The Court of the Sun-King

Louis XIV, the Great Monarch, held memories of Paris too bitter to suffer him to dwell in the capital of France. King from an early age, the years of his minority were such as he did not care to dwell on when he was at the zenith of his power—the most famous of the Bourbon line, the most dreaded ruler in the whole of Europe.

Memories haunted him in Paris, of the days when Mazarin ruled, amassing riches for a future King but tenacious of the rights of ministers; of the civil war when the royal troops were turned from the Bastille by the cannon of a warlike woman; of the period when the nobles exercised prerogatives that diminished the glory of the throne and were never held in check by fear of an iron hand controlling them. Perhaps the crowd that surrounded Louis' state carriage, if he drove through the streets, wearied him more than he cared to tell. Perhaps his pride was wounded by a suspicion that lowly subjects could whisper among themselves of a certain neglected boy who had been fished out of a basin in the garden of the Palais Royal and bundled out of Paris by night to sleep on straw at Saint Germain.

In splendid state, with guards and lackeys in his trains the King still had fears that the world might remember the plight of a youth who had had torn sheets on his bed and a ragged coat on his royal back. But, during the years of sore humiliation, there had always been a real belief that one day the King would worst the nobles and play the Grand Monarch of his generation.

Mazarin's death freed Louis Quatorze at the age of twenty-three. Then and there he declared the outline of his regal policy—"Gentlemen," said he, "I shall be my own Prime Minister."

LOUIS XIV

At Paris, the nobles, so disdainful of authority, could build their own hotels, could come and go at pleasure. At Versailles, they were part of a magnificent Court pageant, units in the vast array of pomp that Louis knew would protect him like a suit of armour. The highest in the land must serve the King, belonging to his daily retinue; they must pay court to favourites, they must attend the chase and fetes. When the money was spent that such a palace demanded of its inmates, they could not return to deserted estates in the country. It was their part to curry favour then and confess themselves dependent on the King's bounty.

The days of castle-dwelling were at an end with all the feuds that weakened the royal dominion. The great lords lost their hold over the tenants they never saw, and it was Louis XIV only who ruled, Louis the magnificent Sun-King.

The palace rose at the bidding of the monarch, a pile of buildings worthy to be the monument of imperial pride. The rooms and galleries were spacious, the courts received vast throngs of noblemen and the gentlemen of their suites, the gardens gave pleasure to an eager multitude. The Guards dazzled the eye by their forms on occasions of state ceremony. They were there to protect the King's person and dared not neglect their duty. It was part of Louis' wisest policy to insist on their regular service in the army. He was under the charge of four bodyguards, twenty-five guards of the halberd and fifty guards of the gate. Then there were the Hundred Suisse, the company of provost-guards and the hundred gentlemen of the battle-axe. The military household numbered both cavalry and infantry, a gorgeous array of men in gray and black, blue and red, musketeers and grenadiers, surely a stalwart shield of defence for the glory of Versailles.

The court of the palace became the centre, not of a little coterie but of all France and her dominions. It was gay with liveries, splendid horses, gilded carriages and the blaze of pomp and color that whirled so continually along the roads from Paris to Versailles. "Versailles! All roads lead to it," they used to say. And these roads were kept in good repair because they were trampled by the steeds of the royal retinue as they went forth to the chase.

To hunt was the first of His Majesty's own pleasures. He could ride and shoot with the best and knew no fatigue in pursuit of stag and hare. The hunting train was imposing in the household where magnificence was demanded for the routine of each day. The Grand Huntsman of France was a nobleman, and the Captain General of the Foils had no menial office nor the Grand Master of the Wolf-Hounds. Their coats were adorned with lace to show the different gradations of their rank. They had many subordinates and treasured the dignity of their position. It was a goodly sight to see the train set forth with the packs of hounds and gallant riders and the pages, whose duty it was to accompany all Court functions in the hope of gaining some prize that would repay the arduous service of their youth. Gorgeous in apparel, such scions of nobility gave the brilliance of spring to the King's more faded cavalcade. They were bold and witty and quick to turn a compliment. They could enjoy to the full such customs as holding the quarry by torchlight and re-echoed the cries, "Hallali, valets! Hallali," when the flesh was torn from the stag's bones by the greedy pack. They knew, too, the etiquette of the fetes held in honor of favorites or to celebrate some royal marriage.

The Court was used, sometimes, for the performance of comedies in which princes and princesses deigned to take a part. Moliere, the renowned comedian, was invited, they say, to sup with Louis at his table, an honor without parallel, surely, from a monarch who would keep his own brother standing in his presence. There were brilliant plays to act in that age of literary giants. Racine came to the Court until he offended, and Corneille and others whose names have lived. Louis was without education himself, but he valued learning in others. He could barely read and write, but it pleased him to make Versailles the centre which attracted men of note from every part of Europe. It was a fine reward for struggling authors to stand in the illuminated court among the groves of orange-trees, which relieved the marble whiteness of the pavement. They heard the applause of men and women courteous and well-mannered. They shared the delicious banquets at the conclusion of the fete and were themselves objects of envy to the gaping crowds of good Parisians who had come to catch a glimpse of earthly Paradise.

The gardens lay beyond the court, a triumph of French art and skill. Le Notre was in the service of Louis and devoted his great genius to Versailles. When he brought the plans to the King and led him to the terrace to describe the vast wilderness beyond, Louis XIV interrupted him constantly, exclaiming, "Le Notre, I give you 20,000 francs." But the gardener was not avaricious. He stopped in vexation and declared, "Sire, your Majesty shall hear no more. I should ruin you."

The Grand Monarch was stayed for a brief moment. Then he spent lavishly and set the fountains running with the beautiful jets that play to this day when Paris makes holiday and visits the palace of the ancient order. The water was difficult to bring in sufficient volume to supply the 1400 jets that rose from the sculptured basins. There was a plan to bring the River Eure to Versailles and 30,000 soldiers were set to work at the bold enterprise. Great numbers caught some contagion from the upturned earth and died of it. It was at the cost of their lives and of forty million francs that King Louis could amuse the frequenters of his court.

MOLIERE SUPPING WITH LOUIS XIV.

But even the fountains of Versailles lent their aid to the tale of kingly splendor which was to spread through Europe and give honor to the French. Foreign ambassadors entered the King's presence by the Grand Staircase to have audience of the King. They had seen the noble gardens and the orangery beloved of princesses, they had alighted in the clamor of the bustling courtyard. Now they slowly ascended the marble steps, regarded through the marble columns by a brilliantly-hued mass of courtiers of different nationalities, one in their perfection of attire, their elegance of bearing, and their silent deference toward the King. These dazzled the messengers of royal courts by the consciousness that the eyes of the whole world were upon them. They turned their attention to the walls and rich tapestry and superb pictures which delighted their eyes like the fountains with their groups of gilded bronze.

Beneath the high roof of his palace, the King sat on a silver throne in the heyday of his glory. He created in his own person the idea of sunshine and fulfilled his own conception of the King whose duty it was so to shine.

Louis XIV presented truly a gallant type of manhood. He wore a velvet coat studded thickly with diamonds and becoming to his handsome limbs. He had grace and dignity as well as beauty. The unfailing tact was his which creates few enemies. At a Court famed for polished manners, he was pre-eminent for the grand air that he imparted to every formal ceremony. There were few occasions when the mantle of state was laid aside since he took for his pattern the young victorious figure painted on the ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors. He strove for the superb aspect of the Sun-King in his minute attention to the details of public functions. He forgot that financial difficulties were likely to arise when earthly existence was supported on the lavish scale of a god's requirements. He said that he gave alms when he spent freely, and frowned on honest Colbert, the minister whose body was worn to a shadow by the cares of a thankless office.

Louis XIV was the hero of his nation even after disasters of war came upon him. He shed abroad, somehow, the luster of France when he received diplomatic guests in one of his superb habits. He smiled indulgently on his subjects when they exulted in success.

Etiquette deprived the monarch of private ease, but he never truly craved it. He was always surrounded by courtiers and soldiers—three or four thousand was his retinue at Versailles and five or six hundred at Marly. Seclusion was not in this man's nature, nor simplicity that would diminish one iota of his power. He spent more than twelve million pounds on Marly and was never alone, though he excluded certain of his Court. At Versailles, nobles stood in his presence and were not bidden to be seated. At Marly, the chosen few might be told, on occasion, to sit down. None were covered before him at Versailles, but when he left the country residence to promenade, he was wont to say, "Your hats, gentlemen," and noted the relaxation with some pleasure. Alone with his family circle, there was the same rigor observed in the relationship of King and governed. The King sat in an arm-chair while the sons remained standing and the daughters were permitted the use of little stools.

The King's levee was the solemn beginning of a day that ended also with grand ceremony. The nobles, warned of the hour when His Majesty would rise, had to be in the ante-chamber, waiting until the door was opened. They had been dressed themselves with elaborate preparations and were sumptuous in their full periwigs and fine habits thus early in the morning. Some were allowed to enter at eight o'clock when Louis was awakened. Monseigneur, the heir to the crown, and the princes of the blood were the first to have the privilege. They conversed with the King in bed and very often had favors to ask at this private audience. The great officers of State came next and the King's clothes were brought by them. The first doctor, the first surgeon; and the nurse of the royal infants were admitted at this entrance. There was a short, religions service held which all followed gravely. Louis XIV was a devout Roman Catholic by practice; though he was curiously ignorant of religion and knew nothing of the Bible.

Before the actual rising, wigs were brought that the King might choose the one he wanted. The barber removed the nightcap from the monarch's head as soon us he was in the place where he dressed regularly and the whole business of the toilette began in due and careful order. The valet of the Wardrobe had to present the knee-breeches with silk stockings attached, which the King put on himself. A garcon of the Wardrobe put on the buckled shoes, and other officers of the Bouche  and Goblet  presently served breakfast from dishes of porcelain and of gold. The valet of the Wardrobe brought the King's shirt and the grand chamberlain handed it to the Dauphin if he were present or to one of the princes of the royal blood, should he be unable to attend. Each detail was carried out with tiresome minuteness and Louis might well be fatigued when he was preceded from his chamber by the announcement of "Gentlemen, the King!" No wonder that the man who went through these formalities every time he rose or slept considered himself superior to other men and held that the realm of France was vested in his person!

Dinner was served by the aid of the service known as the Bouche du Roi, which numbered more than three hundred persons. They had their own apartments at Versailles, where each meal was so elaborate that it entailed the care of butlers, cooks and cup-bearers, carvers, equerries, and a host of underlings. The King dined in public, exposed to the gaze of a crowd of loyal subjects. He was excessive in his appetite but drank wine sparingly. At one meal he is said to have eaten "four platefuls of different soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a plateful of salad, mutton hashed with garlic, two good-sized slices of ham, a dish of pastry and afterwards fruit and sweetmeats."

Etiquette ruled the King and by it the King ruled the Court. He was himself the pink of courtesy and expected from all a like deference to the laws of breeding. Weary, the courtier must yet remain upon his feet, angry, he must control his tongue and countenance. All were dismayed if the monarch gave way to natural emotion of either grief or wrath. He was completely master of himself in general and any exhibition of feeling was distasteful. The men he drew to Court learnt lessons of real value. They were able to meet danger fearlessly and to bear loss of fortune without sign of distress. Their incomes diminished woefully, since they had to please a master who compelled magnificence. He shone as the Sun-King and the minor constellations also must be brilliant. The card-tables ruined the gambler and the expenses of the chase the hunter. The lord lost the hearts of his tenants by continual absence from his estate. These murmured of their grievances and were met, did they raise their voices, by the same surprise that Louis felt when the cost of Marly was lamented.

Offices were sought through favorites, for pride stooped very low to gain its ends. Mme. de Maintenon, the King's wife, was approached continually by those anxious for the welfare of either sons or daughters. She was known to influence the King, to have many places to bestow.

The noble away from Versailles passed into oblivion quickly. Louis XIV said of the neglectful courtiers, "They are people I never see." It was useless for a go-between to ask a favor. Suitors must see the patron personally and attend him every day. The men never present at court functions were dismissed with the haughty disclaimer, "I do not know them." It were foolish indeed for Louis to have spent five hundred million francs from the national coffers that the buildings of hip; palace might be empty, his royalty but a name.

