The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DEATH OF THE COUNTESS

In the night, while Gilbert was vainly trying to save Andrea, the Commune, unable to secure Danton's help, formed a committee of vigilance, including Marat, though he was not a member of the Commune. But his name enthroned murder, and showed the frightful development of his power.

The first order of this committee was to have twenty-four prisoners removed from the abbey, and brought before them at the mayor's offices – now the police prefecture building.

It was expected that they would be set upon in the streets, and the butchery there begun would be introduced into the prisons.

Marat's "barkers," as they were called, in vain, however, shouted as the hacks went along:

"Look at the traitors – the accomplices of the Prussians! There they go who are surrendering our towns, slaying our wives and babes, and will do it here if you leave them in the rear when you march to the border."

But, as Danton said, massacres are a scarce bird, and the incitement only brought out more uproar.

Fortune came to the ruffians' assistance.

At a crossing was a stage run up for the voluntary enlistments. The cabs had to stop. A man pushed through the escort and plunged his sword several times inside a carriage, drawing it out dripping with blood. A prisoner had a cane, and trying to parry the steel, he struck one of the guards.

"Why, you brigands," said the struck man, "we are protecting you and you strike us! Lay on, friends!"

Twenty scoundrels, who only waited for the call, sprung out of the throng, armed with knives tied to poles in the way of spears, and stabbed through the carriage windows. The screams arose from inside the conveyances, and the blood trickled out and left a track on the road-way.

Blood calls for blood, and the massacre commenced which was to last four days.

It was regularized by Maillard, who wanted to have every act done in legal style. His registry exists, where his clear, steady handwriting is perfectly calm and legible in the two notes and the signature. "Executed by the judgment of the people," or "Acquitted by the people," and "Maillard."

The latter note appears forty-three times, so that he saved that number.

After the fourth of September he disappeared, swallowed up in the sea of blood.

Meanwhile, he presided over the court. He had set up a table and called for a blank book; he chose a jury, or rather assistant judges, to the number of twelve, who sat six on either side of him.

He called out the prisoner's name from a register; while the turnkeys went for the person, he stated the case, and looked for a decision from his associates as soon as the accused appeared. If condemned, he said: "To Laforce!" which seemed to mean the prison of that name; but the grim pun, understood, was that he was to be handed over to "brute force."

Beyond the outer door the wretch fell under the blows of the butchers.

If the prisoner was absolved, the black phantom rose, laid his hand on the person's head, and said, "Put him out!" and the prisoner was freed.

When Maillard arrived at the Abbey Prison, a man, also in black, who was waiting by the wall, stepped forward to meet him. On the first words exchanged between them, Maillard recognized this man, and bowed his tall figure to him in condescension, if not submission. He brought him into the prison, and when the tribunal was arranged, he said:

"Stand you there, and when the person comes out in whom you are interested, make me a sign."

The man rested his elbow against the wall and stood mute, attentive, and motionless as when outside.

It was Honore Gilbert, who had sworn that he would not let Andrea die, and was still trying to fulfill his oath.

Between four and six in the morning, the judges and butchers took a rest, and at six had breakfast.

At half past the horrid work was resumed.

In that interval such of the prisoners as could see the slaughter out of a window reported by which mode death came swiftest and with the least suffering; they concluded it was by a stab to the heart.

Thereupon, some took turn after turn with a pocket-knife to cheat the slaughterers.

In the midst of this dreadful ante-chamber of death, one woman in deep mourning was kneeling in prayer and smiling.

It was the Countess of Charny.

Two hours yet passed before she was called as "Citizeness Andrea of Taverney, previously known as the Countess of Charny."

At the name, Gilbert felt his legs yield under him and his heart weaken.

A life, more important than his own, was to be debated, tried, and doomed or spared.

"Citizens," said Maillard, "the person about to appear before you is a poor woman who was devoted formerly to the Austrian, but with truly royal ingratitude, she paid her with sorrow; to that friendship she gave all – her property and her husband. You will see her come in, dressed in mourning, which she owes to the prisoner in the temple. Citizens, I ask you for the life of this woman."

The bench of judges nodded; but one said the prisoner ought to appear before them.

"Then, look," said the chief.

The door opening, they saw in the corridor depths a woman clad wholly in black, with her head crowned with a black veil, who walked forward alone without support, with a steady step. She seemed an apparition from another world, at the sight of which even those justices shuddered.

