and they were saluted with yells of hatred. Some of the guard losing control over themselves fired their pistols, hit three men, and tore the clothes of two others with their bullets. The national guard instantly discharged a volley, wounded one horse and killed another. The soldier mounted on the latter fell, and the women precipitated themselves upon him and would have killed him, had not two officers of the national guard come to his rescue.

Those who had fired on the body-guard returned to their barrack on the Place d'Armes, and demanded ammunition. It was refused. A lieutenant of Versailles threatened to blow out the brains of those who kept watch over it, unless it were given up. Thereupon a barrel of gunpowder was produced, and Lecointre loaded two cannons and ran them out opposite the balustrade, so as to command the flank of the troops which still covered the castle, and the body-guard who were returning to the square. The commandant of the body-guard, the Duke de Guiche, finding that the mob were resolved on attacking them in their hôtel, and that the national guard were making common cause with the people, deemed it advisable to return to the palace; but finding the grand entrance closed and cannon directed against them, they galloped down the Rue de Satory, and making a circuit entered the court of the Ministers by the Rue de la Surintendance. The mob, furious at their escape, flung themselves against the railing, vociferating loudly, and they would have forced the gates, had not a detachment of Swiss been marched to the reinforcement of the sentinels.

The town then presented a sinister appearance. The rain continued to fall, and the night was very dark. The shops were closed, with the exception of the bakers' and the vintners'. All the inhabitants of Versailles had fastened their doors and put shutters over their windows. The lamps at wide distances cast a lugubrious light on the patrols of the national guard, and the crowd of men and women in rags, covered with mud and dripping, who battered at every door, and demanded food and shelter.

Some of the crowd burst open the gates of the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and took refuge among the soldiers; others invaded the barrack of the French guard, and crowded into it out of the rain and cold. Four thousand, mostly women, occupied the hall of the Assembly, shouting, swearing, and making an uproar. Maillard alone could keep them quiet by continual haranguing. Some of the body-guard, those who had been to the Hôtel de Charrost, finding their position full of danger, resolved on joining their comrades. On issuing from their barrack they were pelted with stones; but they spurred their horses into a gallop and reached the court of the Ministers, though not without wounds.

Mounier waited on at the door of the council chamber to know the result of the deliberations within. It was nine o'clock, and nothing was decided. Then the young Duke of Richelieu arrived disguised like one of the mob, ragged, muddy, wet through, panting for breath, to announce to the king that a fresh swarm of people was on its way from Paris; he had mingled with them, had heard their threats against the queen, their vows of vengeance against the court. Shortly after the news reached the palace, that Lafayette was marching upon Versailles at the head of the Parisian militia or national guard.

The king's heart failed him, and at ten o'clock at night he signed the Declaration of Rights.

Mounier at once returned to the hall of the Assembly, expecting to find the delegates there, but they had been so incommoded by the women, who had intruded everywhere, that the Assembly had been adjourned, and the mob of women had been left in possession of the hall; one female occupied the president's chair, but she surrendered it to Mounier on his appearing. He sent immediately to the municipal officers to request them to summon the delegates by roll of drum.

Whilst this was being executed, he announced to the people that the king had accepted the articles of the constitution. The announcement elicited applause, and then the women asked, simply enough, if this acceptation would make bread more plentiful and cheaper. The president, ascertaining that many of these poor creatures had eaten nothing all day, sent round to the bakers' shops, and all the food that he could collect, wine, brandy, sausages, bread, was collected at the table, and was by him distributed among the famished multitude.

The great hall then presented the appearance of a huge eating-house. During this feast a message was transmitted to Mounier, announcing the approach of Lafayette and his army of Parisian guards. Mounier at once commissioned M. Goui-d'Arci to hasten to meet the general, and report to him the acceptation by the king of the Declaration of Rights.

As soon as it was known at the Château that the Parisian militia were on their way, orders were issued that the body-guard should quit the court of the Ministers and betake themselves to the terrace before the queen's apartments; by this means it was hoped that a collision would be avoided. During the absence of the Duke de Guiche, who had gone to the royal apartment for orders, but could get none, though he waited till two o'clock in the morning, the Marquis de Vilaines took the command. He transferred the squadron to the Tapis-Vert, leaving some videttes on the terraces. The Count d'Estaing came to him there, and assured him that it would be quite impossible for the guards to re-enter their hôtel before day-break, as the streets were in a tumult of excitement on the approach of Lafayette's soldiers. Acting on this advice, he withdrew his guards to Trianon for the rest of the night.

Lafayette, immediately on his arrival, which took place at midnight, went to the hall of the National Assembly, but finding it crowded with women, and the Assembly not sitting, he betook himself to the palace, which he found full of people waiting his arrival with anxiety, and endeavouring to read on his countenance whether his dispositions were hostile or pacific.

In the Œil-de-Bœuf, one of the courtiers said, 'There goes Cromwell;' to which Lafayette replied aptly, 'Sir, Cromwell would not have entered alone.'