Above all monarchs of his age, the Sun-King displayed the might of power and place. He was gifted by nature for kingly duties. He fulfilled his ideal of them with a loftiness that was maintained always. He lost prestige among other nations when he lost battle after battle, but his own country looked up to him to the last hour as the embodiment of everything truly national. The war he failed to conduct to successful issues was the beginning of a downfall he foresaw but dimly for the Monarchy. France was rich when he succeeded to the throne and could afford him the appointments which were then his people's pride. France was drained by enormous expenditure as the army reached efficiency, and could not maintain a long struggle against allies of increasing strength. The money was forthcoming, nevertheless, whenever Louis asked it as his right. The whole land of France was his. Why should subjects deny some portion of it when they existed for the King's convenience? Few withstood the demands for taxes; few even murmured beneath their own roofs that there would be a day of reckoning.

Marlborough, the all-conquering English general, broke the power of the Grand Armies, yet could not break the spirit of his foe. After a long reign, Louis was popular with his subjects. He did not show chagrin at defeat or consciousness of decaying fortunes.

He died amidst the pomp of Versailles, an old man, whose wife fled from him to make her own future quite secure. He had seen children and grandchildren die before him. He knew that his successor was unworthy, but he was mortal, and left the palace at the time appointed, neither young nor victorious now, though he retained the wreath of laurel.

"Still, heedless of the centuries, upon the arches of that sumptuous Galerie des Glaces, the Sun-King sits serene. Out under the blue sky, he drives his four-horse chariot amid the leaping waters, and the gilded device of his divinity still blazes on the railings that hedge his royal house. He is always young, he is always victorious, he is always crowned with laurel, he is always superb. Each day he rises and sets with the same splendor, and, in transit, he gives light and life to all the world."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dreamer

The old order passed, though life at Court wore its atmosphere of chivalrous frivolity long after the eighteenth century had begun a new era for the French.

In 1712, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, son of a watchmaker of Geneva, was born into a world that he would do much to change. His childhood gave promise of the future—ardent, exaggerated, undisciplined; he was his father's companion, and had never known his mother. In the evening the child devoured romances, filling his mind with strange pictures of life as it was not. When he was only five years old, he began to know the heroes of fiction. He was two years older when he first studied Plutarch's lives of the Greeks and Romans, and was fired with the ambition to mould his character by theirs. "I believed myself Greek or Roman," he says. "I became the persons of whom I read; the story of traits of constancy and intrepidity which struck me made my eyes sparkle and my voice firm."

The child's imagination was vivid. He lived in the books he read; and sleep was often but a brief hour of dreams. Far into the night, the watchmaker and his little son would sit together, and when morning was announced by the twitter of the birds, the elder only roused himself to say; "Go to bed; I am more a child than thou."

The watchmaker was indeed not capable of guiding the son he made the associate of his pleasures. He left the child to the care of his uncle Bernard at Bossey, and troubled very little further about his education. In this quiet village near Geneva, Jean-Jacques learnt the real love of country leisure that was always to be the accompaniment of his restless life. To be quite happy, he must have "an orchard on the bank, a firm friend, an amiable wife, a cow, and a little boat." These seem simple tastes, but the genius of his age was often too poor to indulge them.

Soon the peaceful times at Bossey were ended. Jean-Jacques had learnt something of music that was to be of use in later life. He had begun to feel that interest in the soil which was to make him famous, for without it he could hardly have written the books that inspired the world-weary Court to betake itself to Trianon and play the rustic.

Apprenticed to an engraver and treated most brutally, Jean-Jacques ran away. He was only sixteen, and had not a penny in his pocket. He had no trade that would enable him to earn a living; he had no friends save those he left. Yet he faced the world cheerfully, enjoying freedom and careless of his future. He was attractive to many people by reason of his strange appearance. His eyes were fiery and told of a passionate nature, his hair was black and his figure well-proportioned. He had become timid through harsh treatment, and awkward, almost stupid, in his manners. It was surprising that he made his way easily and never suffered starvation or the worst experiences of poverty.

Mme. Warens, a kindly lady of means, received him into her household and gave him time to think without the necessity of selling his thoughts before they were mature. He copied music to support himself partially, and refused to write for bread since he thought that talent was killed and genius most surely stifled by such service. He who might have been rich dared to be poor, and always sympathized with the poor and understood them. When he did write later, the reward was worth the long apprenticeship. Even the wicked city of Paris listened to words straight from the heart of the man who had waited long to utter them.

The peaceful days with his benefactress ended, and Jean-Jacques set out on his journeyings again. The hardships of the road were pleasant to one of his temper. He could not be kept within a household, but must see the France, neglected by Versailles. One day he entered a cottage to ask for refreshment, since he had walked a great distance and was very tired. It was a poor enough place to outward seeming. Peasants were not disposed to do much for their dwellings, when their rents would be raised if they looked too comfortable.

The master eyed Jean-Jacques suspiciously. Strangers were rare and might be spies, sent by the lord or his agent, to find out resources hidden from the tax-collector. A meal of coarse bread and the cheapest sort of wine wits set before the visitor. He ate it thankfully, and began to discuss with his host many things of interest to all Frenchmen. The host grew uneasy. He was generous in his humble way and wished to be more truly hospitable to the wayfarer with the kindly manners and the shabby clothes. He scanned Jean-Jacques furtively, and decided to risk ruin. With a muttered word of apology, he produced some fine bread and some sparkling that had a flavor. They were hidden in a cellar, entered by a trap-door. It would be folly to expose such dainties to an excise-man who would exact duty for the wine, a commissioner who would remind him harshly that there was a tax on bread. He would be a lost man unless he pretended to die of hunger, he said, and Jean-Jacques, questioning this peasant, felt the hatred quicken that was to lead him always to be the defender of the poor.

The Haves and the Have-nots were the two orders, more commonly known as the rich and poor. Taxation fell on the luckless Have-nots and reduced them to a state of beggary. They were slaves to the Haves, who paid nothing to the State. One-half of all the land was in the possession of the King, the Church, and the great nobles. Such a division was monstrously unequal. The bulk of the people belonged to the Commons or Third Estate. The First Estate and the Second Estate numbered about the one-hundredth part of the actual population. Yet, apart from the public lands, they must own half France, and that the half which held the stateliest buildings, the richest works of art, the finest hunting, parks, pleasure-haunts, gardens, and all the beauty of the cultivated earth.

A few nobles paid some sort of tribute, assessing themselves at what they chose. The clergy paid no direct taxes at all. They were supposed to make a Free Gift, and they were seldom generous. When France was in distress they got money from the public treasury, and gave not a fraction in the woeful year of 1789. The whole country-side was covered with customs-houses and tolls, which made smuggling a pardonable crime and raised the price of necessities to luxuries. The imposition of duties hampered trade in every way. A man bringing goods from south to north would take three months to perform a journey of three weeks. Even a worker going across some river to his work was forced to pay a duty on the dinner he carried in his humble pocket!

The Gabelle  was the tax resented more than any other imposition. The country people were patient, but their blood boiled as they related the story of this salt-tax. It was, in truth, a poll-tax levied on every person of seven years and upward. Every member of a household was obliged to purchase seven pounds yearly, and the price varied according to the province, since the sale of salt was a monopoly. It might cost but a few shillings in one province and two or three pounds in another. This quantity was to be used for cooking only. If it were required for salting pork or fish, it must be bought specially for that purpose. Any evasion of the tax was punished with severity. Fines and personal chastisement were inflicted, and men and women were sent to prison to endure the cruelest hardships, if they were found to have defied the Government.

The Corve  was another grievous burden of the farmer. Many were brought to abject poverty by the compulsory labor on the roads, which meant leaving work of a more profitable nature. The path must be made smooth for the lord's heavy carriage, the way must be even over which the King drove. More than three hundred prosperous men were brought to abject beggary by filling up one vale in Lorraine, and, in later times, the crowning of Louis the Sixteenth was accomplished at the sacrifice of poor wretches, who fell down at their task from sheer starvation, or disgraced the day of splendor by piteously entreating alms from the nobles who returned from Rheims to Versailles.

The Taille  was a tax on property so unjust that it varied year by year. It fell with the greatest weight on the small proprietors, who were afraid to indulge in comfort, lest they should be discovered to owe more, and lose their temporary prosperity. It was said that the Peasant locked his door and shuttered his window on the rare occasions when he was able to enjoy the "fowl in the pot," which became the ideal of the Have-nots, as the time of reckoning approached. The fowl might assuredly have been wrested from him when half-way to his mouth! He was obliged to give part of the fruit of his labor to his lord, no matter how meager the wage be earned and how paltry the contents of his farmyard. The noble insisted that tenants should bake in his great ovens, should make wine in his presses, kill cattle in his slaughter-house, and pay handsomely for the privilege of doing these things.

The rights of the chase were hard on the men whose land was ravaged. The deer were sacred, and guarded from vengeance by laws too cruel to be infringed by any who valued his life. The peasant had to bear the odious sight of stags browsing on his fruit-trees, rabbits gnawing his corn, and pigeons pecking the crops he had sown for his own scanty harvest. The "right of dovecote" belonged to the lord, who made it penal to kill a single pigeon. Other rights there were which might well have survived from the remote ages of barbarity. Among these was the "silence des grenouilles,"  by which the unfortunate tenant must stand in marshy places the night long and risk his own health in flogging the waters to prevent the croaking of the frogs, thereby preserving the silence that was necessary for the lady of the manor.

The women suffered such toil that they knew nothing of youth, and paid dearly for beauty, did they happen to possess it. An English traveler met a haggard wretch one day and took her for an old woman who had known the privations of a lifetime. She was twenty-eight, and was prematurely aged through the cares and poverty which fell to the lot of the typical mother of a French family, bound to the service of a noble who ruffled it at Versailles.

Not all this did Rousseau learn in the house of the peasant where he received a meal. But he began from that hour to take note of such glaring contrasts, and it was through his writing that the new humanity was introduced to bridge the awful gulf between the seigneur and his tenant.

The happiest period of Jean-Jacques' life was passed at Les Charmettes, a cottage near Paris, which he occupied through the favor of a friend. Here he explored the hills and valleys, helped in the labors of the household, gathered fruit and worked in the garden. He was persuaded that a return to Nature would be the salvation of the French, and would worthily displace the corrupt life of the capital.

In 1741, Rousseau went to Paris, ill-supplied with money and depending on his wits for a modest livelihood. He was introduced to various great ladies, and obtained a diplomatic post in Italy. This was the opportunity of the man of letters, whose intellect had not yet gained him any power. He profited by learning the manners of a world above him in station, and afterwards studied the society of France, corrupt yet witty, repulsive yet too often of a marvelous fascination. He was received in the salons which noted beauties held for the interchange of brilliant ideas and scandal. The success of his opera, Le Devin du Village, might well have gone to his head, since the Queen acted in it when it was performed at Trianon.

But Jean-Jacques preferred rural pleasures to salons. "He gave up gold facings and white stockings, laid aside his sword, and sold his watch, exclaiming with great joy, 'Thank Heaven, I shall no longer need to know the time.' "

The town of Geneva received him with transports of admiration he had reason to remember later. He went lack to Paris, elated by the praise of men, and settled in "the Hermitage," where he wrote La Nouvelle Heloise, the first book of his to take the fashionable public by storm.

This novel was greeted after the extravagant manner of the time. All Paris raved of it, the booksellers could not meet the demand for copies, belles lingered over its pages, forgetting carnivals and such engagements because they were absorbed in the new hero and the newer heroine. It was a novel in favor of true seclusion from society, quiet homes and sincere relationships. Parisians thought the ideal charming, and began with zest to play at imitating it.

Emile  was published in 1762. It explained a system of education, sufficiently startling to arrest attention. The author condemned the artificial restraints of childhood. He might well preach against the pathetic spectacles of miniature men and women moving stiffly before their elders in the attitudes they were obliged to practice. The boy could enjoy neither ease of movement nor healthy occupation. He was powdered by the barber, embroidered by the tailor, decked by his valet with sword and sash, and instructed by some dancing-master to bow with elegance, one hand on his breast, the other holding the hat he seldom wore. He paid pretty compliments that amused the ladies, and gave his opinion precociously upon the merits of poets and playwrights, if his mother happened to be learned. He was a suitable gallant, not a playfellow, for the girl of the period, who at the age of six or seven was bound in whalebone, burdened by a heavy skirt, and girdled with iron. She was hardly expected to learn much; her head was adorned by a coiffure two feet in height, and her complexion must not be injured by the tears engendered by punishment. The fine lady rouged her little daughter as though she were a doll, and delighted in her mimic coquetry.

