Marie Antoinette and Her Son Part 24

On the platform of the Club de Cordeliers, the cry was raised loudly and hoa.r.s.ely: "Paris is in danger of folding its hands in its lap, praying and going to sleep. They must wake out of this state of lethargy, else the hateful, tyrannical monarchy will revive, and draw the nightcap so far over the ears of the sleeping capital, that it will stick as if covered with pitch, and suffer itself to relapse into bondage. We must awaken Paris, my friends; Paris must not sleep."

And on the night of the 4th of October, Paris had not slept, for the agitators had kept it awake. The watch-cry had been: "The bakers must not bake to-night! Paris must to-morrow morning be without bread, that the people may open their eyes again and awake. The bakers must not bake to-night!"

All the clubs had caught up their watch-cry, and their emissaries had spread it through the whole city, that all the bakers should be informed that whoever should "open his store in the morning, or give any other answer than this: 'There is no more meal in Paris; we have not been able to bake!' will be regarded as a traitor to the national cause, and as such, will be punished. Be on your guard!"

The bakers had been intimidated by this threat, and had not baked.

When Paris awoke on the morning of the 5th of October, it was without bread. People lacked their most indispensable article of food.

At the outset, the women, who received these dreadful tidings at the bake-shops, returned dumb with horror to their families, to announce to their households and their hungry children: "There is no bread to-day! The supply of flour is exhausted! We must starve! There is no more bread to be had!"

And from the dark abode of the poor, the sad cry sounded out into the narrow and dirty streets and all the squares, "Paris contains no bread! Paris must starve!"

The women, the children uttered these cries in wild tones of despair. The men repeated the words with clinched fists and with threatening looks: "Paris contains no more bread! Paris must starve!"

"And do you know why Paris must starve?" croaked out a voice into the ears of the people who were crowding each other in wild confusion on the Place de Carrousel.

"Do you know who is the cause of all this misery and want?"

"Tell us, if you know!" cried a rough man's voice.

"Yes, yes, tell us!" shouted other voices. "We want to know!"

"I will tell you," answered the first, in rasping tones; and now upon the stones, which indicated where the carriage-road crossed the square, a little, shrunken, broad-shouldered figure, with an unnaturally large head, and ugly, crafty face, could be seen.

"Marat!" cried some man in the crowd. "Marat!" yelled the cobbler Simon, who had been since August the friend and admirer of Marat, and was to be seen everywhere at his side. "Listen, friends, listen!

Marat is going to speak to us; he will tell us how it happens that Paris has bread no more, and that we shall all have to starve together! Marat is going to speak!"

"Silence, silence!" scattered men commanded here and there.

"Silence!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed a gigantic woman, with broad, defiant face, around which her black hair hung in dishevelled ma.s.ses, and which was gathered up in partly-secured knots under her white cap. With her broad shoulders and her robust arms she forced her way through the crowd, directing her course toward the place where Marat was standing, and near him Simon the cobbler, on whose broad shoulders, as upon a desk, Marat was resting one hand.

"Silence!" cried the giantess. "Marat, the people's friend, is going to speak! Let us listen, for it will certainly do us good. Marat is clever and wise, and loves the people!"

Marat's green, blazing eyes fixed themselves upon the gigantic form of the woman; he shrank back as if an electrical spark had touched him, and with a wonderful expression of mingled triumph and joy.

"Come nearer, goodwife!" he exclaimed; "let me press your hand, and bring all the excellent, industrious, well-minded women of Paris to take Marat, the patriot, by the hand!"

The woman strode to the place where Marat was standing and reached him her hand. No one in the crowd noticed that this hand of unwonted delicacy and whiteness did not seem to comport well with the dress of a vender of vegetables from the market; no one noticed that on one of the tapering fingers a jewel of no ordinary size glistened.

Marat was the only one to notice it, and while pressing the offered hand of the woman in his bony fist, he stooped down and whispered in her ear:

"Monseigneur, take this jewelled ring off, and do not press forward too much, you might be identified!"

"I be identified!" answered the woman, turning pale. "I do not understand you, Doctor Marat!"

"But I do," whispered Marat, still more softly, for he saw that Simon's little sparkling eyes were turned toward the woman with a look of curiosity. "I understand the Duke Philip d'Orleans very well. He wants to rouse up the people, but he is unwilling to compromise his name or his t.i.tle. And that may be a very good thing.

But you are not to disown yourself before Marat, for Marat is your very good friend, and will keep your secret honorably."

"What are you whispering about?" shouted Simon. "Why do you not speak to the people? You were going to tell us why Paris has no bread, and who is to blame that we must all starve."