He was perfectly calm, his cheeks fresh through encountering the wind, and his fair hair wet with rain. He entered the royal cabinet accompanied only by two commissioners of the Paris municipality. He informed the king of all that had taken place, and of the arrival of his army, and received the order for the national guard under him to occupy the posts which had formerly been held by the French guard; the body-guard and the Swiss were to retain the posts usually confided to them. He returned to the head of his column, to provide for the execution of this order, and the national guards thereupon took possession of the posts confided to them; the rest dispersed over the town in search of shelter. The men were worn out with their long and toilsome march, drenched with rain, and soiled with mud. They found an asylum in the churches of S. Louis, Notre-Dame, and the convent of the Recollects. One battalion invaded the deserted barracks of the body-guard, and quartered themselves comfortably therein.

It was three o'clock in the morning before every arrangement was complete. The Parisian national guardsmen were at their posts, and patrolled the streets, or reposed. The rabble of men and women had fallen asleep in the hall of the Assembly, in the barrack of the French guard, and in the taverns. Calm seemed to have been restored, and Lafayette then visited the Count of Luxembourg and the Marquis d'Aguesseau, to warn them that a battalion of his militia having taken possession of the hôtel of the body-guard, it would be impossible for the latter to return to it without running the risk of a fight.

The count at once sent a messenger in disguise to Trianon, with a recommendation to the Marquis de Vilaines to leave Versailles; he accordingly mounted his soldiers, and they retreated to S. Leger.

Lafayette, having again made the circuit of the town, and finding all quiet, went to the Hôtel de Noailles, and flung himself on a bed to snatch a few hours of rest, after having spent seventeen consecutive hours with every faculty strained to its utmost.

But what had Nicholas done? We left him sallying forth at night-fall into the streets in quest of his half-sister and stepmother.

Nicholas went direct to the Swiss guard-house, on the right side of the court of the Ministers, but found it impossible to enter the grating before the court. There was, however, a door opening into the building from the back street, and at this he applied, and asked to see his father. He was immediately admitted, and found, to his surprise, Madame Deschwanden and Madeleine sitting beside the fire drying their clothes. The former was talking in the most animated manner to a score of Swiss guardsmen, who laughed and joked with her, whilst the corporal looked on, and listened good-humouredly.

'But I won't go,' said madame, stamping on the ground; 'no human power shall persuade me to leave France for your detestable land of lakes and perpetual snows.'

'Now, wife,' said the corporal, 'what has been your object in coming here to Versailles?'

'To carry off the king to Paris,' answered she, sharply.

'What! whether he like it or not?'

'To be sure. We know best what is to his interest.'

'Very well, madame,' said the corporal, roguishly. 'Do to others as you would be done by. I am going to treat you precisely as you want to treat the king. To-morrow is my last day of service. To-morrow I reckon on obtaining my discharge. After to-morrow, as soon as possible, I intend to transport you from Paris to Lucerne, whether you approve or not; for I know best what is to your interest.'

This sally was greeted by the soldiers with applause.

'My faith!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, not at all taken aback, 'the cases are totally different; but that is what you Alpine bears can never perceive. In the case of his majesty, it is the ladies who insist, and he is too gallant to refuse our wishes. Whoever heard—unless he were a German—of a man dragging a woman after him into a wilderness against her will? Hah! Nicholas, my boy, what brings you here?'

'I have come in search of you and Gabrielle,—Madeleine, I mean?'

'Where is Gabrielle?' asked his sister, looking up.

'She is in safe keeping,' answered the lad; 'and, if you and my mother wish for shelter, you can have it in the same house.'

'That entirely depends,' said madame; 'we are exceedingly comfortable here.'

'But the house is that of a curé, and when I told him that you and Madeleine were out, he insisted on my inviting you to partake of his hospitality.'

'A curé, did you say, Nicholas?'

'Yes, mother.'

'Mon Dieu! To think of my leaving the society of soldiers for that of priests! I am much obliged to him, but scarlet coats are a more cheerful sight than black cassocks. Do you think I am going to put my head into the lion's mouth? I have plenty of naughty little things on my conscience, but I don't want to precipitate myself into a confessional to-night. Thank you, Nicholas; I prefer to remain here, where I can have a good laugh, I am too wet and cold to endure the cold water and freezing to which a curé would subject me. In Lent, yes—not now.'

Madame's determination was received by the soldiers with satisfaction.

'You are all priest-bitten,' said madame; 'that is the mischief of you Swiss. There was once a spider called the Tarantula, and there was at the same time another spider called Curatus, and these two went forth a scamper one day, and the former entered France and bit the people here, and set them all dancing; and the other spider crawled over the Alps, and spun his web in Switzerland, and nibbled at the good folk there, and made them all conscientious. Mon Dieu! what it is to be conscientious!'

The soldiers laughed heartily.

'Madeleine,' said Nicholas, 'will you come to Gabrielle?'

'No,' said the girl, 'I shall remain with my mother; at any rate, at present. What street are you in?'

'We are immediately opposite the opening into the Rue des Recollets, in the Rue du Vieux Versailles, with M. le Curé Lindet lodging in the house of the widow Maupied.'

