The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family. Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  THE FEDERATION OF FRANCE.

  All the realm had bound itself together in the girdle of Federation, onewhich preceded the United Europe of later utopists.

  Mirabeau had favored the movement, thinking that the King would gainby the country people coming to Paris, where they might overpower thecitizens. He deluded himself into the belief that the sight of royaltywould result in an alliance which no plot could break.

  Men of genius sometimes have these sublime but foolish ideas at whichthe tyros in politics may well laugh.

  There was a great stir in the Congress when the proposition was broughtforward for this Federation ceremony at Paris which the provincesdemanded. It was disapproved by the two parties dividing the House, theJacobins (So called from the old Monastery of Jacobins where they met)and the royalists. The former dreaded the union more than their foesfrom not knowing the effect Louis XVI. might have on the masses.

  The King's-men feared that a great riot would destroy the royal familyas one had destroyed the Bastile.

  But there was no means to oppose the movement which had not its likesince the Crusades.

  The Assembly did its utmost to impede it, particularly by resolvingthat the delegates must come at their own expense; this was aimedat the distant provinces. But the politicians had no conception ofthe extent of the desire: all doors opened along the roads for thesepilgrims of liberty and the guides of the long procession were all thediscontented--soldiers and under-officers who had been kept down thataristocrats should have all the high offices; seamen who had won theIndies and were left poor: shattered waifs to whom the storms had leftstranded. They found the strength of their youth to lead their friendsto the capitol.

  Hope marched before them.

  All the pilgrims sang the same song: "It must go on!" that is, theRevolution. The Angel of Renovation had taught it to all as it hoveredover the country.

  To receive the five hundred thousand of the city and country, a giganticarea was required: the field of Mars did for that, while the surroundinghills would hold the spectators; but as it was flat it had to beexcavated.

  Fifteen thousand regular workmen, that is, of the kind who loudlycomplain that they have no work to do and under their breath thankheaven when they do not find it--started in on the task converting theflat into the pit of an amphitheatre. At the rate they worked they wouldbe three months at it, while it was promised for the Fourteenth of July,the Anniversary of the Taking of the Bastile.

  Thereupon a miracle occurred by which one may judge the enthusiasm ofthe masses.

  Paris volunteered to work the night after the regular excavators hadgone off. Each brought his own tools: some rolled casks of refreshingdrink, others food; all ages and both sexes, all conditions from thescholar to the carter; children carried torches; musicians played allkinds of instruments to cheer the multitude, and from one hundredthousand workers sounded the song "It shall go on!"

  Among the most enfevered toilers might be remarked two who had beenamong the first to arrive; they were in National Guards uniform. One wasa gloomy-faced man of forty, with robust and thickset frame; the other ayouth of twenty.

  The former did not sing and spoke seldom.

  The latter had blue eyes in a frank and open countenance, with whiteteeth and light hair; he stood solidly on long legs and large feet. Withhis full-sized hands he lifted heavy weights, rolling dirt carts andpulling hurdles without rest. He was always singing, while watching hiscomrade out of the corner of the eye, saying joking words to which hedid not reply, bringing him a glass of wine which he refused, returningto his place with sorrow, but falling to work again like ten men, andsinging like twenty.

  These two men, newly elected Representatives by the Aisne District, tenmiles from Paris, having heard that hands were wanted, ran in hot hasteto offer one his silent co-operation, the other his merry and noisyassistance.

  Their names were Francois Billet and Ange Pitou. The first was a wealthyfarmer, whose land was owned by Dr. Gilbert, and the second a boy of thedistrict who had been the schoolmate of Gilbert's son Sebastian.

  Thanks to their help, with that of others as energetic and patrioticallyinspired, the enormous works were finished on the Thirteenth of July1790.

  To make sure of having places next day, many workers slept on thebattlefield.

  Billet and Pitou were to officiate in the ceremonies and they went tojoin their companions on the main street. Hotel-keepers had loweredtheir prices and many houses were open to their brothers from thecountry. The farther they came the more kindly they were treated, if anydistinction was made.

  On its part the Assembly had received a portion of the shock. A few daysbefore, it had abolished hereditary nobility, on the motion of MarquisLafayette.

  Contrarily, the influence of Mirabeau was felt daily. A place wasassigned in the Federation to him as Orator. Thanks to so mighty achampion, the court won partisans in the opposition ranks. The Assemblyhad voted liberal sums to the King for his civil list and for the Queen,so that they lost nothing by pensioning Mirabeau.

  The fact was, he seemed quite right in appealing to the rustics; theFederalists whom the King welcomed seemed to bring love for royaltyalong with enthusiasm for the National Assembly.

  Unhappily the King, dull and neither poetical nor chivalric, met thecheers coolly.

  Unfortunately, also, the Queen, too much of a Lorrainer to love theFrench and too proud to greet common people, did not properly valuethese outbursts of the heart.

  Besides, poor woman, she had a spot on her sun: one of those gloomy fitswhich clouded her mind.