No wonder that Rousseau's book was unwelcome to the age. He preached a natural education wherein books played a secondary part, and the child was left to find out for himself the great rewards of knowledge. The custom of handing children over to hirelings was attacked with scathing criticism, as also the use of artificial toys and the attempt to enlarge the child's vocabulary. Health was to be of the first importance, and next, the moral character of the child. He was to find out by the consequences of his acts whether they were wise or foolish. If he wantonly broke a window, he must endure the discomfort of a draught; if he offended again, he would merely be placed in a room without windows. Robinson Crusoe was to be a whole library in itself, because it taught the value of self-help. Alone on a desert island, a man must be his own cook and carpenter. He must use his brain daily to find ordinary food and clothing for himself. The young pupil was to learn a trade that he might not eat the bread of idleness—a daring attack on the luxury of the class who read this work, considering that their views of existence were almost purely frivolous.

The Contrat Social  was destined to make an impression far more profound than that of Emile  in the history of the kingdom. It treated of a state where the old order was abolished, where every man was born free and insisted on his freedom. Property was the root of all evil, Rousseau stated boldly. The first man to enclose a piece of land and declare it to be his own was an enemy of the race, and had caused a thousand miseries. The chains about the feet of the oppressed were to be broken. Equal rights for all was the teaching of the Contrat Social, by which men lived in a. union composed of different natures but united by the common bond of humanity Nobody could do exactly as he liked, lest he might injure a neighbor. Everybody agreed to do what would be of use to the community in general.

It was a daring scheme of government to propose in the France of the eighteenth century. It was a daring book to publish in a country where literature was fettered by the ignorant. The Parlement of Paris ordered the work to be burnt and the author to be arrested. Rousseau fled in haste and found enemies wherever he turned. In gazettes and journals the name of this man was odious. He was denounced as an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, and a wolf. His own town would not receive him. He was ordered to leave Berne where he had descended to kiss the ground he judged to be the soil of liberty!

When Frederick the Great afforded the writer protection Jean-Jacques was thankful to dwell at the foot of Mt. Jura, though the peasantry of that neighborhood disliked his odd Armenian costume and eccentric habits, and did not fail to turn against him when popular prejudice was at its height. He was hooted in the streets and attacked in his own house. He feared death itself and escaped to England, almost crazy from the strain of such a persecution.

In 1766, Rousseau arrived in London. His writings were well known there, and distinguished people were anxious to meet him. Hume met the outcast, who fell on his neck with mingled tears and kisses. He was an object of interest even to the King and Queen, and they paid him more attention at the theatre than was given to David Garrick, the great actor.

Rousseau lived in retirement at Woolton, where the villagers took him for some strange king in exile. He brooded over his wrongs while he roamed the picturesque country-side, and all the charm of rustic scenery could not bring peace to his unquiet mind. He was in Paris once more in the summer of 1770. The order for his arrest was not withdrawn, but he was allowed to live in the capital unmolested. He gave up his Armenian dress, adopted for the sake of hygiene, and dwelt very quietly on the fourth floor of a house in the street which was named after him, when passionate admiration succeeded neglect and mockery. He copied music and played the spinet. The wife, ill-educated and unable to understand him, sewed in the humble room, with the pots of flowers and canary in its wooden cage. It was a modest income that genius desired, and yet this was made by labor which was truly strenuous. Nearly eight years passed before he moved to a cottage on a fine estate which was noted for its gardens. Voltaire, the brilliant atheist, died in 1778, and Rousseau, his only rival in the world of letters, followed an ancient enemy to the grave. "I feel that my existence is bound up with his," he said, on hearing the news from Paris. "He is dead. I shall soon follow." The assailant of the old faith was buried at the end of May, the assailant of the old order in July of that same year.

Jean-Jacques might be a vagabond, a man of many faults and morbid imagination. He marked out the path to be taken by the foremost of the Revolutionaries. They studied his Contrat Social  to find the text of their principles. They shed blood and destroyed ruthlessly. The writer had detested violence, but he was to lead the people to a state of anarchy. He taught freedom, and he was beloved by them as they killed their oppressors. He preached equality, and they reduced the privileges of the nobles to assume despotic rights as the rulers of a Republic which their own hands had set up.

The Lighted Candle

Maria Theresa, the powerful Empress of Austria, planned a marriage for a fair child in her cradle, all unconscious of the mighty change that was preparing. The Empress's father had striven to secure her succession by binding the other monarchs of Europe to support her.

Frederick of Prussia was Maria Theresa's enemy and neighbor. She had a bitter struggle to endure before she triumphed over her most aggressive foes. The Hungarians rallied round her, swearing to die in defense of "their King, Maria Theresa!" She appealed to their chivalry by professing a woman's helpless dependence on their strength. She was a mother with young children; she was beset by treachery and scheming. So she gathered powerful armies beneath her banner and thus kept her vast dominion. She was ruthless in determination, subtle in maneuvers. She had decided that France must help Austria long before the marriage of her daughter to the Dauphin.

The ambitious mother's scheme was not concealed from the child, Marie Antoinette. Her name was changed to the French fashion. She was drilled in the speech of her future kingdom, though her general education was neglected. She danced gracefully, but cared not at all for books and refused to attend to studies. The old Abbe, who became her tutor, did not accomplish his task successfully, When she was of an age to be married she wrote a shocking hand and spelled incorrectly. She was untrained in mind, and hoydenish in movements. She had no conception of the duties of a queen, and would have been surprised to hear that she ought to study the people of the nation she would govern. They were merely smiling faces, seen in dense crowds from the Royal carriage. They said nothing of more importance than their salutations to Royalty. It was good for them to see grand spectacles; if they asked more, surely they were wrong the poor should he contented always.

She was fourteen when they sent her to France to marry the awkward lad who was only a year older. She was given "a plan and rule of life "and told to read it every month, and was advised to adapt herself to a new Court and a new way of thinking. She left Vienna in April 1770, deeply mourned, for she was the youngest and fairest daughter of the great Empress.

Marie Antoinette, no doubt, enjoyed the long journey that took her through scenes she did not recognize. She had Austrian attendants with her but said farewell to them as soon as she reached the French borders. She was bidden to remove the clothes she had brought with her, and clad from head to foot in the garments of her marriage state. She felt strangely ill-at-ease, and natural trepidation seized her when thunder heralded her arrival at the town of Strasburg. It was an evil omen, and she was superstitious in her girlhood. The day would come when she was to shudder at the recollection of that storm and the tapestry of the room where she was royally welcomed. The scenes were wrought by skilful hands, but they presented a strange subject—Medea, rending her own children, was depicted, and other episodes from mythology, terrible in their grim tragedy.

The Princess met King Louis XV and the Dauphin in the forest of Compiegne. She was anxious to produce a favorable impression on the monarch, as splendid as the Sun-King in appearance, but differing widely from him in command of self and subject. Louis XV could maintain the royal state of Versailles, though he shocked the Court by his lavish gifts to favorites, worthless women for the most part, who took greedily the offerings given them at the cost of a ruined government. Millions were spent on residences where costly whims could be indulged. Millions were spent on giving incomes to recipients who did nothing to deserve them. It was well for Marie Antoinette that she pleased Louis. Her first act was to fall down at his feet in real humility. He raised her, and she gave her hand to Louis the Dauphin, who had no more notion than a rustic how to bear himself toward his bride. He was kind, but he had no presence. The King looked handsome and polished by his side. Neither barber nor valet could make the heir of the noble Bourbons stately; moreover the Dauphin was slovenly and of a heavy countenance.

LOUIS XV

The marriage was celebrated with solemn rites at Versailles in the May of 1770. The Court life proved baffling to the new-made wife, who forgot her lessons in deportment and conducted herself like the noisy romp of fourteen she was in reality. Her dame d'honneur was punctilious about the manners of a Dauphine who would soon be Queen of France, they said. "Madame l' Etiquette"  the girl named de Noailles, and mimicked the elder woman with youthful want of feeling. She was only allowed to ride a donkey; she was rebuked for the merry games she enjoyed whenever other children of her age gathered at the pompous Court. She wrote to complain of these restraints to her mother, and that august lady was uneasy. She bade her daughter conform to French usages, which were strict and liable to prove a stumbling block to foreigners.

It was too dull for lively Marie Antoinette to submit to the routine of Court life without an occasional diversion. She had to curtsey to the King at stated hours, to play cards with little interest in the game, to put on and off the cumbersome Court dresses. She was surrounded by spies, who suspected the voluminous correspondence with her mother. She was short of money, although a large sum was allowed for her dress, and since she neither liked nor respected Madame du Barry, Louis' greatest favorite, and refused to notice her at functions, she made enemies.

The King's daughters, nicknamed, Rag, Snip, and Pig, were prim and elderly unmarried ladies. They did not gain Marie Antoinette's affection in her early days at Court. They were shocked by her levity and want of dignity. They heard with horror of her play with dogs and her rides on horseback, a forbidden pleasure in which however she indulged. They were good according to their lights, but they began to form a party in opposition to the Austrian princess. She would never be a Frenchwoman. She was too free in speech, too careless of the impression she created.

The Dauphin was not a companion for his young bride. He could ride well, and was immoderate in his love of hunting. But he was without charm or gaiety, and his jokes were boyishly offensive. His hobbies did not attract anyone who was dainty in habit. He was fond of manual labor, and had a workshop, where the smith Gamain treated him as though he were an ordinary apprentice. He was scolded rather sharply for coming to his wife's apartments with dusty clothes and dirty hands, for he was neglectful of all ceremony. He would retreat then with a bad grace and mount to his observatory, watching the heavens and studying the stars.

Marie Antoinette declared that she preferred her husband to his brothers, but she was too friendly with the younger, the Count of Artois, an idle, frivolous boy, who led her into mischief. The elder, nicknamed Tartuffe by the Dauphin, who said he played the hero of Moliere's comedy to perfection, was hypocritical, as the name implied, and kept a steady furtive eye on the two heirs of the throne. All knew that Louis XV could not live long. He was worn out by a life of selfish follies, and when the zest of youth was gone he cared for nothing.

Louis, the Well-Beloved, had a shrewd idea that trouble was brewing for the successor to his kingdom. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, however, and wondered aloud how "Berry" (the Dauphin) would manage to pull through it. He judged "Berry" to be a weak stripling, not clever enough to play his part, if it were difficult. And it was going to be very difficult to rule a country, seething with discontent that, at times, even now rose to the surface. "After me, the deluge," Louis said cynically, and smiled to think that he would be well out of it. He had gained what he wanted, he had eaten and drunk and had what he would of pleasure. He did not care for his family or the nation, placing always their welfare second to his own desires. The daughters he named so contemptuously were afraid of him, knowing that he despised their single state and scant claim to admiration. He did not deserve that they should tend him so devotedly when he was seized with deadly illness and the Court fled panic-stricken from infection.

Small-pox was the scourge of prince as well as peasant. Louis suffered the agonies of disease at Versailles, deserted by all except the chosen few, whose duties constrained them to remain. The trembling courtiers waited in the outer chamber for the news of the King's demise.

The Oeil-de-Boeuf  was crowded with a throng, no longer eager to demand an audience. They knew that a lighted candle, put in the window of the King's apartment, would go out when the Well-Beloved drew his last breath. They saw the carriages in the courtyard with horses harnessed in readiness to take the new King and Queen to Choisy. Suspense made them haggard beneath the rouge and powder. Their dress was slightly disarranged, though the polite conversation of the courtiers was worldly, as it had been under the rule of the man now seeking late absolution from a priest.

The great clock struck three, and the fatal hour, prophesied by a daring preacher as the time appointed for the King's reign to end, was come. The candle was extinguished by an unseen hand, the palace roused to sudden animation. There was a noise like thunder when the courtiers rushed to the presence of the Dauphin and his wife and made the usual declaration. "The King is dead. Long live the King!"

Louis XVI and his young wife clung together, weeping. They were alarmed by the awful responsibility that was thrust upon them. They fell on their knees and raised their hands to heaven, praying for guidance because they were too young to reign.