'I shall see you to-morrow, Nicholas,' said the corporal. 'I will take good care of these two madcaps. You know that to-morrow my time of service is out. I shall be on duty early in the morning at the grand staircase, and that is the last office I shall perform for his gracious majesty. Then, huzza! we shall be off to the brave Switzerland, to the mountains and lakes! to the land of Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, and Walter Fürst.'

'Never!' cried madame.

'We shall see,' said the corporal.

'We shall see,' said madame; 'a woman has a will of her own, and it is a stubborn one.'

'Good night!' said Nicholas.

At five in the morning, before daylight, a crowd was already prowling about the streets, and crossing the Place d'Armes, armed with pikes, spits, and scythes. Seeing some of the obnoxious body-guard as sentinels at the iron gates, they forced the national guards to fire on them; the latter obeyed, taking care not to hit them.

Fires were burning in the open square, and men and women were treading on one another to warm their hands and dry their clothes at the blaze. A hunchback on a tall horse was trotting up and down and haranguing the people. A very handsome man, with long black hair and beard, dressed in the costume of a Greek slave, with bare arms and legs and throat, gesticulated, put himself into postures, and recited scraps of poetry.

To understand what followed, certain particulars must be explained. The guard of the castle had been refused to Lafayette, and he had been given only the outer posts. Those of greater importance were confided to the Swiss and to the body-guard. These latter had received an order to retire, but they had been recalled when it was ascertained that their squadron had left Versailles, and were retained in the posts they had occupied the day before. During the 5th, all the iron gates of the Château had been shut and guarded by sentinels, so that the people had been unable to penetrate within the walls. It was otherwise on the morning of the 6th.

When the French guard had attended on the king, they had been charged with the custody of the railing in face of the grand court of entrance, and of the gates opening into the gardens. To facilitate their service, the gates of the Princes' court had been wont to be left open, so that they might pass through into the park to relieve the sentinels. When it was decided that the national guard should resume the posts formerly occupied by the French guard, the gates of the courts of the Ministers and of the Princes were opened as of old.

About half-past five the women, who had been sleeping in the barrack adjoining the Place d'Armes, woke up and issued forth into the square. Finding the gate into the grand court of entrance open, they passed through it, without the sentry of the national guard refusing them admission. On the left was the gate into the court of the Princes, guarded by two soldiers of the same militia corps; the women, probably more from curiosity than any other reason, penetrated into this court, and finding that it gave access to the park, ran out upon the terrace to admire the gardens and the ponds full of statuary.

These explorers were speedily followed by other women, and by the rabble of armed men; and the terrace was soon crowded with them, talking noisily beneath the queen's windows.

Their voices awoke the queen, who rang the bell for her lady-in-waiting, Madame Thibault. This woman looked out of the window, and told her majesty that the noise arose from a number of women who, having been unable to find shelter during the night, were walking about. This reply satisfied the queen, and Madame Thibault returned to her bed.

By this time the grand court was full of the rabble which began to arrive from all sides, and poured through the gates armed with cutlasses, pistols, guns, and pikes, vowing vengeance against the body-guard and the queen.

Major d'Aguesseau at once sent guards into the passage opening out of the court of the Princes into the Cour Royale. But, too few to withstand such a mass of people, they were driven back, and a horde of ruffians precipitated themselves into the Cour Royale, uttering horrible threats and cries of rage. One detachment rushed towards the vestibule leading to the apartments of the queen and the princesses; another flung itself upon the sentinel at the gate of the court, disarmed him, threw him down, and stabbed him with their pikes and sabres. The fellow in the costume of a Greek slave—his name was Jourdain, and he was an artist's model—rushed upon the guard, armed with a hatchet, and, jumping on his breast, chopped at his neck till the head came off and rolled among the feet of the by-standers.

Whilst this horrible scene was being transacted in the court, the band of ruffians who had run to the vestibule, found the door shut in their faces by the sentinels. They then directed their attack upon the marble staircase, which was defended by Corporal Deschwanden and another Swiss. Foremost among them was a militiaman of the guard of Versailles, a diminutive locksmith, bald-headed, with small sunken eyes, and his hands chapped and begrimed. The rioters assailed the Swiss, and by dint of numbers forced them up several steps. The corporal was disarmed and maltreated. The little locksmith, seeing him deprived of his gun and sword, sprang vindictively at him and struck him in the breast with a long knife he held in his hand; then leaving him, hanging over the balustrade bleeding and faint, he ran up the steps screaming and flourishing his knife, and the crowd poured after him to the landing, where several guards were prepared to defend the door into the hall of the king. One of the guards, Miomandre, descended a few steps, and asked the rabble, 'What, my friends! do you love the king, and seek to disturb him in his palace?'

Without answering him, the locksmith seized him by the belt, others caught him by the hair, and they would have flung him down the stairs to the ruffians below, had not his companions rescued him. Too few in number to oppose the crowd, the guard retired into the hall and shut and locked the door. Then the rioters endeavoured to break it open, and succeeded in staving in one of the panels. The soldiers blocked the hole with a wooden chest and kept them out.