Arriving at the table, she lifted her veil. Never had beauty less disputable but none more pale met the eyes of man; it was a goddess in marble.

All eyes were fixed upon her, while Gilbert panted.

"Citizen" – she addressed Maillard in a voice as sweet as firm – "you are the president?"

"Yes, citizeness," replied the judge, startled at his being questioned.

"I am the Countess of Charny, wife of the count of that house, killed on the infamous tenth of August; an aristocrat and the bosom friend of the queen, I have deserved death, and I come to seek it."

The judges uttered a cry of surprise, and Gilbert turned pale and shrunk as far as he could back into the angle by the door to escape Andrea's gaze.

"Citizens," said Maillard, who saw the doctor's plight, "this creature has gone mad through the death of her husband; let us pity her, and let her senses have a chance to come back. The justice of the people does not fall on the insane."

He rose and was going to lay his hands on Andrea's head as he did when he pronounced those innocent; but she pushed aside his hand.

"I have my full reason," she said; "and if you want to pardon any one, let it be one who craves it and merits it, but not I, who deserve it not and reject it."

Maillard turned to Gilbert and saw that he was wringing his clasped hands.

"This woman is plainly mad," he said; "put her out."

He waved his hand to a member of the court, who shoved the countess toward the door of safety.

"Innocent," he called out; "let her go out."

They who had the weapons ready parted before Andrea, lowered them unto this image of mourning. But, after having gone ten paces, and while Gilbert, clinging to the window bars, saw her going forth, she stopped.

"God save the king!" she cried. "Long live the queen, and shame on the tenth of August!"

Gilbert uttered a shriek and darted out into the yard. For he had seen a sword glitter, and swift as a lightning flash, the blade disappeared in Andrea's bosom. He arrived in time to catch her in his arms, and as she turned on him her dying gaze she recognized him.

"I told you that I would die in spite of you," she muttered. "Love Sebastian for both of us," she added, in a barely intelligible voice, and still more faintly continued: "You will have me laid to rest by him – next my George, my husband, for time everlasting?"

And she expired.

Gilbert raised her up in his arms, while fifty blood-smeared hands menaced him all at once.

But Maillard appeared behind him and said, as he spread his hands over his head:

"Make way for the true citizen Gilbert, carrying out the body of a poor crazed woman slain by mistake."

They stepped aside, and carrying the corpse of Andrea, the man who had first loved her, even to committing crime to triumph over her, passed amid the murderers without one thinking of barring the way, so sovereign was Maillard's words over the multitude.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ROYAL MARTYR

Let us return to the somber edifice confining a king become mere man, a queen still a queen, a maid who would be a martyr, and two poor children innocent, from age if not by birth.

The king was in the temple, not the temple tower, but the palace of the Knights Templars, which had been used by Artois as a pleasure resort.

The Assembly had not haggled about his keep, but awarded a handsome sum for the table of one who was a hearty eater, like all the Bourbons. Not only did the judges reprimand him for his untimely gluttony during his trial, but they had a note made of the fact to be on record to our times.

In the temple he had three servants and thirteen attendants connected with the table. Each day's dinner was composed of four entrées– six varieties of roast meat, four fancy dishes, three kinds of stews, three dishes of fruit, and Bordeaux, Madeira, and Malvoisie wine.

He and his son alone drank wine, as the queen and the princesses used water.

On the material side, he had nothing to complain of; but he lacked air, exercise, sunshine, and shady trees.

Habituated by hunting in the royal forests to glade and covert, he had to content himself with a green yard, where a few withered trees scattered prematurely blighted leaves on four parterres of yellowed grass.

Every day at four, the royal family were "walked out" here, as if they were so many head of stall-fed cattle.

This was mean, unkind, ferocious in its cruelty; but less cruel and ferocious than the cells of the pope's dungeons where they had tried to drive Cagliostro to death, or the leads of Venice, or the Spielberg dungeons.

We are not excusing the Commune, and not excusing kings; we are bound to say that the temple was a retaliation, terrible and fatal, but clumsy, for it was making a prosecution a persecution and a criminal a martyr.

What did they look like now – those whom we have seen in their glory?

The king, with his weak eyes, flabby cheeks, hanging lips, and heavy, carefully poised step, seemed a good farmer upset by a great disaster; his melancholy was that of an agriculturist whose barn had been burned by lightning or his fields swept by a cyclone. The queen's attitude was as usual, stiff, proud, and dreadfully irritating. Marie Antoinette had inspired love of grandeur in her time; in her decline, she inspired devotion, but never pity; that springs from sympathy, and she was never one for fellow-feeling.