Before the Deluge

There was hope in the hearts of the French peasantry when the young King and Queen succeeded Louis the Well-Beloved. He had been buried with a lack of ceremony that contrasted ill with the state he had maintained. Now there was to be a fete day, a coronation of the sixteenth Louis at Rheims, with all the ancient rites. Even the Austrian wife became popular for the moment. Her enemies dared speak no ill of her while the preparations for the King's anointing were toward. She did not claim the honor of being crowned herself, though the ambitious Empress would have urged it. She was content to go in splendor from Versailles with milliners, ladies of honor, and the usual accompaniments of royal journeys. She added materially to the expenses of the ceremony. In vain, Turgot, the shrewd minister of France, pleaded the advantage of using the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Louis was not moved by the argument that the spectacle would be more imposing, nor Marie Antoinette by the foolish idea that it would be well to save two millions for the State.

From Clovis, the wild, warlike barbarian, to Louis XV, most finished of courtiers, most civilized of Bourbons, the French monarchs had been invested with their royalty at Rheims. To Rheims, then, the sixteenth Louis would repair, though the roads were so bad that the corvee  had to be put in force and peasants' backs broken by the work of haste.

Down those roads the marvels of the Court flashed in carriages, hung high and driven furiously. Unlucky those urchins or curious women who crossed the path of the Queen's coach, which had been elevated to an unusual height to give a glimpse of the wonderful head-dress she adopted. In those days pedestrians had a sorry time of it, either in town or country. In Paris there was a sharp distinction between the man who drove and the man who walked. It was impossible for a well-dressed lady to cross a street without ruining her toilette, and people of moderate fortune dressed in black with black stockings that they might not have their clothes spoilt if they were splashed by the one-horse cabriolets, driven by fops at a most dangerous speed. On country roads children were trampled without the aristocrat suffering a pang of compunction. He would be annoyed by a jolt, perhaps, and would look out to see a bundle round which a weeping crowd gathered, but he was generally satisfied by throwing a few gold pieces to the bereaved, and went his way at the same risk to life and limb.

So the spectators gaped to see the Queen's fine head-dress but forbore to approach too near. She was always pleased by the cheers that saluted the royal carriage. She held her head high now, though it was burdened by a magnificent coiffure. It was the fashion to wear a head-dress that bore some reference to a great event of the period. On Louis XVth's death, mythological allusions were brought into the barber's latest novelty. A cypress on one side represented the mourning of the nation, and on the other was a cornucopia, overflowing with every good gift as an emblem of the prosperous era that was dawning! When Rousseau brought rusticity into favor, the "belle jardiniere"  was worn by every truly modish woman. It was heavy with turnips and beetroots, carrots and cabbages, and must have been as trying a fashion as the "coiffure a l'anglomanie" in vogue when the young men of quality took to crossing the channel and introduced the races and outdoor pastimes of the English. The belle of Versailles then had to poise her head carefully to preserve from damage a miniature race-course with jockeys, dogs, and five-barred gates arranged on the mighty scaffolding!

The procession met a royal greeting. The ceremony itself was gorgeous. The old cathedral formed a fitting background for the wealth and might that gathered in its aisles. The walls were hung with crimson cloth of gold, the dignitaries of the Church were decked magnificently in their robes of office. Ladies in court dress, then more luxurious than at any other epoch, accompanied peers and princes of the blood whose garb did not suffer one whit by comparison. Even the King, so humble and plebeian in aspect, had a certain majesty when he put on the violet velvet robes and took in his hand the sceptre, which was to prove unwieldy. The pealing of the organ, the sweet chant of the choir, hailed him and the crown was almost on his head. Then, with a sudden awkward movement, Louis XVI raised his hand to thrust the emblem on one side. It was the hottest day of .June, the weighty trappings irked him. He suffered from an impulse of strange apprehension. "It burdens me, it tires me," he said uneasily when the costly bauble was placed upon his head. It had cost £800,000. It was to cost his life. He had a vague instinct, no doubt, which made him hesitate to take it.

But the weakness passed, and once again the Queen breathed freely. Her pride had been hurt, though she concealed the wound by a haughty bearing. She was to govern rather than this coward. She would let him indulge his passion for the chase, and herself give audience to ministers, transact the public business with her favorites, while he put down in his diary the day's sport or made these curious entries. "To-day nothing; remonstrances of the Parlement. Nothing: death of M. de Maurepas. Nothing; retirement of M. Necker."

Louis Seize passed out of the cathedral now amidst the roar of cannon and the acclamations of the people. Thousands of singing birds were freed from their cages to symbolize the "vieilles franchises"  or "ancient rights" of France, medals were scattered among the mob by heralds-at-arms who cried "Noel" and "Largesse," as they strewed them broadcast. The day of splendid festivity was concluded by a banquet in the Hall of Rheims, where statues of other kings crowned there were placed to welcome the King who dreaded sovereignty.

On the morrow Louis received offerings from the Mayor of Rheims, who delivered the old formula of the citizens. "'Te, Your Majesty's loyal subjects, crave leave to offer you of the best we possess—our wine, our pears, our hearts."

LOUIS XVI

The sick were brought to him that he might heal them by one touch of the royal fingers, debtors were set free because a King had graciously assumed their debts. All was feting and merrymaking in that June of 1774. The Queen wrote in high spirits to her mother. She did not know that it was a false gaiety she met on the way through a concourse of French loyalists. The deformed and crippled were forbidden to obtrude themselves upon the sight of the exalted. Disease and poverty must not be too ugly. They were swept aside that the path of King and Queen might seem all roses and sunshine, that they might not suffer from the sight of human pain and human sorrow.

The King doffed the purple and went hunting or made locks busily in the slovenly disarray that caused valet and barber to despair of his doing them honor. The Queen cast off the restraints that had been imposed on her when she was a princess. She was beautiful and commanding, in the flower of youth and of a fascination that brought her real homage. If she danced to a measure carelessly, the music itself must be out of tune. If she acted in the mimic theatre of her palace, the audience did not whisper that her voice was weak and her gestures artificial. With the frivolous Count of Artois she went to masked balls and set up gaming tables. The King paid her debts though he did not accompany her on the wild frolics she enjoyed among the common people of Paris, who penetrated her disguise and yet pretended no suspicion. She drove in a sleigh through the streets without attendants. The Princesse de Lamballe was her companion—a foolish pretty woman, whose delicacy was such that she fainted at the scent of a bunch of violets! The Princesse must share the royal wealth, acquired so easily. A post was created for her at Versailles that she might be given an enormous salary. The scandal spread beyond Court circles. There were murmurs that the Queen cared nothing for the people. They suffered cruel want during the winter of the sledges, and the King ordered carts of fuel to be given to them, declaring that he would spend money on a different kind of hobby.

Marie Antoinette, too, had impulses of kindness. She brought up a little boy who had been run over by her carriage. He was transferred from cottage to castle and soon learnt to play the role of courtier, but the Queen's whim made him her bitter enemy in the days when she had no longer the right to indulge such fancies.

The old Court with its faded beaux and belles looked askance at the caprice of the new Court. Scandals were in the very air, and the King's brother and his wife fostered them continually. They were jealous of the Austrian and believed the worst of every harmless folly.

"The Queen goes incessantly to the opera and to the play, gets into debts, interferes in law-trials, adorns herself with feathers and knots of ribbon and laughs at everything." It was a true enough description. She loved finery, and swam, a splendid vision, down the Galerie des Glaces  when the ceremony of Mass claimed her. The King was religious; he would have been shocked by inattention.

MARIE ANTOINETTE

Caron de Beaumarchais played on the Queen's love of the theatre. He wrote The Marriage of Figaro  and the Barber of Seville, both satires on Court manners and the Court wished to hear them. The King was moved to assert his authority. He sent the clever playwright to prison, using the arbitrary method of a "lettre de cachet,"  which dispensed with a formal trial. The Queen overruled him. Beaumarchais read his play in her Salons, and when it was acted the crush was stupendous, fashionable ladies deigning to sit by women of the humblest class and to endure a lengthy time of waiting. They applauded Beaumarchais, amused by his witty exposure of their morals. They saw the glass held up for others to see them as they were and did not realize that they were bringing about their own downfall!

The Queen had a fancy for country life in the course of her extravagances. She had received the little village of Trianon as a gift from the King and went there alone to play the dairymaid. The teaching of Rousseau had inspired her with a desire for simplicity. She would have an English garden, differing from the prim beauty of Versailles. Bridges and tiny streams and rustic hedges diversified the profusion of flowers and green sward. There were grottoes lined with green moss and pleasant dells where the elegant friends of the Queen ate strawberries and imagined themselves real inhabitants of the peasant village. It was costly to build the Swiss houses and the model farm and to put the mimic mill in motion, but every detail must be perfect to continue the illusion. There was a house for the cure and a house for the bailli, grouped near the more pretentious dwelling of the lady of the manor. The King came to Trianon only by a special invitation. The Queen's orders were paramount. She gave great offence by signing notices with her own name to foot a legal proclamation. There was a special mode of dress to wear at the butter-making and the pie-making. A rustic hat displaced the coiffure symbolical, and muslins were so much the fashion that Lyons silk merchants complained of injury done to trade by this cult of simplicity.

There was nothing real in this play at poverty. The grounds of Trianon afforded only "the sort of country where lambs are as well-washed as lap-dogs, and dairies have white marble tables and china bowls," but it pleased Marie Antoinette mightily, and she was careless how large a sum of money was added to the expenses of the nation. She insisted on places being made for favorites regardless of the waste that the rewards entailed. The Comtesse de Polignac was greedy for her family, and she was the companion of the Queen always when the Princesse de Lamballe failed to charm.

The delights of gorgeous apparel inspired the new Court with its parti-coloured carnivals. The heroic Henri IV figured so gallantly that the courtiers longed to return to the dress of an earlier period. If the King had not frowned at the idea, they would all have ruffled it in garments that were picturesque but absurdly cumbrous.

English habits became the rage as the admiration for liberty seized the fickle aristocrat of France. Benjamin Franklin lived for a time among the Court of Louis, and, homely in speech and appearance, was flattered by the class who were doomed to hear the fatal repetition of his favourite phrase "Ca ira." Lafayette went to offer his sword to General Washington and enthusiasm rose high for the rights of free government. It was vain babbling for the most part, but it brought a new sensation, and English racing was better calculated to make the pulse beat high than the card-games that were too dull and solemn for the Austrian princess. English clothes were imported and English jockeys, strange little wizened creatures, who sat behind the French dandies in their cabriolets. English clothes displaced the richer garb of the fantastic; poplins, tabinets and lawns were more precious than brocades; "they sold their diamonds to buy steel beads and English paste and Gobelin tapestry was stowed away in cupboards and blue English paper took its place. The evenings were devoted to tea-drinking and eating bread-and-butter." There was talk of Pitt, the English Prime Minister, marrying an ugly but vivacious daughter of M. Necker, the French minister. The house of Necker was a resort of the most brilliant intellects. Necker had displaced Turgot, the one sound minister of finance in that unsound nation. His wife helped to sustain his credit by her entertainments. He was the idol of the people because he published an account of the money spent in the kingdom. It was appalling and showed a grave deficit. Yet Necker did nothing to bring about reform.

In 1781, a Dauphin was born and welcomed with rejoicing. The King rushed into the streets to embrace his humblest subjects, the Queen was almost stifled by a throng of noisy visitors. The whole life of royalty was public in those days—the royal apartments never free from intrusion. Marie Antoinette's brother had been shocked by the stalls which blocked the splendid corridors of Versailles and filled the air with the clamor of a market. He complained of the sale of ginger-bread and the cry of newsvendors. When such an event as this birth was toward, privacy became impossible for the royal family. The fishwives and market-women hastened to claim their ancient privileges. They arrived in full force to compliment the Queen, and afterwards were allowed to fill the royal box at the opera with their comely figures in black silk gowns, the full dress of their order upon such occasions. The chimney-sweepers claimed a similar privilege from ancient days. Behold them at the opera, pretending to listen to the new music, but, in reality, preening themselves in handsome broad-cloth and powdered hair, with faces cleaner than was usual.

Marie Antoinette began to take her duties seriously, though she was declining in the favor of the nation day by day. She was ruling the King, they knew, and distrusted all her measures. By what right did she dare to choose Calonne as minister? He was flippant and polished in manners, but he did nothing which should avail to put him in the place of Necker.