Others attacked the door of the hall of the queen's guard, and, bursting it open, precipitated themselves into the room, and catching one of the guard who was unable to escape, cut him down with their swords, and Jourdain, leaping upon him, as he had on the other guard, hacked off his head, tossed it into the air, and caught it again with a shout of laughter. Another guardsman was dragged down by his belt, and drawn along the polished oak floor, through the blood of his comrade, to the head of the grand staircase, where Jourdain clamoured to get at him with his axe. A man struck at him with his pike, but the soldier caught the weapon, and drawing it towards him, by means of it regained his feet; then, with the energy of despair, he disarmed his adversary, and defended himself with the pike against the blows that were rained upon him, till he reached the door of the king's hall, which his comrades opened to receive him; and he was drawn in by one of the guard, whilst another fired in the face of the crowd and shot one man.

Another guardsman, Miomandre, was struck down with the handle of a pike, and one of the assailants, a man in the uniform of a soldier, wrenched from him his gun, and with the butt end struck him a blow which cut his head open and stunned him. Thinking him dead, the ruffian robbed him of his watch, and then deserted him. On his recovery, finding none of the mob near him, he crawled to the door and obtained admission.

The rioters were at that moment engaged in forcing an entrance into the ante-chamber of the queen's apartments. The sister of the queen's chambermaid, Madame Angué, hearing a rapping at the door, half opened it, and seeing four guardsmen covered with blood, shut and locked it again. They continued to rap, and she admitted them. They stationed themselves before the door of the queen's bedroom, and bade Madame Thibault and Madame Angué take their mistress to the king's apartment.

The rest of the guard, driven from the king's hall, betook themselves to the Œil-de-Bœuf, a gallery opening into the private apartments of the king, lighted by an oval window at one end, and having an oval mirror at the other. In this they took up their position, determined that the mob should only enter the cabinet of their sovereign over their bodies.

But by this time the news of the invasion of the palace had reached Lafayette, who sprang from his bed, and, without waiting for his horse, ran into the Place d'Armes to collect his militia. The first to arrive was the detachment of the Parisian militia, who had slept in the church of the Recollects. It came up under the conduct of its commandant, Doctor Gondran, and ranged itself in the marble court, under the windows of the king's apartments. At that moment, the fellow who had been shot by the guards was brought down and placed in a slanting position on the stairs, so that all might see the corpse. Next moment, one of the body-guard was dragged by his collar down the steps, and the mob were about to butcher him with their knives and swords beside the body of the labourer whose head had been split by a bullet, when Dr. Gondran appealed to his soldiers: 'Will you suffer an assassination to take place under your eyes?'

They replied at once that they would not permit it, and, running to the foot of the marble stairs, they rescued the guardsman from the hands of the populace.

The doctor then advanced his troop up the staircase, which was encumbered with ruffians carrying off chairs, mirrors, pictures, and any object worth securing that they had found in the rooms they had forced open. He made them lay down their spoil, and traversing the rooms, he knocked at the door of the Œil-de-Bœuf.

As the guard within did not obey, he exclaimed, 'Come, open to us, body-guard; we have not forgotten that you saved us French guards at Fontenoy.'

The door was thrown open. The king and his brave defenders were saved.

Nicholas had slept soundly on a mat before the fire, and Lindet had made himself a bed on a settle.

In the morning the two men rose refreshed, and the widow Maupied came in to make up the fire, and prepare breakfast.

Gabrielle appeared shortly after, quite recovered from her fright and exhaustion, her cheeks brilliant with colour, and her dress cleansed from the stains of the dirty road.

'So the whole family are here,' said Lindet, good-humouredly, to Nicholas; 'your father, mother, sister, and—Gabrielle.'

'Yes,' answered Nicholas; 'we have got a story in Switzerland of a young man who carried a goose with golden feathers through a town, and a woman ran behind to pluck one of the plumes; but, lo! her fingers stuck to the goose, and she could not detach them; then her mother, indignant at seeing her daughter run through the streets after a young man, rushed up to her, and caught her by the arms to arrest her; but, lo! the mother stuck fast. Then the husband, who was parish clerk, amazed at such an exhibition, ran after his wife and was fast directly. He was followed by the priest; and so they ran, a train of persons after the golden goose, unable to disengage themselves. I think Madeleine started the wild-goose chase in this instance, and my mother ran after her, dragging Gabrielle along with her, and——' he suddenly paused and reddened.

'And you ran after Gabrielle and caught her,' said the curé, laughing.

'You see, monsieur,' said Nicholas, still very red, 'it would not have done for me to have let those three women go into danger without me. What might have happened? Madeleine was nearly hung, and Gabrielle well-nigh strangled, and I dare say my mother was all but trampled upon by the crowd. It was a foolish thing for them to come—it was not Gabrielle's fault; but, as they came, I could not in conscience leave them unprotected. Madame Deschwanden generally knows how to take care of herself, and so, for the matter of that, does Madeleine; but what if they should be separated by the crowd from poor little Gabrielle? The thought frightened me. And very lucky—no! providential, I will say—was it that I did follow. When I saw her—' he nodded to the girl—'in the hands of those frenzied mad women, I vowed a mass to the honour of Bruder Klaus if he would obtain her release, and extend to her his protection.'