The guardian angel of the family was Princess Elizabeth, in her white dress, symbol of her purity of body and soul; her fair hair was the handsomer from the disuse of powder. The princess royal, notwithstanding the charm of youth, little interested any one; a thorough Austrian like her mother, her look had already the scorn and arrogance of vultures and royal races. The little dauphin was more winning from his sickly white complexion and golden hair; but his eye was a hard raw blue, with an expression at times older than his age. He understood things too well, caught the idea from a glance of his mother's eye, and showed politic cunning which sometimes wrung tears from those who tormented him.

The Commune were cruel and imprudent; they changed the watchers daily, and sent spies, under the guise of town officers. These went in sworn enemies to the king and came out enemies to the death of Marie Antoinette, but almost all pitying the king, sorrowing for the children, and glorifying the Lady Elizabeth. Indeed, what did they see at the prison? Instead of the wolf, the she-wolf and the whelps – an ordinary middle-class family, with the mother rather the gray mare and spitfire, who would not let any one touch the hem of her dress, but of a brood of tyrants not a trace.

The king had taken up Latin again in order to educate his son, while the queen occupied herself with her daughter. The link of communication between the couple was the valet, Clery, attached to the prince royal, but from the king's own servant, Hue, being dismissed, he waited on both. While hair-dressing for the ladies, he repeated what the king wanted to transmit, quickly and in undertones.

The queen would often interrupt her reading to her daughter by plunging into deep and gloomy musing; the princess would steal away on tiptoe to let her enjoy a new sorrow, which at least had the benefit of tears, and make a hushing sign to her brother. When the tear fell on her ivory hand, beginning to yellow, the poor prisoner would start back from her dream, her momentary freedom in the immense domain of thought and memories, and look round her prison with a lowered head and broken heart.

Weather permitting, the family had a walk in the garden at one o'clock, with a corporal and his squad of the National Guard to watch them. Then the king went up to his rooms on the third story to dine. It was then that Santerre came for his rigorous inspection. The king sometimes spoke with him; the queen never; she had forgotten what she owed to this man on the twentieth of June.

As we have stated, bodily needs were tyrannical in the king, who always indulged in an after-dinner nap; during this, the others remained silent around his easy-chair. Only when he woke was the chat resumed.

When the newsboys called out the news items in the evening, Clery listened, and repeated what he caught to the king.

After supper, the king went into the queen's room to bid her good-night, as well as his sister, by a wave of the hand, and going into his library, read till midnight. He waited before going off to sleep to see the guards changed, to know whether he had a strange face for the night-watcher.

This unchanging life lasted till the king left the small tower – that is, up to September 30th.

It was a dull situation, and the more worthy of pity as it was dignifiedly supported. The most hostile were softened by the sight. They came to watch over the abominable tyrant who had ruined France, massacred Frenchmen, and called the foreigners in; over the queen who had united the lubricities of Messalina to the license of Catherine II.; but they found a plain old fellow whom they could not tell from his valet, who ate and drank heartily and slept soundly, playing piquet or backgammon, teaching Latin and geography to his boy, and putting puzzles to his children out of old newspapers; and a wife, proud and haughty, one must admit, but calm, dignified, resigned, still handsome, teaching her daughter tapestry-work and her son his prayers, speaking gently to the servants and calling them "friends."

The result was that the more the Commune abased the prisoner, and the more he showed that he was like any other man, the more other men took pity on their fellow-man.

Still, all who came into contact with the royal family did not feel the same respect and pity. Hatred and revenge were so deeply rooted in these, that the sight of the regal misery supported with domestic virtues, only brought out rudeness, insults, and actual indignities.

On the king saying that he thought a sentry was tired, the soldier pressed his hat on the more firmly, and said, in the teeth of the monarch:

"My place here is to keep an eye on you and not for you to criticise me. Nobody has the right to meddle with my business, and you least of all."

Once the queen ventured to ask a town officer where he came from.

"I belong to the country," he loftily replied, "at least, as much of it as your foreign friends have not taken possession of."

One day a municipal officer said to Clery, loud enough for the king to overhear: "I would guillotine the lot of them if the regular executioner backed out."