Calonne, indeed, made the Queen a very gallant promise. She was to have her way, however the nation suffered. "Madame, if it is possible, it shall be done," he declared agreeably; "if it is impossible, it shall still be done."

Never was the Court more splendid than in the time of this flattering man of finance. The rich bourgeois began to ape the class above him. "Never did the looms of. Lyons produce, even for Madame de Pompadour, silks of richer quality or greater beauty of design; or Alencon and other lace-making towns more exquisite specimens of their beautiful art. Every article of the toilet was of the finest and costliest kind. Elegant equipages became more generally used, and the number of servants increased. Silver plate was more abundant, and inlaid and artistically carved furniture, and the tapestry of Beauvais and the porcelain of Sevres were in unusual demand."

In cruel contrast was a picture of the streets of Paris in the winter of 1783, which was memorable as a winter of hard frost. Crusts of black bread were thrown to the hungry, wretched creatures who were strong enough to struggle for them through the masses of snow that covered the mud with a delusive beauty. The open places of the city witnessed a horrible eagerness for such a dole of charity. None could scorn black bread when they were bidden to eat grass by their contemptuous rulers. It would have gone hardly with Marie Antoinette if she had driven her costly sleighs through the avenues of Paris, where there was so much want and misery.

The Cardinal and the Necklace

King Louis XV had designed to make a worthy present to Du Barry, the favorite who dazzled him by her beauty. He wanted her to wear round her white neck jewels that would proclaim his generosity. Hither and thither the royal jewelers hurried to collect the priceless diamonds that would be of a luster to satisfy the Well-Beloved. Messengers were dispatched by them wherever there seemed likelihood of a stone being found that could be added to a string of marvels. "There was excitement in the judengasse  of every capital in Europe," and merchants proffered the best in their collection.

The jewelers earned by their efforts some part, at least, of the colossal sum they demanded from the lavish King. Two millions of livres—£80,000—was the price to which he readily assented. Some would starve to pay for this in the obscurer portions of the kingdom, but Du Barry must have some mark of real devotion. A palace and its treasures was little enough. Louis XV would have the earth plundered before he denied himself the pleasure of out-doing the Sun-King, his royal predecessor.

But this King, too, was mortal—did not live to see the necklace completed. It had ruined the court jewelers, who had pledged their credit to buy gems. They were in sore straits because they had made something too magnificent for customers less free with their gifts than the fifteenth Louis.

The Queen, surely, was enamored of all beautiful, rare ornaments. If Marie Antoinette fancied the necklace, the King would buy it. There was a ray of hope in the hearts of the diamond-merchants when they visited Versailles to seek an audience. They found the King willing to make the purchase, but the Queen was strangely lacking in appreciation. She refused the gift, refused it steadfastly though she took a costly present, the palace of Saint-Cloud.

Then an adventuress saw in this vexatious gaud an opportunity of gaining a vast fortune. Dame de Lamotte had been poor long enough. Report said that she had been rescued from abject beggary by a great lady, who listened to her story that she was descended from the kingly line of Valois.

Married to an idle husband, the unfortunate descendant of Henri Quatre looked about her for an easy mode of living. She went to see Cardinal de Rohan, the Grand Almoner of France, and claimed from him a small pension. She went again and began to understand the Cardinal's real character. He was vain and credulous; he was longing to win the proud Queen's favor.

De Rohan had lately returned from the Austrian Court, where he lived a riotous life as the ambassador of France. Maria Theresa disliked him, and her daughter seems to have followed her example. It was not the Austrian Queen who raised the object of her hate to the position of Grand Almoner. Even when de Rohan became the Bishop of Strasburg, he made no appeal to her reverence. She did not admit to her fetes the red-hatted, handsome man of middle age, whose hair had whitened prematurely, but whose mind was strangely young.

Some said that de Rohan loved the Queen and that she treated him with scorn. Others were of opinion that love of self guided him and the wish to rise to greater eminence by winning the Queen's favor. Madame de Lamotte made a tool of the nature she understood so quickly. She was tired of the shifting scenes of poverty and established herself in Paris, where she attracted a certain number of the foolish and unscrupulous. She was very ill-satisfied with her tiny state pension, but she fared sumptuously and entertained with profusion. Into the Cardinal's ears she dropped hints that his infatuation was returned by Marie Antoinette. She would correspond with him if he wrote secretly and used a clever go-between.

De Rohan was elated by the news. He had striven arduously to win the Queen's forgiveness for his follies. Now he began to build a castle in the air, and wrote as a lover, while Lamotte meanwhile was preparing a subtle scheme of deceit to entangle him.

The Queen replied, apparently, to the Cardinal's letters. He received notes signed by her name and written on the coroneted blue paper she used for private correspondence. A quicker brain might have suspected forgery, but de Rohan was ready to believe that what he wished would come to pass.

The Queen, it appeared, would like to entrust the Cardinal with a most delicate mission. She longed for the diamond necklace she had refused, and instructed him to open negotiations for its private purchase. The jewelers were delighted to make terms and rid themselves of the "white elephant" that bade fair to be their undoing. De Rohan was persuaded to believe that the unlucky stones would prove most fortunate to him. Cagliostro, an impostor, but a man of extraordinary powers, was regularly consulted by the Cardinal at Strasburg. He professed to have discovered the art of making both gold and diamonds. His patron wore a ring which he explained that the new scientist had made in his presence out of nothing!

There was a solemn ceremony to decide the question of the necklace. Finally, Cagliostro announced that it would raise the Queen to a lofty pinnacle of queenly state and would also reveal the true devotion of de Rohan. No doubt Madame de Lamotte foretold this result; she knew the magician and then dwelt very near the house where he reveled in Oriental luxury.

Lamotte's husband found a poor girl sufficiently resembling Marie Antoinette to be taken for her by a stranger, and a meeting was arranged in the Park of Versailles. This d'Oliva was trained to imitate the Queen's speech, and dressed very elegantly in a white robe that gave her an air of royalty. She was placed in a grove in the Park of Versailles when the summer twilight had descended. Marie Antoinette was well known to have a habit of roaming about at night either quite alone or with only a friend as her attendant.

The trembling Cardinal met a tall and gracious figure in the shadow of an arbor. He received a portrait and a rose and a few words that intoxicated him by their hint of a secret understanding. On the strength of this interview he paid a large installment of the money for the necklace to Lamotte who did not, however, send it to the jewelers, though she obtained the jewels and instructed her husband to sell them separately, in London and in Paris. Then she was rich enough to realize an old plan of returning to the scenes of her former poverty with an appearance of great splendor. Her dresses were conveyed from Paris in great wagons, and the richness of her jeweled counterpanes became a fable to the country-folk she tried to dazzle.

Meantime the jewelers became anxious as they could not obtain any payment for the diamond necklace. They petitioned the Queen, at last, and were told that she had had nothing to do with the transaction. After a conclave with the King, Marie Antoinette sent for the unhappy Cardinal.

De Rohan was on his way to chapel, attired in the full dignity of his pontifical robes, for it was the Day of the Assumption. The summons startled him, and in the Queen's presence he began to understand that he had been duped by Madame de Lamotte and that this proud and angry woman had never deigned to grant him an interview at Versailles. He left the royal presence almost stunned by his discovery and was arrested publicly before he could recover from bewilderment. He had only time to send a messenger to destroy his papers.

Madame de Lamotte was dining with a fashionable party when the news came that de Rohan had been taken to the prison. The arrest of a Grand Almoner of France in his vestments startled the whole company. It had such an effect on one guest that she rushed from the room, with a face turned deadly pale, and drove at once to Paris. Lamotte refused to leave the country, vowing that she knew nothing of the necklace, but she was in a hurry to destroy her documents and spent the night burning the papers in a sandal-wood bureau, including hundreds of letters from the deluded prisoner. She was still at work in a dense atmosphere of burning wax and paper at four o'clock in the morning, when she was discovered and lodged in the state prison of the Bastille.

Cagliostro did not escape, nor his wife, nor d'Oliva, nor yet the man who had forged the letters. Paris was wild with excitement and the Queen's name on every tongue. All the noble and powerful family of de Rohan were against her. They declared that she had at least coveted the diamonds and had been guilty of arbitrary injustice when she ordered the Cardinal to be arrested. They moved heaven and earth to get the Church dignitary out of prison, and became so alarming in their righteous wrath that the King tried to rid himself of all responsibility and gave the business of the trial into the hands of the Parlement of Paris.

The trial was public, so the court was crowded. The de Rohan family assembled, clad in garments of deep mourning, to stand within the hall through which the judge and advocates must pass. Popular feeling against Marie Antoinette rose higher and betrayed itself in the loud satisfaction that greeted the Cardinal's acquittal. It was not that they sympathized with de Rohan, the silly dupe of an adventuress. "Unloved he and worthy of no love; but important since the Queen and Court were his enemies."

That was the real reason for the hurrahing crowd met to welcome the miserable Grand Almoner when he issued from the Bastille again on the last day of May, 1786. Proud Marie Antoinette saw in the verdict an insult to herself. She wept bitterly at the public rejoicing, and was little consoled by the punishment Lamotte received, despite her eloquent speech in her own defense. She was sentenced to receive a public whipping, was branded with the letter V for voleuse  (thief), and should have been imprisoned for her life, but so furious was the storm of indignation against royalty, so threatening the attitude of Paris, that Louis XVI was obliged to connive at the escape of his wife's fair enemy.

D'Oliva was set free after the trial, since she had been duped with the Cardinal. The Comte de Lamotte most wisely fled to England, and de Rohan himself passed into exile. The Cardinal lived quietly on the Rhine with austerity and a certain mature dignity. He was a source of much comfort to emigrants before he died, but he had wrought evil to Marie Antoinette which she never forgave him.

Libels assailed the Queen, many of them grossly exaggerated and untruthful. All her past levity was revived, and that free habit of wandering alone by night which had placed her name in jeopardy. Her escapades with D'Artois, the King's madcap brother, lost nothing in the telling. There were rumors that "Tartuffe"  and his wife supplied these malicious stories. They had never ceased to think evil of the Queen since the birth of the Dauphin destroyed their son's hope of the succession.

"The Austrian" was blamed for the schemes of her mother, Maria Theresa. There was no doubt that Austria would have liked to gain help from the French, and that letters came to the Court, insisting that Marie Antoinette should use her well-known influence with her husband. So the clever mother helped to bring about her daughter's ultimate destruction. She had made this marriage to forward the aggrandizement of her empire. Maria Theresa was too far away to know that smothered discontent was rife among her daughter's subjects.

The Queen's fair fame was tarnished. She was mocked and derided, and treated with the same want of respect and coarse insulting epithets that had greeted the King after he was crowned. But she played her part brilliantly, showing neither fear nor indignation. She was now the King's adviser, and all changes in the State were discussed in her boudoir with Mme de Polignac and her favorites. She saw Calonne depart, threatened by an angry mob, who sought on one occasion to drag him from his carriage. She knew that he had been bold enough to declare the Exchequer empty. A special head-dress had been worn at Court to satirize the poverty of the nation. It was not in the best of taste, but the great ladies wore it, punning wittily on the fact that it lacked the crown, the essential part of a "bonnet," as the Treasury lacked treasure.

Yet the Queen would not recall Necker, the minister in whom the people trusted. She appointed Lomenie de Brienne, the Abbe, because she thought he would be loyal to her. When he hastily left office, France went mad with joy, burning him in effigy to the music of shovel and tongs, and welcoming the hundred couriers from Versailles who rode out to give news to the provinces.

The Queen's portrait had to be taken from the Salon because it met with insult. They called her Madame Deficit, and declared she was betraying France to Austria. All respect for the monarchy was gone now. Men wore portraits of General Lafayette on their waist-coats, and called upon such gallant spirits to aid them in the recall of Necker to the Ministry and the meeting of the one representative assembly of the nation, the States-General.

The First Procession

In that Convocation of the Notables, which Calonne had desperately summoned to hear of the wretched financial condition of the country and the King's patriotic wishes that the deficit might be met by a new act of generosity performed by the privileged class, Lafayette had demanded a National Assembly or States-General to include representatives from every part of France. Peers were there and men of the robe, soldiers and clergy of the highest class; seven "princes of the blood" dignified the ancient Assembly of Notables, which had not met since Richelieu's time. These shook their heads when Calonne became eloquent and spoke of a Land Tax which would be paid by the rich, for they loved the old saying, "The nobles fight, the clergy pray, the people pay," and they refused to give up their ancient rights. Brienne dismissed them, and their convocation would have been useless indeed had it not spread the magic word "States-General" through all France.