'Bruder Klaus,' repeated Lindet, with a puzzled look; 'who was he? or what was he?'

'Bruder Klaus was a hermit, a patriot, and a saint,' began Nicholas, delighted to find a hearer to whom he could recount the history of his patron. 'The holy brother lived a miraculous life without food——'

'Bruder Klaus must wait a moment,' interrupted Lindet; 'here is some one coming for you.'

In fact, Madeleine rushed in, her eyes full of tears, out of breath; she could only articulate, 'Nicholas! quick, your father is dying;' and then, leaning her head on the back of a chair, gasp for air and sob. When she had recovered sufficiently she added, 'The corporal wants to see a priest. M. le Curé, will you follow me?'

'I am ready,' answered Lindet, catching up his hat.

'Come, Gabrielle, come too,' said Madeleine; 'he asked after you.'

'Where is he?' asked Nicholas, his breast heaving convulsedly.

'He is in the gardens,—the park,' answered the girl. 'I found him—he had dragged himself out upon the terrace, and he made me take him out of the way of the crowd to the side of one of the sheets of water, and lay him on the grass.'

She could speak no more, for her tears burst forth anew. 'Dear old corporal!' she said between her sobs, 'he never knew how I reverenced and loved him. I would have followed him over the world.'

She drew Gabrielle after her, the priest followed. Nicholas ran forward in the direction indicated by the girl,—to the large pond or lake called the Pièce aux Suisses, and when Madeleine came up she found Nicholas supporting his head.

'My boy,' said the old corporal, faintly, lying with his head propped against his son's shoulder, 'whilst I have been alone I have had such a beautiful vision. Look yonder!' He pointed to a mass of cloud lit with the brilliant beams of the morning sun, standing crisply against a blue sky. 'It is changed,' continued the Swiss soldier, 'but you may see what has been. There was the Jungfrau, as truly as I have seen it from Interlaken. A little to the right, where you can still distinguish an elevation in the cloud, was the dazzling Silber-horn, with its glacier flashing in the sun. There was the Mönch, and there the precipice of the Eiger. Is it not beautiful still? but the outline is not what it was. God be praised that I have been shown my dear Alps once more. God be praised!'

He folded his hands, and his eyes still watched the cloud mountains gradually changing their forms in the roseate morning light.

'Shall I fetch you a doctor, father?' asked Nicholas, bending over him.

'It is of no use, my boy,' answered the old man; 'I have received my death-wound. I bear no resentment against him who dealt it. God willed that I should obtain my discharge from service this way, with a stroke of the knife instead of with that of a pen. Klaus! have you your flageolet with you?'

'Yes, father,' sobbed the boy.

'Then play me "Herz, mein Herz."'

The young man obeyed, but sadly and imperfectly, for his fingers refused to move correctly. However, the corporal sang to himself, disregardful of the false notes:

'Heart, my heart, why art thou weary,

Why to grief and tears a prey?

Foreign lands are bright and cheery;

Heart, my heart, what ails thee, say?'

And then he went abruptly to the verse—

'I should climb the rugged gorges

To the azure Alpine lake,

Where the snowy peak discharges

Torrents, that the silence break.

'I should see the old brown houses;

At the doors in every place,

Neighbours sitting, children playing,

Greetings in each honest face.'

'Here is the priest, father,' said Nicholas, interrupting the tune, and laying aside his flageolet.

The corporal instinctively put his hand to his brow, as a salute.

Gabrielle burst into tears and threw herself at his side, and put her arms around him. The old man patted her affectionately on the head and kissed her brow; then, raising his eyes to Madeleine, he asked her to take the place of Nicholas, who supported him. The girl readily obeyed, and pressed her stepfather's head to her bosom, whilst she endeavoured to stanch the blood that flowed from his wound with a handkerchief.

'Come here, Nicholas,' said the corporal; 'here, Gabrielle, dear child, look up. I want you to grant me a very great favour, little friend.'

Gabrielle looked earnestly in the weatherbeaten face of the dying man, endeavouring to read his meaning. He smiled at her, and took her hand in his.

'I have often longed, of late, to see the day when my Klaus should lead you to the altar; and I have loved to think how good a little wife you would be to him, and how dear a daughter you would prove to me. Gabrielle, will you allow me the satisfaction of joining your hands before I die?'

She did not answer, but trembled violently, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. The old man, without waiting for a formal reply, took the right hand of Nicholas, and placing it in that of Gabrielle, held them together, saying to the priest, with a grave smile,—'I call you to witness, Father, that I have betrothed these children. May God bless them both! And now leave me alone with the curé for a few moments.'

The young people withdrew, and sat down at the water's edge sorrowfully and silently.

When the priest made them a sign to approach, they returned to take the last kiss. The sun was shining down on the old man and glorifying his face; he held the crucifix between his hands clasped to his breast, and his eyes looked across the water, beyond the wooded hill that formed the horizon to the golden clouds floating in the blue sky, and his lips murmured:

'Heart, my heart, in weary sadness

Breaking far from Fatherland,

Restless, yearning, void of gladness,

Till once more at home I stand.'