  She had long loved Count Charny, lieutenant of the Royal Lifeguards, buthis loyalty to the King, who had treated him like a brother in times ofdanger, had rendered him invulnerable to the woman's wiles.

  Marie Antoinette was no longer a young woman and sorrow had touched herhead with her wing, which was making the threads of silver appear in theblonde tresses--but she was fair enough to bewitch a Mirabeau and mighthave enthralled George Charny.

  But, married to save the Queen's reputation to a lady of the court,Andrea de Taverney, he was falling in love with her, she having lovedhim at first sight, and this love naturally fortified his tacit pledgenever to wrong his sovereign.

  Hence the Queen was miserable, and all the more as Charny had departedon some errand for the King of which he had not told her the nature.

  Probably this was why she had played the flirt with Mirabeau. The geniushad flattered her by kneeling at her feet. But she too soon compared thebloated, heavy, leonine man with Charny.

  George Charny was elegance itself, the noble and the courtier and yetmore a seaman, who had saved a war-ship by nailing the colors to themast and bidding the crew fight on.

  In his brilliant uniform he looked like a prince of battles, whileMirabeau, in his black suit, resembled a canon of the church.

  The fourteenth of July came impassibly, draped in clouds and promisingrain and a gale when it ought to have illumined a splendid day.

  But the French laugh even on a rainy day.

  Though drenched with rain and dying of hunger, the country delegatesand National Guards, ranked along the main street, made merry and sang.But the population, while unable to keep the wet off them, were notgoing to let them starve. Food and drink were lowered by ropes out ofthe windows. Similar offerings were made in all the thoroughfares theypassed through.

  During their march, a hundred and fifty thousand people took places onthe edges of the Field of Mars, and as many stood behind them. It wasnot possible to estimate the number on the surrounding hills.

  Never had such a sight struck the eye of man.

  The Field was changed in a twinkling of the plain into a pit, with theauditorium holding three hundred thousand.

  In the midst was the Altar of the Country, to which led four staircases,corresponding with the faces of the obelisk which overtowered it.

  At each corner smoked incense dishes--incense being decreed hen
ceforthto be used only in offerings to God.

  Inscriptions heralded that the French People were free, and invited allnations to the feast of Freedom.

  One grand stand was reserved for the Queen, the court and the Assembly.It was draped with the Red, White and Blue which she abhorred, since shehad seen it flaunt above her own, the Austrian black.

  For this day only the King was appointed Commander-in-chief, but he hadtransferred his command to Lafayette who ruled six millions of armed menin the National Guards of France.

  The tricolor surmounted everything--even to the distinctive banners ofeach body of delegates.

  At the same time as the President of the Assembly took his seat, theKing and the Queen took theirs.

  Alas, poor Queen! her court was meager: her best friends had fledin fright: perhaps some would have returned if they knew what moneyMirabeau had obtained for her; but they were ignorant.

  She knew that Charny, whom she vainly looked for, would not be attractedby the power or by gold.

  She looked for his younger brother, Isidore, wondering why all theQueen's defenders seemed absent from their post.

  Nobody knew where he was. At this hour he was conducting his sweetheart,Catherine, daughter of the gloomy farmer Billet, to a house in Bellevue,Paris, for refuge from the contumely of her sisters in the village andthe wrath of her father.

  Who knows, though, but that the heiress to the throne of the Caesarswould have consented to be an obscure peasant girl to be loved by Georgeagain as Isidore loved the farmer's daughter.

  She was no doubt revolving such ideas when Mirabeau, who saw her withglances, half thunderous weather, half sunshine, and could not helpexclaiming:

  "Of what is the royal enchantress thinking?"

  She was brooding over the absence of Charny and his love died out.

  The mass was said by Talleyrand, the French "Vicar of Bray," who sworeallegiance to all manner of Constitutions himself. It must have been ofevil augury. The storm redoubled as though protesting against the falsepriest who burlesqued the service.

  Here followed the ceremony of taking the oath. Lafayette was the first,binding the National Guards. The Assembly Speaker swore for France; andthe King in his own name.

  When the vows were made in deep silence, a hundred pieces of artilleryburst into flame at once and bellowed the signal to the surroundingcountry.

  From every fortified place an immense flame issued, followed by themenacing thunder invented by man and eclipsing that of heaven ifsuperiority is to be measured by disasters. So the circle enlarged untilthe warning reached the frontier and surpassed it.

  When the King rose to declare his purpose the clouds parted and the sunpeered out like the Eye of God.

  "I, King of the French," he said, "swear to employ all the powerdelegated to me by the Constitutional Law of the State to maintain theConstitution."

  Why had he not eluded the solemn pledge as before; for his next step,flight from the kingdom, was to be the key to the enigma set that day.But, true or false, the cannon-fire none the less roared the oath to theconfines. It took the warning to the monarchs:

  "Take heed! France is afoot, wishing to be free, and she is ready likethe Roman envoy to shake peace or war, as you like it, from the folds ofher dress."