Brienne's measures to alleviate distress were futile, because the Parlement of Paris refused to register the fiscal edicts which he had proposed. There was to be a Land Tax, which the wealthy lawyers who formed the Parlement could not approve. There was to be a Stamp Tax, such as had aroused wrath in the American colonists. Suddenly the Parlement discovered that it had never had the power to register any edicts dealing with taxation, but had hitherto usurped the authority of the ancient States-General, which had not met since 1614. The people rejoiced to hear the refusal, and blessed the Parlement as it went into exile at Troyes, in Champagne, for that representative body of the Three Estates—Nobles, Clergy, and Commons—might, when called upon to meet, do more than deliberate upon finance or vote taxes to abolish the deficit of the nation. They might redress grievances which had grown intolerable during the long years of suppression which the commons had endured.

LAFAYETTE

Yet the Parlement made terms with the Versailles government, and returned from exile when Brienne decided that the Stamp Tax should be withdrawn and the Land Tax made less troublesome to the privileged. The nation was assured that the States-General should be convoked in 1792 as soon as the loan, which took the place of taxation, had been exhausted by the needs of government.

Brienne anticipated some happy ending of the troubled state of France long before five years should pass, but 1788 saw the provincial parlements roused against Versailles. They refused to register edicts, and were exiled amidst the national anger that such an act of tyranny now roused. In August Brienne was obliged to promise that the States-General should be convoked in May of the following year.

Necker was recalled on August 24, 1788, France resounding with the cry of "Vive le Roi! Vive M. Necker!" while the nation rejoiced openly that Brienne had gone. Henceforth, the whole country spoke of the meeting of the States-General, and the structure of that ancient body was discussed by clubs and statesmen, while the twenty-five million commons palpitated with the mighty joy of reckoning themselves members of a voting class. The Parlement of Paris lost popularity suddenly by declaring for the old form of 1614, in which the Third Estate figured mainly as a show, leaving all real decisions to the nobility and clergy, their superiors.

The Third Estate had its champions among the pamphleteers, for Abbe Sieyes came from Chartres to Paris asking three questions which he could answer best himself. "What is the Third Estate? All. What has it hitherto been in our form of government? Nothing. What does it want to become? Something." Orleans, prince of the blood, and formerly Due de Chartres, opposed his own order when he gave utterance to the words, "The Third Estate is the Nation." He had long been suspected of disloyalty by Versailles.

The Court thought revolt impossible, though they admitted that the commons might be dangerous if encouraged by men of such influence. They settled that the Third Estate should join the King in taxing the First and Second Estates. All three Estates could be dismissed when the State Treasury was full again.

Necker proved himself feeble in all attempts to settle the two burning questions of the hour. He could not decide whether the commons should be represented by as many members as the clergy and the nobles united, since they were by far the most numerous class, nor whether the States-General, once assembled, should vote and deliberate in one body or three separate bodies. The Notables, assembled for the second time, did not incline to the patriotic side which demanded "vote by head," but they were dismissed before the royal edict went, forth ordering the election. of deputies and the preparation of cahiers  or writs of grievances in January 1789.

The edict was acclaimed with joy "as the news of Victory, Deliverance, and Enfranchisement" by the class which had been ignored in politics since 1614. "To the proud, strong man it has come; whose strong hands shall be no more gyved; to whom boundless unconquered continents lie disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar with his crust moistened in tears."

The great Salles des Menus at Versailles was made ready to receive the deputies by order of the King. There was to be a great gala and procession on May 4th of 1789. The weather was propitious, and there was a general hope of happiness to come. The poorer deputies of the Third Estate found lodgings too expensive for their slender purse, since there was a general concourse from all parts of France to Paris and Versailles, but their hearts beat high with patriotism and the proud belief that they too could help to save the State from ruin.

Rich draperies floated from the balconies of houses; the sound of bells, ringing for the solemn ceremony, was mingled with the fanfare of trumpets and the roll of drums. The deputies assembled in the cathedral of Notre Dame when May 5th dawned, and awaited the coming of their King.

Then the procession filed out, the deputies of the Third Estate marching at the front, as men of the least importance, sad in garb, and, for the most part, humble in their mien. They wore a close-fitting black costume, with a short black mantle of either wool or silk, a plain muslin cravat, and a small round hat, which had no feathers, no cord, nor band of any kind. The Queen's "boudoir council" had decreed that the people's representatives of 1789 should be clad in garments modeled on those worn by the "vilains" or meanest class of 1614! Here and there a distinguished face or a striking carriage was conspicuous among this sombre mass of six hundred men, for double representation had been granted to the Third Estate. The wild Marquis of Mirabeau had been elected deputy of the commons, though his birth entitled him to a higher place. His strangely powerful, scarred face would have redeemed a multitude of more commonplace men than had been mustered for this 5th of May.

Maximilian Robespierre, the deputy from Arras, walked stealthily and with a deferential manner among men royal in their own provinces. None marked him closely, since all eyes were drawn to the gallant Marquis, the fame of whose exploits had rung through Europe before he opened a cloth-shop at Marseilles and turned tailor in order to be elected representative of the people he was naturally inclined to rule.

Close to the deputy from Arras, perhaps, walked Dr. Guillotin, who detested acts of violence, and spoke eloquently for men condemned to suffer death in its cruelest form. He was planning even then the machine for beheading victims of capital punishment painlessly. It had been used in Italy, but was adopted by France later as La Guillotine, for men were grateful to the good doctor for his merciful inventive powers, and King Louis himself advised some shaping of the blade that would lessen the suffering of the condemned.

The stately Queen was received in silence, though she looked more truly aristocratic than any member of the insolent Court streaming before her in the white plumes and laces, the rich embroidery and velvet that made the pageant so gay. Marie Antoinette would have ignored cold glances, but the cry from the crowd, "Long live Orleans!" stung her with its insult as she passed through the subjects who acclaimed her enemy. There were rumors that Orleans would have liked to enroll himself with the Third Estate, which he supported, being treasonable to his own order, and he had given much money to gain popularity among them. He was hideous through the excesses of his life, and grossly ornamented, but he pleased the Parisians, who disliked the beautiful, proud Queen.

If his wife betrayed emotion, the King was phlegmatic in his aspect as he walked under the sacred canopy of the Catholic Church. He believed that the majesty of the episcopal purple would awe subjects and prevent violence. A dais of violet velvet, adorned with the golden fleur-de-lis, had been prepared in the Church of St Louis, whither the twelve hundred deputies were bound. The King and Queen sat there, wrapped for the last time in all the panoply of state. Servile respect, indeed, was not paid to them even on this occasion of high ceremony, for the deputies applauded the speech of the Archbishop of Nancy, which dwelt especially on the true piety of the King of France, and in the presence of royalty it had never been usual to applaud.

Marie Antoinette frowned and bit her lip, recognizing that the personality of the King could never make him dreaded, though he might be popular still. She disapproved of his simple act of courtesy when the first meeting of the States-General took place the next day in the Salle des Menus, which was gorgeous enough to dazzle the humblest members of the Third Estate. The King's speech ended, he put on his hat, a weighty head-gear generously plumed. The noblesse donned their hats too, according to the custom of old times, and with defiance the slouched hats of the Third Estate were clapped on at once. There were cries of "Hats off" from the Court, indignant to see a privilege usurped, but the sturdy deputies refused to obey till Louis himself took off his hat again, thus showing a clumsy kind of tact which pleased the crowd. The claim to equality had been made, as the Queen well knew and others who were scornful of the rights of the Third Estate.

The next day the nobility and clergy retired to a separate apartment to "verify their powers," a ceremony which was necessary before their deliberations could have weight. The six hundred left alone realized that double representation was not all that they had to gain. They determined to demand that the Three Estates should be merged in one for the business which France gave them to perform. A feeling of impatience agitated the vast Salle des Menus where spectators thronged to hear the speeches of the deputies. There was famine in the provinces because bread was sold to the poor at a ruinous price. These representatives of the people could do nothing to help those who had elected them till their powers were verified. The noblest reformers fretted at the delay and heard speeches with impatience, for the nation needed more than words. Pamphlets issued from the Press defending the claim of the Third Estate, and orators in the Palais Royal were clamorous, denouncing the obstinacy of the nobility and clergy who still held aloof.

THE OATH OF THE TENNIS COURT.

Mirabeau struggled towards recognition, speaking with eloquence to the deputies of the Third Estate. He urged that the clergy should be asked, "in the name of the God of peace," to join the commons since many of the Second Estate had shown signs of wavering loyalty to the body to which they belonged. A president of the commons was appointed whose powers seemed likely to become greater than those of Necker, now losing popularity day by day.

On June 17th the Third Estate declared themselves the National Assembly and boldly assumed the privilege of verifying their powers alone. The King was timid in his reproaches, but the Queen became hostile to the States-General she had at first approved because it took the place of the Parlement which had not justified her in the trial of Cardinal de Rohan.

The Third Estate were to meet the deputies of the Second and receive their submission in the Salle des Menus on June 20th, but heralds-at-arms appeared in the streets of Versailles on Saturday, June 20th, and proclaimed a Royal Session to be held on the Monday of the following week.

The deputies flocking to the hall of meeting through the rain found that the doors were closed and workmen were busy within preparing for the reception of His Majesty, who had ordered that no meeting of States-General should take place until the Royal Session of next week. The president himself was turned away amid the angry muttering of the throng who had come to listen to the speeches of Mirabeau and his fellow-deputies. When a voice was raised crying "To the tennis-court," there was an eager echo from the crowd. The deputies sought the covered enclosure where nobles occupied their frivolous hours and looked towards Bailly, who seated himself at a wooden trestle and claimed to be the first to take the oath that he would never separate from the National Assembly or deny its powers, wheresoever it should meet.

"Six hundred right hands rise with President Bailly's to take God above to witness that they will not separate for man below but will meet in all places, under all circumstances, wheresoever two or three can get together, till they have made the Constitution."

The swarm of spectators held their breath, realizing that these were profoundly solemn words. "Vive In Nation! Vive le Rai!" they cried at length, and the applause could be heard far beyond the tennis-court which had been put to such strange use. In vain for the King to admit the commons grudgingly to the hall on June 23rd. In vain for de Breze, the King's messenger, to bid the commons leave the hall after Louis and his retinue. "Messieurs, you have heard the King's orders." Mirabeau's reply was fierce and prophetic of the days to come. "Go, Monsieur," he said, "tell those who have sent you that we are here by the will of the people and that nothing but the force of bayonets will drive us hence."

The soldiers were not sent for, the Third Estate, with the defiant deputies, had triumphed. Workmen ordered to take down the royal platform listened to the voice of Mirabeau, leader of the National Assembly, and eloquent in victory.

The Marquis of Mirabeau, Maker of a Revolution

Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau! The very name rings with the family arrogance that claimed the noblest blood of Provence. Noble or not, they had fought and striven, boasted and showed themselves soldiers of hard courage on many a field of battle. Gabriel's grandfather had been left on the bridge at Casano with twenty-seven wounds that might well have proved too fatal. They left him for a dead man, and he rose again to live and to marry, wearing a silver collar as the only visible reminder of that death-bed. "Silver-stock" was his name henceforward. He was proud of it, because he loved men to think him valiant.

The son who succeeded to the estates, bought by an enterprising founder of the family fortunes, one Riquetti, merchant of Marseilles, was of another stamp from Silver-stock. He quarreled with his father, knew poverty and a wildly riotous life, being remarkable for beauty of person and a belief in his own powers that earned him the title of the Friend of Men. Something of a pedant, he bequeathed the gift of facile writing to his son and heir, the ugly, monstrous infant who alarmed his parents by a strange precocity. The nurse chosen for him was a woman of some force, being a widow well able to carry on her husband's trade of blacksmith. But Gabriel worsted her, and his father wrote in some amusement at the mimic combat. "I have nothing to say about my enormous son only that he beats his nurse, who does not fail to return it, and they try which shall strike the hardest."