The sentinels decked the walls, where the royals came along to go into the garden, with lines in this style: "The guillotine is a standing institution and is waiting for the tyrant Louis." – "Madame Veto will soon dance on nothing." – "The fat hog must be put on short rations." – "Pull off the red ribbon he wears – it will do to strangle his cubs with."

One drawing represented a man hanging, and was labeled: "Louis taking an air-bath."

The worst tormentors were two lodgers in the temple, Rocher, the sapper, and Simon, the notorious cobbler. The latter, whose harsh treatment of the royal child has made him noted, was insult personified. Every time he saw the prisoners, it was to inflict a fresh outrage.

Rocher was the man whom we saw take up the dauphin when Charny fell, and carry him into the House; yet he, placed by Manuel to prevent harm befalling the captives, resembled those boys who are given a bird to keep – they kill time by plucking out the feathers one by one.

But, however unhappy the prisoners were, they had yet the comfort that they were under the same roof.

The Commune resolved to part the king from his family.

Clery had an inkling of the intention, but he could not get at the exact date until a general searching of the prisoners on the twenty-ninth of September gave him a hint. That night, indeed, they took away the king into rooms in the great tower which were wet with plaster and paint and the smell was unbearable.

But the king lay down to sleep without complaining, while the valet passed the night on a chair.

When he was going out to attend to the prince, whose attendant he strictly was, the guard stopped him, saying:

"You are no longer to have communications with the other prisoners; the king is not to see his children any more."

As they omitted to bring special food for the servant, the king broke his bread with him, weeping while the man sobbed.

When the workmen came to finish the rooms, the town officer who superintended them came up to the king with some pity, and said:

"Citizen, I have seen your family at breakfast, and I undertake to say that all were in health."

The king's heart ached at this kind feeling.

He thanked the man, and begged him to transmit the report of his health to his dear ones. He asked for some books, and as the man could not read, he accompanied Clery down into the other rooms to let him select the reading matter. Clery was only too glad, as this gave an opportunity of seeing the queen. He could not say more than a few words, on account of the soldiers being present.

The queen could not hold out any longer, and she besought to let them all have a meal in company.

The municipal officers weakened, and allowed this until further orders. One of them wept, and Simon said:

"Hang me if these confounded women will not get the water-works running in my eyes. But," he added, addressing the queen, "you did not do any weeping when you shot down the people on the tenth of August."

"Ah!" said the queen; "the people have been much misled about our feelings toward them. If you knew us better, you would be sorry, like this gentleman."

So the dinner was served in the old place; it was a feast, for they gained so much in one day, they thought. They gained everything, for nothing more was heard of the Commune's new regulation; the king continued to see his family daily, and to take his meals with them.

One of these days, when he went in, he found the queen sweeping up the dauphin's room, who was unwell. He stopped on the sill, let his head sink on his breast, and sighed:

"Ah, my lady, this is sorry work for a Queen of France, and if they could see from Vienna what you are doing here! Who would have thought that, in uniting you to my fate, I should ever bring you so low?"

"Do you reckon it as nothing," replied Marie Antoinette, "this glory of being the wife of the best and most persecuted of men?"

This was spoken without an idea there were hearers; but all such sayings were picked up and diffused to embroider with gold the dark legend of the martyr king.

CHAPTER XXV.
MASTER GAMAIN TURNS UP

One morning, while these events were occurring at the temple, a man wearing a red shirt and cap to match, leaning on a crutch to help him to hobble along, called on the Home Secretary, Roland. The minister was most accessible; but even a republican official was forced to have ushers in his ante-chamber, as went on in monarchical governments.

"What do you want?" challenged the servant of the man on the crutch.

"I want to speak with the Citizen Minister," replied the cripple.

Since a fortnight, the titles of citizen and citizeness had officially replaced all others.

"You will have to show a letter of audience," replied the domestic.

"Halloo! I thought that was all very fine fun in the days when the tyrant ruled, but folks ought to be equals under the Republic, or at least not so aristocratic."

This remark set the servant thinking.

"I can tell you that it is no joke," continued the man in red, "to drag all the way from Versailles to do the Secretary of State a service and not to get a squint of him."

"Oh, you come to do Citizen Roland a service, do you?"

"To show up a conspiracy."

"Pooh! we are up to our ears in conspiracies. If that is all you came from Versailles for, I suggest you get back."

"I don't mind; but your minister will be deuced sorry for not seeing me."

"It is the rule. Write to him and get a letter of audience; then you will get on swimmingly."