Madeleine gently closed his eyes, as his spirit fled.

A few hours later, the king and queen bade farewell to Versailles, which they were destined never to see again, and were escorted by the crowd and by the national guard to Paris, destined to be their prison and their grave.

CHAPTER XL.

IN June, 1790, the constitution of the Church of France was re-cast. Its revenues had been seized to pay the debts incurred by Louis XIV and his successors. The cahiers of the third order had asked with unanimity for this. Thus the endowments of the Church saved the country from bankruptcy. But though the third estate had expressed their desires for the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, they had protested their profound attachment for the religion in which they had been brought up. Consequently, the National Assembly undertook the maintenance of the Clergy by the State on certain conditions perfectly just and reasonable.

That those who had fattened on the 'patrimony of the poor' under the old system should revolt against a constitution which cut down their revenues, destroyed their privileges, and restrained their arbitrary exertion of authority, is not surprising.

Monseigneur de Narbonne, whose revenues and benefices had exceeded 80,000 francs, found himself suddenly reduced to live on 30,000 francs, and the bills for the re-furnishing of the palace for the reception of the prince were not yet paid.

The 16th of January, 1791, had been fixed by the municipality of Évreux for receiving the constitutional adhesion of the clergy. The bishop had addressed an epistle to the curés of his diocese, in which he resumed all the arguments directed against the civil constitution, and quoted the saying of Esprémesnil: 'It is a constitution unheard-of in the Church, which annihilates all jurisdiction, all ecclesiastical authority, and the Assembly, whence it emanates, can only be compared to the sovereign council of the Jews which crucified Jesus Christ.' He concluded by declaring that, for his part, he would never submit to it, and he bade all his clergy reject it as impious.

Monseigneur de la Ferronnais, Bishop of Lisieux, protested against the execution of the decree, till the opinion of Rome had been taken. He summoned an assembly to concert plans of resistance, and presided over it himself. It was, however, but thinly attended.

These examples and exhortations only touched the minority.

At Évreux, only one incumbent and three young curates refused the oath. The other seven incumbents and all the ecclesiastics exercising public functions, each in his parish, after the high mass, descended to the choir gates, and in a distinct voice pronounced their adhesion, in the presence of the people and the municipal authorities.

At Bernay, all the clergy, even those who, through not exercising ministries salaried by the State, were not required to give in their adhesion, took the oath, and a sermon was preached on the occasion by Lebertre, curé of La Couture. Some days after, the Abbé Deshayes preached to a crowded congregation in favour of the constitution, taking for his text the words of the Gospel, 'Peace be unto you;' and the municipality were so pleased with the discourse that they ordered it to be inscribed in the parish register.

At Andelys, the four perpetual curates took the oath. At Brionne, M. Bordeaux the priest, who had followed the same course, in a sermon defended the new constitution as being, if not faultless, at least an honest attempt to rectify old abuses. At Breteuil, on the contrary, M. Parizot de Durand refused his adhesion, and his two curates followed his example; but two other priests in the same place signed the protestation.

Monseigneur de Narbonne persisting angrily in his refusal, the episcopal seat of the department of Eure became vacant. The election of a fresh bishop was therefore necessary, and, for this purpose, a convocation of the electors was made.

The election was not direct, but in two degrees. The grand electoral college was composed of about six hundred members. Their number, the variety of their social situations, were conditions proper for assuring an independent and intelligent vote. The principle admitted, the election of a bishop,—who, it was required, had served in the diocese for fifteen years,—could be confided with some security to such a reunion of men. It was, however, vitiated by the fact that those most immediately under the authority of the bishop, viz. the clergy, had but a fractional influence in the election. This must be borne in mind when we read of the resignation and apostasy of some of the constitutional bishops during the reign of Terror.

Those who had most power in the electoral college were the men of advanced philosophic opinions, whereas those with deep religious sentiment were nowhere. Consequently, in some instances, those were elected bishops whose attachment to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity had been sapped by the dissolvent philosophy of the 18th century.

The electoral Assembly was convoked for Sunday, Feb. 13. High mass was celebrated in the cathedral by M. de Corval, curé of Petit-Andely, assisted by M. Rever, curé of Couteville. The service concluded, the procureur-général of the department opened the session, and said to the electors:—'We dispense with recalling to you your duties and obligations. We count on your patriotic zeal, and we are assured that in your selection you will be determined by your judgment as to whom is most worthy of confidence and of the esteem of the public.'

The votes were taken, and Thomas Lindet was proclaimed the bishop elect; 238 suffrages were given to him, and 180 to M. Rever.

A courier was immediately despatched to Paris to announce the result to Lindet, who at once posted to Évreux, and arrived there before the Assembly dispersed.

'Sir,' said the mayor to him, 'if the department of Eure had known an ecclesiastic more virtuous than you, it would have preferred him to you.'

On the 15th of February, the roar of cannons, the ringing of the cathedral and the parish-church bells, announced to the people that they had a new bishop,—a representative of the new law, of liberty, justice, and equality. The arrival at the highest ecclesiastical function of a congruist curé who had not been preceptor or confessor to princes, a man without noble birth or fortune to recommend him, was a spectacle proper to excite the enthusiasm of the nascent democracy.