MIRABEAU

At three years old this lusty boy had smallpox, which left lasting scars on a face that could never be well-favored. The other children of Mirabeau were beautiful. He alone was destined to conquer by amazing powers of mind. The training of children in those days was harsh. The Marquis determined that his son should be brought into subjection. He was fond of reading and curious knowledge. At four years old he had accomplished marvels. "All Paris talks of his precocity," his father wrote to another Mirabeau, then governor of Gaudeloupe. He shocked a pious grandmother when a cardinal confirmed him at the age of seven. He asked questions so keen that they could not answer him.

Such a spirit soon grew difficult to manage. The father began to dislike a son likely to outstrip himself. "A bloated bully who will eat every man alive before he is twelve years old," he said bitterly, and then a system of strange discipline sent away the heir of Provence to a military school at Paris, where he was not to bear his own name but entered as M. de Pierre Buffiere. The Abbe Choquard did not treat his pupil as severely as had been expected. He saw the enormous capability of this southern nature and directed it most wisely. Boxing, riding, drilling, dancing were the usual exercises of the academy. Gabriel Honore excelled since he was too strong to feel fatigue even after the hardest physical exertion. He mastered Greek and Latin, and nearly every living language for learning was easy to him. He was of fine intelligence and liked to use his natural ability.

At eighteen the academy pupil was ready for the army. He was unfortunate in his colonel, an officer of overbearing manners, who denounced him to the Marquis as a gambler when be lost some trifling sum at a gaining table. It was adding fuel to the fire of hate which seemed to consume this unnatural parent. He jeered at Gabriel's extraordinary fascination over men and women, and described him as "a nothing bedizened with crotchets." Certainly, there was a vast inheritance of eccentricity in the family, so burdened by their heavy debts.

The Marquis showed his own inconsistent temper by making use of a lettre de cachet  (sealed or official letter) to control his son. This was a method of imprisonment he had denounced with good reason, since a man might be committed to prison for years without having a proper trial or even being acquainted with his own offence or the name of his accuser. The first of Gabriel's terms of imprisonment began when he was shut up in a fortress on the Isle of Rhe. He should not be free to disgrace the honorable and ancient race which had produced him. He should hear the Atlantic beat against the walls of his gaol and realize that he was at the mercy of relentless forces. He should win the heart of the gaoler if he chose, but should make no other attempt to dominate.

He was set free that he might serve in Corsica in the legion of Lorraine. He was distinguished as a soldier, and fought like some giant wrestling against evil. In truth, the world was too small for him. He broke bonds continually. Even from the cruelest of restrictions he escaped somehow or other. In the country, where the family held estates, he impressed men by his self-confidence and boldness. He had conquered his father's prejudices at this time and was allowed to go to Versailles.

The Marquis heard of his son's success at Court, his pride mingled, perhaps, with a touch of jealousy. He was fond of warning people of the fatal gifts that the son held. "In the name of all the gods, what prodigy is this I have hatched?" he exclaimed, hearing that great ladies were captivated by the soldier's gallantry and formal nobles routed by his easy insolence.

He was all-conquering in love, and won a wealthy bride from a host of other suitors, but the marriage was unhappy. In spite of a generous income, debts crippled the young people very shortly. Gabriel pawned his wife's jewels, and at the day of his funeral had not paid for the clothes he wore at his wedding! He could not keep money. He wasted it on luxuries and on works of art, for he had the tastes of a cultured man. He asked his father for help, and was promptly put in prison. He got into more serious trouble for horsewhipping a man who wrote satirical verses about his sister. His father thought nothing could punish such a crime except imprisonment in the Chateau d'If, noted for that prisoner of romance, the Count of Monte Cristo. "Girt with the blue Mediterranean, behind iron bars, without pen, paper, or friends except the Cerberus of the place, who is ordered to be very strict with him, there shall he devour his own lion heart in solitude." "The Cerberus of the place" was merciful and interceded for the captive, who was removed to the fort of Joux, near Pontarlier, where he enjoyed a certain amount of freedom. His wife forgot him during that imprisonment.

He loved another woman, Sophie de Monier, with whom he fled to Holland. He lived by his pen there, and when tracked and in bondage again at Vincennes, he continued to write ceaselessly, for liberty was not given him in the dreary keep where he spent forty-two months of his youth. Yet he left there with strength increased and stature taller by some inches. His fiery spirit was not tamed, and he dared to enter law courts where he harangued judge and jury as though they were guilty, and caused some consternation by his eloquent, persuasive tongue.

In 1784 Gabriel visited England and attended debates in the English House of Commons. He admired the independent spirit of the people, but would have had more complete freedom for his own country. He had formed those ideas now of a true government, which he tried to bring about later. He wanted to abolish feudal privileges, to have complete equality in the State for each citizen, to have no narrow religious persecutions, to retain the king and limit his rule by the meeting of representatives of the nation.

At thirty-six there seemed scant likelihood that this man would reach a position whence he might attempt reforms so vast. He was bloated and scarred; he looked old and worn by dissipation. He was glad to write on banking questions and any subject that was prominent. Then he captivated friends able to give him glimpses of the world outside his circle. He visited Berlin and met all the men worth knowing. He tried to obtain some post in the French Government, seeing that changes were at hand, but was unsuccessful. He had a secret mission, nevertheless, from Calonne, who did not pay generously the correspondent whose letters were too original and daring for diplomatic purposes. He gave Louis XVI advice on problems of government, but the King did not follow the advice of the man with advanced ideas on free trade and free education.

Calonne found that Mirabeau was not a suitor to be passed over quietly. He refused to make him secretary to the Assembly of Notables, and was punished by a pamphlet which denounced him. Lettres de cachet  had no terrors for one so inured to harsh usage. He was rash enough to attack Necker, the minister whom he had never influenced. His pen, indeed, was never weary; his name now was always to the fore, and he hotly supported the freedom of the Press. In course of time, men had to listen to his views as a reformer. He advertised himself and made an impression on Paris. He was practical and counseled attention to the actual needs of the present rather than dependence on tradition. He was impatient that so much time should be wasted on discussion of the various methods of election to the States-General. He was a royalist above all, and did not wish to take authority from the Crown.

Mirabeau found his own order anxious to cast him from their party. He was guilty of certain offences against society which courtiers could not forgive him. His huge head, with its mass of curled and powdered hair, his dress slovenly but of exaggerated fashion, coupled with his violent manner and his awkwardness, displeased the refined. He turned to the people of Provence and found that they would welcome him. He showed his strength by quelling a riot at Marseilles where the citizens had been powerless to resist a mob, attacking property and its owners. He went to Aix and found disturbance there. He restored peace and was elected as one of the four deputies of the Third Estate.

The States-General included no man so likely to prevent the ruin of the King as Mirabeau, but Necker failed him, the minister who had refused his proposals of reform. The feeble speech delivered at the first meeting roused the wrath of an orator with real plans of reform to unfold before the nation. Mirabeau knew men and cities, he was patriotic and moderate, he had enormous influence over other minds, he was courageous and would bring his work to some result. The natural leader of the people was chosen. His hour came when the National Assembly declared itself. Through the vast hall of Versailles the great voice of the giant began to roll in speeches, rising above he distant clamors of his colleagues or the comments of the galleries. The giant's form became familiar to Louis Seize, through his presenting a petition for the removal of the troops from Versailles and from Paris. Mirabeau knew the course that this meeting of the representatives would take, he knew that what seemed a wild revolt would become a serious revolution. Even as he wrote in the name of the Assembly to ask for a militia of the citizens to keep order in the turbulent, excited capital, the news of his father's fatal illness came to him. He left his work to attend to family affairs after the death of the Marquis, and when he returned to Paris on July 15th, he heard that the Bastille had fallen before the mob.

The Fall of the Bastille

Through the hot unquiet days of July 1789, Paris had been dreading the force of the King's armies. The citizens knew that the nobles had bidden their monarch rely on their swords rather than give way to the people. They understood that Marshal de Broglie, the veteran of the Seven Years' War, appointed to command in this time of peril, would not hesitate to turn his soldiers against the citizens. They plotted, under the secret instigation of the Duke of Orleans, to win the French guards and make them disloyal to their officers.

Foolish it was to allow the military to haunt the streets and cafes where speeches inflamed their war-like spirit, and reminded them that they, too, were of the people. More foolish still it was to alarm the jealous nation by marching up every road artillery and infantry, cavalry and musketeers to the number of twenty-six thousand men, all giving ominous signs that Paris was to be blockaded by the King.

If it came to civil war, the citizens would hold their own but where were the arms they needed to oppose the guns and cannon, the swords and muskets of the well-trained regular soldiers? It would be wise to cherish the Guards and win their weapons to the popular cause by any means whatever. Before July came, certain soldiers, punished unjustly, as the people thought, were rescued from the Abbaye prison by the mob and dragged in triumph to the Palais Royal. The men, punished by officers they refused to obey, were intoxicated by their wild reception. They were treated to a sumptuous banquet in the open air; they were lodged comfortably in a popular theatre for the night.

Disaffection spread, alarming Marshal de Broglie. He could rely on the Swiss and German regiments alone; his other troops were changed from passive automatons to creatures recognizing no higher authority than their own. He would have had the speakers of the people scattered and the crowds who listened to them. He would have quelled the republican spirit, and restored the absolute power of the monarchy by a swift and deadly onslaught of the military. So they said of him in the clubs, which were now beginning to be dangerous. The Breton club, originally formed by the deputies of Rennes to protest against the dissolution of the Parliaments, which had followed their refusal to register the King's edicts, was become the National. Barnave was among its members, a pure and honourable patriot, Sieyes, the bold Abbe, spoke there, and the Duke d'Aiguillon, who had left his order. Orators and writers had much food for discussion. They dreaded the dissolution of the States-General, the imprisonment of the deputies, the expulsion of Necker, the blockade of Paris, the starvation of the people. Yet they would not sell their liberty to gain the precious boon of living; they would resist the conspiracy of Queen, courtier, minister, and agent. They had marked the growth of a new court party which enslaved the King. They whispered vengefully of the plots hatched by the Austrian and her brother-in-law, the Count of Artois.

Marat, the doctor of the stables, could not speak with the eloquence of Mirabeau, the born leader. But he could write against injustice. He could cause panic in a whole city by his dark utterances of sixty thousand soldiers coming soon to prey upon the citizens who found it difficult to feed their children.

What wonder that nobles were attacked now when they ventured forth from Versailles! M. de Polignac, the Queen's favourite, only saved his life by sheer courage. He laughed at the timidity of the mob, and was untroubled by the sight of long queues of anxious wretches waiting before daybreak at the doors of bakers' shops. He did not harass the King by the rumour, if he heard it, that the monarch was poisoning his subjects by unwholesome bread, bought at famine prices. He returned to the Court after he had been threatened, and encouraged Louis to reply coldly to the impassioned address of Mirabeau and even to threaten the exile of the National Assembly from the capital.

Necker was dismissed. The step was taken privately. A new ministry was formed by the Queen and Count of Artois. Marshal Broglie, on whom they relied for the army to put down a national rising; the Baron de Bretueil, in charge of finance; Foulon, the unpopular, who had bidden the hungry people to eat grass, at the head of the navy—the whole ministry seemed to threaten the liberty of the people, while outside the city walls on the night of July 11th, 1789, was heard the rumbling of artillery.

Sunday came—a day of gloom, when warnings of massacre came to the citizens of Paris assembled in the Palais Royal. Necker dismissed, Foulon in office, and Marshal Broglie given the power to quell the insubordinate by the sword if he chose! Camille Desmoulins, the wild young student from the northeast province, rose to address the scared, incredulous multitude. The crowd, silenced by horror of the tidings brought from Versailles, closed round him. They welcomed a mouthpiece now in the youth who had made a name as orator in the Palais Royal, though he would never be a statesman. He was idle and giddy, and volatile—he could not hope to rival Mirabeau, but he was devoted to his service. If he never made the people tremble by his voice, he could always rouse their emotion. He swayed the mob by tears and laughter. He had a kind of wit that gave him a singular power in speaking. He could act fear and consternation admirably when he conveyed the news of the banishment of the popular idol. Possibly he did not really regret Necker more than Mirabeau, who pretended alarm and kept silent, but he mounted on a table in the Cafe de Foy and gave the signal for the Revolution.

