Marie Antoinette and Her Son Part 44

There were still true friends who wanted to save the queen. Secret tidings came to her that all was ready for her escape. It was against her that the popular rage was chiefly directed, and her life was even threatened. Twice had the attempt been made to kill the queen, and the most violent denunciations of the populace were directed against her. It was therefore the queen whom her friends wanted most to save. Every thing was prepared for the flight, true and devoted friends were waiting for her, ready to conduct her to the boundaries of France, where she should meet deputies sent by her nephew, the Emperor Francis. The plan was laid with the greatest care; nothing but the consent of the queen was needed to bring it to completion, and save her from certain destruction. But Marie Antoinette withheld her acquiescence. "It is of no consequence about my life," she said. "I know that I must die, and I am prepared for it. If the king and my children cannot escape with me, I remain; for my place is at the side of my husband and my children."

At last the king himself, inspired by the courage and energy of his wife, ventured to oppose the decisions and decrees of the all- powerful a.s.sembly. It had put forth two new decrees. It had resolved upon the deportation of all priests beyond the limits of France, and also upon the establishment of a camp of twenty thousand men on the Rhine frontier. With the latter there had been coupled a warning, threatening with death all who should spend any time abroad, and engage in any armed movement against their own country.

To both these decrees Louis refused his sanction; both he vetoed on the 20th of June, 1792.

The populace, which thronged the doors of the National a.s.sembly in immense ma.s.ses, among whom the emissaries of revolution had been very active, received the news of the king's veto with a howl of rage. The storm-birds of revolution flew through the streets, and shouted into all the windows: "The country is in danger! The king has been making alliances abroad. The Austrian woman wants to summon the armies of her own land against France, and therefore the king has vetoed the decree which punishes the betrayers of their country.

A curse on M. Veto! Down with Madame Veto! That is the cry to-day for the revolutionary party. A curse on M. Veto! Down with Madame Veto!"

The watch-cry rolled like a peal of thunder through all the streets and into all the houses; and, while within their closed doors, and in the stillness of their own homes, the well-disposed praised the king for having the courage to protect the priests and the emigres, the evil-disposed bellowed out their curses through all the streets, and called upon the rabble to avenge themselves upon Monsieur and Madame Veto.

n.o.body prevented this. The National a.s.sembly let every thing go quietly on, and waited with perfect indifference to see what the righteous anger of the people should resolve to do.

Immense ma.s.ses of howling, shrieking people rolled up, on the afternoon of the 20th of June, to the Tuileries, where no arrangements had been made for defence, the main entrances not even being protected that day by the National Guard.

The king gave orders, therefore, that the great doors should be opened, and the people allowed to pa.s.s in unhindered.

In a quarter of an hour all the staircases, corridors, and halls were filled by a howling, roaring crowd; the room of the king alone was locked, and in this apartment were the royal family and a few faithful friends--the king, bland and calm as ever; the queen, pale, firm, uncomplaining; Madame Elizabeth, with folded hands, praying; the two children drawing closely together, softly weeping, and yet suppressing their sobs, because the queen had, in a whisper, commanded them to keep still.

A little company of faithful servants filled the background of the room, and listened with suspended breath to the axe-strokes with which the savage crowd broke down the doors, and heard the approaching cries of the mult.i.tude.

At last a division of the National Guard reached the palace, too late to drive the people out, but perhaps in season to protect the royal family. The door of the royal apartment was opened to the second officer of the National Guard, M. Acloque. He burst in, and kneeling before the king, conjured him, with tears in his eyes, to show himself to the people, and by his presence to calm the savage mult.i.tude.

By this time the two children were no longer able to control their feelings and suppress their fear. The dauphin burst into tears and loud cries; he clung affrighted to the dress of his mother; he implored her with the most moving tones to take him away, and go with him to his room. Marie Antoinette stooped down to the poor little fellow, and pressed him and Theresa, who was weeping calmly, to her heart, whispering a few quieting words into their ears.

While the mother was comforting her children, Louis, yielding to Acloque's entreaties, had left the room, in order to show himself to the people. Madame Elizabeth, his sister, followed him through the corridor into the great hall, pa.s.sing through the seething crowd, which soon separated her from the king. Pushed about on all sides, Madame Elizabeth could not follow, and was now alone in the throng, accompanied only by her equerry, M. Saint-Pardoux. Armed men pressed up against the princess, and horrid cries surged around her.

"There is the Austrian woman!" and at once all pikes, all weapons were directed against the princess.

"For G.o.d's sake!" cried M. de Saint Pardoux, "what do you want to do? This is not the queen!"

"Why do you undeceive them?" asked Madame Elizabeth, "their error might save the queen!"

And while she put back one of the bayonets directed against her breast, she said, gently: "Take care, sir, you might wound somebody, and I am convinced that you would be sorry."

The people were amazed at this, and respectfully made way for her to come up with the king. He stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by a crowd threatening him with wild curses. One of these desperadoes pressed close up to the king, while the others were shouting that they must strangle the whole royal family, and, pulling a bottle and a gla.s.s out of his pocket, he filled the latter, gave it to the king, and ordered him to drink to the welfare of the nation.

The king quietly took the gla.s.s. "The nation must know that I love it," said he, "for I have made many sacrifices for it. From the bottom of my heart I drink to its welfare," and, in spite of the warning cries of his friends, he put the gla.s.s to his lips and emptied it.

The crowd was beside itself with delight, and their cries were answered from without by the demand of the bloodthirsty rabble--"How soon are you going to throw out the heads of the king and the queen?"

Marie Antoinette had meanwhile succeeded in pacifying the dauphin.