The bishop elect was, however, as yet without canonical confirmation and episcopal consecration.

His institution ought to have been asked of the Archbishop of Rouen, his metropolitan, but the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld was out of his see, having refused the oath, and was not yet replaced.

This situation could not be prolonged. The presence of the constitutional bishop in Évreux became daily more necessary. The directory of the department of Eure addressed to Lindet an invitation to come and take possession of his diocese as soon as possible, and requested him to demand institution at the hands of any bishops of his choice.

Thomas Lindet hastened to obey. He was consecrated on the 6th of March, 1791, in the chapel of the Oratoire, at Paris, along with the Bishops of Beauvais, Châteauroux, and Moulins, by Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, and the Bishops of Quimper and Dax, who had subscribed to the constitution. A few days after he joined in consecrating the Bishop of the Seine-Inférieure, in the cathedral of Rouen, and was himself afterwards confirmed by the new metropolitan.

On Sunday, March 27, Thomas Lindet was solemnly installed in the beautiful cathedral of Évreux, before a vast congregation. After vespers a Te Deum was sung as an act of thanksgiving for the convalescence of the king, and the same day he despatched a circular round the diocese, to announce his intention of making a pastoral visitation.

He left the cathedral, when the service was concluded, by the private door into the palace gardens. It was the same door through which he had passed the night that he had been locked in the minster.

But his mind did not revert to the past: it was occupied with the future. He had taken his place at the helm of the vessel, and he foresaw breakers ahead, and felt that the gale was rising from every point of the compass. He was not sanguine. On the contrary, he was dispirited; his elevation to the episcopal throne did not jump with his wishes, for Lindet was not personally ambitious.

He was resolved to do his best, to work the diocese thoroughly, and to set an example of simplicity of life and devotion to the causes nearest his heart—Liberty and Catholicism. But, at the same time, he owned to himself, that if he found resistance among the clergy and laity, his heart might fail him. He was impetuous, but he had not the gift of patient endurance. That he would find some opposition to his claims was certain, but it could be overcome by conciliatory conduct and by diligent discharge of his duties, unless—and there rose before him a prospect which made him quake—unless the pope should pronounce against the Constitutional Church.

As this prospect arose to dismay him, he encountered the ex-bishop, De Narbonne-Lara. Both were in episcopal purple, with pectoral cross and cape; Lindet wore as well a lace surplice.

'I have expected to meet you,' said the ex-bishop. 'Indeed, I have waited here on purpose.'

'Monseigneur,' said Lindet, 'I am glad of the opportunity of speaking to you, that I may give expression to my regret that you should have felt yourself unable to take the constitutional oath, and thus have forced me into incurring responsibilities which I tremble to feel upon my shoulders.'

'This is nonsense,' said De Narbonne; 'you have courted it. You curés have been driving matters on to this point for the purpose of stepping on our necks into our thrones.'

'I beg your pardon,' answered Lindet; 'you are altogether mistaken; we had no ambition except for the Church, for ourselves individually none,—none whatever. For myself, I may assure you, my Lord, I had neither the wish nor the expectation of being a bishop, least of all of taking your place.'

'You a bishop!' exclaimed De Narbonne, his red face flaming with passion. 'Do you call yourself a bishop? Pshaw! who will accept you as their prelate?'

Lindet, determined not to resent the insolence of the ex-bishop, replied with moderation: 'You cannot be unaware, Monseigneur, that the vast majority of the clergy in this diocese have signed the Constitution.'

'Wait a bit,' said De Narbonne, threateningly; 'when his holiness speaks, they will be of another mind.'

'Are you sure that the holy father will refuse to recognise the Constitutional Church? Why should he? We hold the Catholic faith; we have the same orders, sacraments, and ritual. There is absolutely no divergence on any religious point between the Church of the old régime and the Church now. The only point on which a difference has arisen has been a political question,—a political one only.'

'Be the point what it may, he will anathematise you.'

'Then,' answered Lindet, 'alas for religion! At present, the Church has advanced, haltingly, I admit; for that, the like of you are responsible; but it has advanced with the tide that is setting in, and, what is more, it can control and direct that tide, and no other power but the Church can, at the present time, do that. Everything is in flux except the faith, and that will be the rallying-point. We shall, may be, have a republic, but it will be a Christian republic. If the holy father were to throw the apple of discord among us now, if he were to break into two factions the Church of France, by forbidding the faithful to accept our ministrations, then he will unchain the hell-dogs, and roll France in blood. My Lord! it is your own doing that this see has become vacant; it is through no influence exerted by me, that I have been elected your successor. The times are threatening. I shall have to bear on my shoulders the burden of this diocese in a period of extraordinary excitement. I pray you give me your episcopal blessing for the work. If ever you see your way towards accepting the Constitution, I will vacate the see at once. I pray your fatherly blessing.' He bent on one knee.