"Hang me if it is not harder to get a word in to Minister Roland than to his majesty Louis XVI. that was."

"What do you know about that?"

"Lord help your ignorance, young man; there was a time when I saw the king whenever I pleased; my name would tell you that."

"What is your name? Are you King Frederick William or the Emperor Francis?"

"No; I am not a tyrant or a slave-driver – no aristo – but just Nicholas Claude Gamain, master of the masters of my trade of locksmithery. Did you never hear of Master Gamain who taught the craft to old Capet?"

The footman looked questioningly at his fellows, who nodded.

"Then it is another pair of shoes. Write your name on a sheet of paper, and I will send it in to the Home Secretary."

"Write? It is all very easy to say write, but I was no dabster at the pen before these villains tried to poison me; and it is far worse now. Just look how they doubled me up with arsenic."

He showed his twisted legs, deviated spine, and hand curled up like a claw.

"What! did they serve you out thus, poor old chap?"

"They did. And that is what I have come to show the Citizen Minister, along with other matters. As I hear they are getting up the indictment against old Capet, what I have to tell must not be lost for the nation."

Five minutes afterward, the locksmith was shown into the official's presence.

The master locksmith had never, at the height of his fortune and in the best of health, worn a captivating appearance; but the malady to which he was a prey, articular rheumatism in plain, while twisting his limbs and disfiguring his features, had not added to his embellishments. The outcome was that never had an honest man faced a more ruffianly looking rogue than Roland when left alone with Gamain.

The minister's first feeling was of repugnance; but seeing how he trembled from head to foot, pity for a fellow-man, always supposing that a wretch like Gamain is a fellow to a Roland, led him to use as his first words:

"Take a seat, citizen; you seem in pain."

"I should rather think I am in pain," replied Gamain, dropping on a chair; "and I have been so ever since the Austrian poisoned me."

At these words a profound expression of disgust passed over the hearer's countenance, while he exchanged a glance with his wife, half hidden in the window recess.

"And you came to denounce this poisoning?"

"That and other things."

"Do you bring proof of your accusations?"

"For that matter, you have only to come with me to the Tuileries and I will give you piles of it. I will show you the secret hole in the wall where the brigand hid his hoard. I ought to have guessed that the wine was poisoned that the Austrian sneaked out to offer me, a-saying, with her wheedling voice: 'Here you are, Gamain! drink this glass of wine; it will do you good now the work is done.'"

"Poisoned?"

"Yes; everybody knows," continued Gamain, with sullen hate, "that those who help kings to conceal treasures never make old bones."

"There is something at the bottom of this," said Mme. Roland, coming forward at his glance; "this was the smith who was the king's tutor. Ask him about the hole in the wall."

"The press?" said Gamain, who had overheard. "Why, I am here to lay that open. It is an iron safe, with a lock-bolt working both ways, in which Citizen Capet hid his private papers and savings."

"How did you come to know about it?"

"Did he not send for me to show him how to finish the lock, one he made himself, and of course would not work smoothly?"

"But this press would be smashed and rifled in the capture of the Tuileries."

"There is no danger of that. I defy anybody in the world to get the idea of it, barring him and me."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure and certain. It is just the same as when he left the Tuileries."

"What do you say to all this, Madeleine?" asked Roland of his wife, when they had listened to Gamain's story, told in his prolix style.

"I say the revelation is of the utmost importance, and no time must be lost in verifying it."

The secretary rang for his carriage, whereupon Gamain stood up sulkily.

"I see you have had enough of me," he grumbled.

"Why, no; I only ring for my carriage."

"What! do ministers have carriages under the Republic?"

"They have to do so, to save time, my friend. I call the carriage so that we shall be quickly at the Tuileries. But what about the key to the safe? – it is not likely Louis XVI. left it in the key-hole."

"Why, certainly not, for our fat Capet is not such a fool as he looks. Here is a duplicate," he continued, drawing a new key from his pocket; "I made it from memory. I tell you I am the master of my craft. I studied the lock, fancying some day – "

"This is an awful scoundrel," said Roland to his wife.

"Yes; but we have no right to reject any information coming to us in the present state of affairs in order to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Am I to go with you?" asked the lady.

"Certainly, as there are papers in the case. Are you not the most honest man I know?"

Gamain followed them to the door, mumbling:

"I always said that I would pay old Capet out for what he did to me. What Louis XVI. did was kindness."