She raised herself up, and when she saw that the king had gone out, she started toward the door.

Her faithful friends stopped the way; they reminded her that she was not simply a queen, that she was a mother, too. They conjured her with tears to give ear to prudence--not to rush in vain into danger, and imperil the king still more.

"No one shall hinder me from doing what is my duty," cried the queen. "Leave the doorway free."

But her friends would not yield; they defied even the wrath of the queen. At that moment, some of the National Guards came in through another door, and pacified Marie Antoinette, a.s.suring her that the life of the king was not threatened.

In the mean while the shouting came nearer and nearer, the cries resounded from the guard-room, the doors were torn open, and the people surged in, in immense waves, like the sea lashed into fury by the storm. The National Guards rolled a table before the queen and her children, and placed themselves at the two sides to defend them.

Only a bit of wood now separated the queen from her enemies, who brandished their weapons at her. But Marie Antoinette had now regained her whole composure. She stood erect; at her right hand, her daughter, who nestled up to her mother--at her left, the dauphin, who, with wide-open eyes and looks of astonishment, gazed at the people bursting in. Behind the queen were Princesses Lamballe and Tarente, and Madame Tourzel.

A man, with dishevelled hair and bare bosom, gave the queen a handful of rods, bearing the inscription, "For Marie Antoinette!"

Another showed her a guillotine, a third a gallows, with the inscription, "Tremble, tyrant! thy hour has come!" Another held up before her, on the point of a pike, a human heart dripping with blood, and cried: "Thus shall they all bleed--the hearts of tyrants and aristocrats!"

The queen did not let her eyes fall, her fixed look rested upon the shrieking and howling mult.i.tude; but when this man, with the bleeding heart, approached her, her eyelids trembled--a deathly paleness spread over her cheeks, for she recognized him--Simon the cobbler--and a fearful presentiment told her that this man, who had always been for her the incarnation of hatred, is now, when her life is threatened, to be the source of her chief peril.

From the distance surged in the cries: "Long live Santerre! Long live the Faubourg Saint Antoine! Long live the sans-culottes!"

And at the head of a crowd of half-naked fellows, the brewer Santerre, arrayed in the fantastic costume of a robber of the Abruzzo Mountains, with a dagger and pistol in his girdle, dashed into the room, his broad-brimmed hat, with three red plumes, aslant upon his brown hair, that streamed down on both sides of his savage countenance, like the mane of a lion.

The queen lifted the dauphin up, set him upon the table, and whispered softly to him, he must not cry, he must not grieve, and the child smiled and kissed his mother's hands. Just then a drunken woman rushed up to the table, threw a red cap down upon it, and ordered the queen, on pain of death, to put it on.

Marie Antoinette threw both her arms around the dauphin, kissed his auburn hair, and turned calmly to General de Wittgenhofen, who stood near her.

"Put the cap upon me," said she, and the women howled with pleasure, while the general, pale with rage and trembling with grief, obeyed the queen's command, and put the red cap upon that hair which trouble had already turned gray in a night.

But, after a minute, General Wittgenhofen took the red cap from the head of the queen, and laid it on the table.

From all sides resounded thus the commanding cry: "The red cap for the dauphin! The tri-color for Little Veto!" And the women tore their three-colored ribbons from their caps and threw them upon the table.

"If you love the nation," cried the women to the queen, "put the red cap on your son."

The queen motioned to Madame Tourzel, who put the red cap on the dauphin, and decked his neck and arms with the ribbons. The child did not understand whether it was a joke or a way of insulting him, and looked on with a smile of astonishment.

Santerre leaned over the table and looked complacently at the singular group. The proud and yet gentle face of the queen was so near him, that when he saw the sweat-drops rolling down from beneath the woollen cap over the dauphin's forehead, even he felt a touch of pity, and, straightening himself up, perhaps to escape the eye of the queen, he called out, roughly: "Take that cap off from that child; don't you see how he sweats?"

The queen thanked him with a mute glance, and took the cap herself from the head of the poor child.

At this point a horde of howling women pressed up to the table, and threatened the queen with their fists, and hurled wild curses at her.

"Only see how proudly and scornfully this Austrian looks at us!"

cried a young woman, who stood in the front rank." She would like to blast us with her eyes, for she hates us."

Marie Antoinette turned kindly to them: "Why should I hate you?" she asked, in gentle tones. "It is you that hate me--you. Have I ever done you any harm?"

"Not to me," answered the young woman, "not to me, but to the nation."

"Poor child!" answered the queen, gently, "they have told you so, and you have believed it. What advantage would it bring to me to harm the nation? You call me the Austrian, but I am the wife of the King of France, the mother of the dauphin. I am French with all my feelings of wife and mother. I shall never see again the land in which I was born, and only in France can I be happy or unhappy. And when you loved me, I was happy there." [Footnote: The queen's own words.--See Beauchesne, vol. i., p. 106.]

She said this with quivering voice and moving tones, the tears filling her eyes; and while she was speaking the noise was hushed, and even these savage creatures were transformed into gentle, sympathetic women.

Tears came to the eyes of the young woman who before had spoken so savagely to the queen. "Forgive me," she said, weeping, "I did not know you; now I see that you are not bad."

"No, she is not bad," cried Santerre, striking with both fists upon the table, "but bad people have misled her," and a second time he struck the table with his resounding blows. Marie Antoinette trembled a little, and hastily lifting the dauphin from the table, she put him by her side.

"Ah! madame," cried Santerre, smiling, "don't be afraid, they will do you no harm; but just think how you have been misled, and how dangerous it is to deceive the people. I tell you that in the name of the people. For the rest, you needn't fear."