'No,' said De Narbonne, sulkily; 'my blessing you shall never have. My advice I give you, as you once gave me yours. I warn you that shortly all you constitutional bishops will be anathematised by Rome, all the priests will be ordered, on pain of excommunication, to abstain from acknowledging you, and the faithful will be forbidden to accept the ministrations of bishops and priests who have taken this accursed oath, at the risk of damning their souls eternally.'

'My God!' exclaimed Lindet.

'Yes, such will be the action of the holy see.'

'Then,' said Lindet, vehemently, 'if that be the conduct of the successor of S. Peter, it is high time that his supremacy should be modified into a primacy; lest at some future occasion, relying on powers he has assumed, he use them to wreck the Church. We have just upset the principle of absolute monarchy in the field of politics, we must overthrow the same principle in the domain of religion.'

He turned from the ex-bishop, and entering the palace, shut himself into the library and wrote a letter to the pope, imploring him to use caution, and not, on a point of trifling consequence—the disendowment of the Church—to wreck Christianity in the whirlpool of the Revolution.

It need hardly be said that his letter remained unanswered, and that the prognostications of the ex-bishop were verified.

CHAPTER XLI.

IN 1816, just twenty-seven years after Corporal Deschwanden's death, as related in the last chapter but one, on a still summer evening, a little party sat in the veranda of a brown timber-built house at Kreutzmatt above Lucerne. The veranda was simply one of three open galleries overgrown with vine-branches, common to Swiss houses in the Four Cantons. Against this gallery, over the door, leading into the house from the garden, was a painting, of no high type of art, representing a tall man with dark hair, and a face of deadly pallor, the eyes sunk and red with weeping; habited in a snuff-coloured garb, with loose sleeves and no collar, holding in one hand a staff. Under this painting was written in German characters, 'Heiliger Bruder Klaus, bitte für uns.' Looking from the veranda, the eye swept across the goodly city of Lucerne, its quaint watchtowers capped with red tiles, and the twin taper spires of S. Leger; across the still blue lake, unruffled, like a gigantic mirror, to Pilatus, its serrated crest flushed with red evening light, crisply cutting the evening sky. To the right was the rolling green country stretching towards the setting sun; but to the left, above the water, towered the glistening peaks of the Engelberg Alps, their glaciers blazing in the last fires of day.

In the gallery are five persons: one an aged woman with white hair, and a grey countenance. Her face is expressive only of childish good-humour. It is Madame Berthier; she sits in this gallery every fine day, and looks at the lake and the mountains and laughs. She has lost her memory almost completely, every trace of her old bitterness is gone. On her lap is a little girl of three years old, dark-haired, black-eyed, the image of Gabrielle; and madame fondles her, plays with her, calls her Mädel, which is the short, we suppose, for Madeleine, and kisses her oftener than the child altogether likes.

Gabrielle is there, a middle-aged woman, with a plain gold ring on the third finger of the left hand, spinning diligently. She is dressed like a Swiss peasantess, with white sleeves and a black bodice, her hair elaborately plaited behind and fastened with a silver spoon.

Leaning against the balcony is Nicholas, grown rather stout, playing a flageolet to a little boy in a brown suit of very stiff cloth, jacket, waistcoat, breeches, all one colour, and all old-mannish, wearing a brown knitted cap on his head;—a little boy with very large dreamy blue eyes and a shock of light flaxen hair, his head thrust through a large rosary, like a necklace, holding his hands behind his back, and singing lustily with a clear sweet voice—

'Heart, my heart, why art thou weary,

Why to grief and tears a prey?

Foreign lands are bright and cheery;

Heart, my heart, what ails thee, say?'

Coming along the path from Lucerne, with his long black shadow going before him, is an old man, very thin, wearing a long grey coat, with snow-white hair.

He comes to the gate of the garden, halts there, looks up inquiringly at the gallery, sees the painting of Bruder Klaus, nods his head, as if acknowledging that this accords with directions that have been given him, opens the wicket and enters the garden.

Nicholas at once, turning to his wife, says, 'Gabrielle, here comes a stranger. Who can he be?'

Directly they hear the tap of the old man at their door, and both Nicholas and his wife run down stairs to answer it. The door is at once opened, and their eyes rest on the thin stranger. His face is wrinkled and worn, the cheeks sunk, the complexion pale, the eyes bright, restless, and intelligent. He raises his right hand, and Madame Nicholas at once observes its delicacy and the beauty of the fingers.

The stranger does not speak, but looks attentively at Gabrielle, whilst a sad smile flickers about his thin lips. She raises her eyes to his, and all at once recognition flashes into them, her countenance lights up, and she falls into his arms with the cry of—'It is M. Lindet!'

When the first greetings were over, Gabrielle's question was: 'How is everything now at Bernay, at dear old Bernay, which I shall never see again?'

'Do you want to see it?'

'I do not know; perhaps it would be too painful, and I am so happy here.'

'I have come,' said Lindet, 'to ask you, Gabrielle, to shelter me for a while under your roof, in my time of need, as once I sheltered you. I am exiled from France, now that the royal family has been restored.'

'Shelter you!' exclaimed Gabrielle; 'of course I will, with joy and love, and Nicholas will never weary of serving you to the best of his abilities; I have told him what you did for me, and he has learned to love your name.'

THE END.

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