"Yes, yes, that is what you were going to tell us!" was shouted on all sides. "We want to know it."

"Tell us, tell us!" cried the giantess. "Give me your hand once more, that I may press it in the name of all the women of Paris!"

Marat with an a.s.suring smile reached his great, bony hand to the woman, who held it in both of her own for a moment, and then retreated and was lost in the crowd.

But in Marat's hand now blazed the jewelled ring which had a moment before adorned the large, soft hand of the woman. He, perhaps, did not know it himself; he paid no attention to it, but turned all his thoughts to the people who now filled the immense square, and hemmed him in with thousands upon thousands of blazing eyes.

"You want to know why you have no bread?" snarled he. "You ask why you starve? Well, my friends and brothers, the answer is an easy one to give. The baker of France has shut up his storehouse because the baker's wife has told him to do so, because she hates the people and wants them to starve! But she does not intend to starve, and so she has called the baker and the little apprentices to Versailles, where are her storehouses, guarded by her paid soldiers. What does it concern her if the people of Paris are miserably peris.h.i.+ng? She has an abundance of bread, for the baker must always keep his store open for her, and her son eats cake, while your children are starving!

You must always keep demanding that the baker, the baker's wife, and the whole brood come to Paris and live in your midst, and then you will see how they keep their flour, and you will then compel them to give you of their superfluous supplies."

"Yes, we will make her come!" cried Simon the cobbler, with a coa.r.s.e laugh. "Up, brothers, up! We must compel the baker and his wife to open the flour-store to us!"

"Let us go to Versailles!" roared the great woman, who had posted herself among a group of fishwives. "Come, my friends, let us go to Versailles, and we will tell the baker's wife that our children have no bread, while she is giving her apprentices cakes. We will demand of her that she give our children bread, and if she refuses it, we will compel her to come with her baker and her whole brood to Paris and starve with us! Come, let us go to Versailles!"

"Yes, yes, let us go to Versailles!" was the hideous cry which echoed across the square; "the baker's wife shall give us bread!"

"She keeps the keys to the stores!" howled Marat, "she prevents the baker opening them."

"She shall give us the keys!" yelled the great woman.

"All the mothers and all the women of Paris must go to Versailles to the baker's wife!"

"All mothers, all women to Versailles!" resounded in a thousand- voiced chorus over the square, and then through the streets, and then into the houses.

And all the mothers and wives caught up these thundering cries, which came to them like unseen voices from the air, commissioning them to engage in a n.o.ble, an exalted mission, calling to them to save Paris and procure bread for their children.

"To Versailles, to Versailles! All mothers and women to Versailles!"

Who was able to resist obeying this command, which no one had given, which was heard by no single ear, yet was intelligible to every heart--who could resist it?

The men had stormed the Bastile, the women must storm the heart of the baker's wife in Versailles, till it yield and give to the children of the poor the bread for which they hunger.

"Up, to Versailles! All wives and mothers!"

The cry sweeps like a hurricane through the streets, and everywhere finds an echo in the maddened, panic-stricken, despairing, raging hearts of the women who see their children hunger, and suffer hunger themselves.

"The baker's wife feeds her apprentices with cakes, and we have not a crumb of bread to give to our poor little ones!"

In whole crowds the women dashed into the largest squares, where were the men who fomented the revolution, Marat, Danton, Santerre, Chaumette, and all the rest, the speakers at the clubs; there they are, giving their counsels to the maddened women, and spurring them on!

"Do not be afraid, do not be turned aside! Go to Versailles, brave women! Save your children, your husbands, from death by starvation!

Compel the baker's wife to give bread to you and for us all! And if she conceals it from you, storm her palace with violence; there will be men there to help you. Only be brave and undismayed, G.o.d will go with mothers who are bringing bread to their children, and your husbands will protect you!"

They were brave and undismayed, the wives and mothers of Paris. In broad streams they rushed on; they broke over every thing which was in their way; they drew all the women into their seething ranks. "To Versailles! To Versailles!"

It was to no avail that De Bailly, the mayor of Paris, encountered the women on the street, and urged them with pressing words to return to their families and their work, and a.s.sured them that the bakers had already opened their shops, and had been ordered to bake bread. It was in vain that the general of the National Guard, Lafayette, had a discussion with the women, and tried to show them how vain and useless was their action.

Louder and louder grew the commanding cry, "To Versailles! We will bring the baker and his wife to Paris! To Versailles!"

The crowds of women grew more and more dense, and still mightier was the shout, "To Versailles!"