"Citizens! You have not a moment to lose. I have just come from Versailles. M. Necker is dismissed. This dismissal is the alarm-bell of another St Bartholomew for the patriots. This evening all the Swiss and German battalions are to march from the Champs-de-Mars, where they are encamped, to slaughter us all. There is but one resource left us, which is to fly to arms and mount a cockade that we may recognize each other."

The eager crowd were excited to a frenzy of enthusiasm. They took up the cry "To arms! To arms!" and the Palais Royal echoed to the shout, which spread beyond it. Green was the color of hope. It should henceforward be the symbol of the nation. They tore down branches from the trees and fastened leaves to their hats when they could not find ribbon to make themselves cockades of Revolution.

Camille Desmoulins drew two pistols from his pocket saying, "Let all good citizens follow my example." He led a tumultuous throng about with him that evening, not the rabble of a city in rebellion, but men of education. The King's troops were defied when they tried to disperse this procession; blood was spilt when a charge of dragoons threw down the bust of Necker. The dreadful hour seemed to have come when men of the same nation were ready to rise against each other.

The city could not sleep that night—too distracting the ringing of alarm-bells, the noise of blacksmiths' shops, the tramping of the citizens, and the constant cry "To arms!" The next day all shops were closed except a few whose wares were strictly necessary.

There was to be a National Militia, and every good citizen must seek weapons. It were useless to wage war without a pike against the regular soldiers, and also against the band of brigands who descended on the city. For the dogs of war were loosed, and rumour had spread the news beyond the capital. It was the chance of the outlaw and the criminal to plunder. They advanced in hordes and fell upon a convent, where they found open cellars of wine to their own undoing. Many were destroyed after they had stupefied themselves with drinking, and others were led to prison by the citizens, zealous to prove that they had no share in such mad debauchery.

The Hotel de Ville where the electors assembled had given orders that green must not be the national color, since it figured in the livery of the family of the hated Count of Artois. Women's fingers were busy now in making cockades of tricolour, red and blue, the old Paris colours, on a ground of "constitutional" white. There was a demand for them almost as general as the clamouring for weapons.

The smiths smote their anvils furiously with strong arms and willing hearts. In six and thirty hours they had piled up pikes to the number of some fifty thousand. Gunpowder had been found after much vain searching, and women hoarded stones in their dwellings to be used as missiles when the boiling pitch should fail them in the protection of their men-folk.

The King would withdraw the royal troops if that would appease his terrible subjects, so ungovernable now in the midst of martial preparations. Versailles was dull and silent, with only a galloping courier to rouse its inmates by new rumours from Paris. Gaiety had vanished from its splendid rooms and galleries, though there was a pretence of formality still, and meals were served as usual. The generals were timid and dared not resist the people, feeling that the time had gone by for that attempt to crush the insubordinate. All night they did nothing, and on the morning of July 14th, the whole of Paris was in arms. They massed themselves in columns and looked with one accord to the frowning towers and battlements of the citadel of tyranny, known well to the breaking hearts of the last century as the prison of the Bastille.

The history of the place is obscure and difficult to follow. It had been founded originally to defend Paris from attack and had become, in course of time, the symbol of a State that hid its crimes. Men were known to have died in dungeons for their religious faith, their honor, and their courage. That mystery which fascinates and terrifies inspired countless stories of the horrors of those walls. They said prisoners languished alone during youth and manhood, and forgot in their old age that they had ever enjoyed freedom. They recounted the jealousy of nobles seeking to ruin even men of their own order by a lettre de cachet, the instrument employed to get rid of an enemy in silence. They murmured against the King's decrees that men of distinction must be sent to the fortress, where solitude broke the stoutest spirit. They trembled with indignation to realize how nearly the deputies had been incarcerated. Down with the power of kings and the tragedy of state-craft! Lay bare the hideous secrets of the bottomless abyss where men could moan unheard!

The Bastille was plainly meant to terrify by the nature of its firm defence. It had ditches, drawbridges, ramparts, keeps, and bastions, and reared itself a mass of seven towers strengthened by huge blocks of massive stone. M. de Launay was the governor, and had some hundred men for gaolers. He had been born in this grim building, and knew all its traditions. He maintained severe discipline that would not allow the prisoners to have any sort of communication with their friends outside.

There were fifteen pieces of cannon mounted on the tower. A few more were brought in desperation from the arsenal now that the mob was approaching. It seemed vain enough to offer a resistance, though the Bastille had survived attacks during many a war. The governor was not capable of organizing a defence that would baffle men and women, enraged by the cruelty of centuries. He had soldiers with poor courage, and felt disposed to hold out the flag of conciliation. It would gain time, at least, and help might possibly be sent from Versailles.

Deputies were received within the very fortress and treated courteously by the governor, who was pale with terror. Other deputations followed, and refused to leave the courtyard. De Launay fired on them, and with the first shot the whole scene changed. It was useless to parley then. The Bastille was besieged.

"We will have the Bastille," cry ten thousand men of iron will and courage equal to the hour. "It is the oldest symbol of the monarchy. It shall fall and prove in falling that the people will be free from tyrants."

The drawbridge is down and countless citizens arrive to help the besiegers in their gallant purpose. There are old men and children among them as well as women. A beautiful young girl very narrowly escapes being burnt to death because the rumour spreads that she is de Launay's daughter.

The drawbridge is down, but battlements so stalwart might well daunt the leaders of the onrush. An old man inspires courage by seizing a sword with his left hand when a ball has struck his right. He can still march, he declares stoutly, after he has lost his left hand. Two sons of his have lately died in America fighting under Lafayette for the cause of freedom.

The wounded return to the fray after they have had their wounds dressed—and the physician tending them is as brave as they are. Cannon from the assailants answer the cannon of the governor. Fire is rising now from the blazing straw which is strewn about the guardroom.

The garrison begin to realize that the cowardly will not find the people merciful. They scan the roads approaching the fortress with despairing eyes, and see no aid advancing from the royal army. The day is far spent, and only death seems left for them. The governor's courage has revived, and he refuses to agree to a surrender. He will blow up the fortress in which he has lived so long before he will allow disgrace to fall upon him.

In vain de Launay seeks to prevent the Bastille falling into the hands of the people. He cannot take his own life for he is disarmed, and he has the shame of seeing his white handkerchief fluttering from a musket as a flag of truce.

Across the bridges comes the cry of "Victory," while men are streaming into the conquered fortress. It is forty minutes past five in the afternoon, and from that hour they will always date the dawn of liberty. France is saved from the government of nobles henceforth. Soon the dungeons will be reached and the few captives brought forth into daylight. Heavy locks are torn from heavy doors, rusty iron keys carried off to be displayed to the citizens of Paris. State papers are scattered before their records can be fully mastered. Grim tragedies are inscribed on them—the very walls bear the lamentable prayers of human desolation.

Only seven prisoners are found as a reward of much vain searching. It is to be feared that they are not the martyrs of a previous generation but they are glad to be free and willingly allow themselves to be the spoil of their rescuers. These, indeed, weep over them, carrying them about the streets in token of liberation. The very stones re-echo the shouts of triumph as de Launay's head is borne aloft on the pike, which begins to have a sinister meaning in the streets of Paris.

The strength of the popular cause was proven by the fall of the monarchy, crashing to ruin with the walls of the state prison. Throughout France the news spread by means of couriers who galloped furiously, proclaiming the death of tyranny by the national cockade they wore. The country districts were already in a state of ferment, rising ominously to demand bread and the destruction of papers which bound them to the lords of the soil by ancient title. They had found an example to be followed in every place where there was a Bastille of sorts. They hailed the couriers with enthusiasm, and plied them with questions that showed what real importance they attached to that Day of Revolution, the Fourteenth of July.

In all the capitals of Europe the triumph of the cause of liberty was heard as a momentous deed. Russians and Danes acclaimed the birth of the new order, the era of youth and promise. Fox, the famous English statesman, declared the fall of the Bastille the event most favourable to liberty that had ever taken place.

At the palace of Versailles the King was awakened from his sleep by the Duke of Liancourt. He had gone to rest early and thought little, it seems, of the terrible confusion of Paris; for in his diary he had noted "Nothing," as was usual when he did not hunt.

"It is a revolt," Louis Seize said drowsily, after the Duke had poured forth the amazing story of the day.

"Sire, it is a Revolution," the Duke answered, and on the morrow there was reason to believe that he spoke truth.

The Lantern

The conquered banners of the Bastille floated above the head of Louis Seize as he was driven from Versailles to Paris, where the citizens greeted him in a most bewildering fashion. His very escort must have puzzled a not too ready brain—it consisted of the militia of Versailles, a medley of ill-dressed soldiers with all the air of armed brigands or revolting peasants. Gone was that glittering train which had helped Louis Quatorze to maintain his royal state. Gone were the gallant courtiers who would once have made a determined effort to crush the canaille by a massacre, if need be. Over the borders nobles were galloping in disguise and in sore poverty, since the palace could not furnish great store of golden coins. The King's brother, the Count of Artois, had fled in panic since he knew in what estimation the people of Paris held him, and had wit enough to realize that they were masters of the situation. Escorted by guards and cannon, he crossed into the realms of Sardinia, and the Queen bore his loss with fortitude. They said that she was overcome with grief to part with the Countess of Polignac, but at the same time urged her flight.

Louis made no attempt to resist the wishes of his subjects who desired his presence. He rose early that 17th of July and went with the real rulers of his kingdom. Secretly he said farewell to Marie Antoinette, afraid that he might be held prisoner. Members of the National Assembly surrounded his carriage to the number of three hundred, but they did not give him confidence, since they had chosen Bailly, Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, the commander of the national forces, and seemed anxious to dethrone their King. Lafayette was king in Paris. The National Militia met Louis' carriage at Sevres, and he entered the capital under their protection. Lafayette, riding his white horse and bowing before the adulation of the citizens, was surely a more royal presence than the timid, irresolute man who suffered himself to be conquered by the conquerors of the Bastille.

Like some strange dream Paris appeared that day, with Mayor Bailly at the gates to present the historic keys of Henri Quatre. The speech made by this dignitary was full of blunders. The greatest blunder of all was the remark that King Henry had reconquered his people, but it was the people now who reconquered their King. Yet Louis heard it without anger. He was dazed perhaps by the swarming multitude, armed with pitch-forks, pick-axes, and any weapons they could muster. They closed round the carriage ominously, even the monks bearing swords in honor of the victory. There were cannon displayed prominently, though wreaths of flowers were twined round them as if to hide their grimness from royal eyes that were soon to behold real horror. Shouts of "Long live the Nation!" rent the air. The sounds were confusing as the sights, and the King obediently pinned the tricolour cockade on his royal breast and mounted the Town Hall steps beneath the arch of steel formed by the drawn swords of citizens. If he feared death, he must have quivered when the clash of weapons struck so close to him. If he had pride, he must have crushed it when he passed under the yoke and made no protest. He was placed on the throne that he might hearken to the harangues of his subjects. He could not speak for tears himself, and was willing to approve the appointments of Lafayette and Bailly, since they were in full discharge already of their offices. They showed him to the crowd from the windows of the Town Hall then, and he was cheered because he had shown himself so docile.

"Long live the King!" He retired from Paris after that day of humiliation with some pretence of the old enthusiastic loyalty in the crowd, who clambered to the steps and roofs of the carriage, but he knew that they had got their way, and felt the shame of his surrender when Marie Antoinette shrank from him and turned proudly away from the wearer of the tricolour cockade.

In the palace there was desolation. The nobles had left their monarch and sought safety for themselves. The people had become threatening to some purpose. It was useless to try to beat them off with swords. Foulon was the man they demanded for their satisfaction. He had been made minister of finance, and they meant to have Necker back again. Foulon had declared when the people were clamorous for bread that they might eat grass. The insult was remembered. When power was in their hands, the mob decided that Foulon should not escape like the Count of Artois and his associates.

The wretched old man was told that there were dark rumours afloat concerning his life, and tried to save it. He was seventy-four and conscience pricked him, for he had been a cruel master. He had a sham funeral, and hid himself in a country house at Vitry. Once he had sneered at the people, and now he shrank from their vengeance piteously.

The servants at Vitry betrayed him, having their own tale of petty grievances. The peasants seized their prey in triumph and dragged him to Paris, tied to a cart, with a bundle of hay on his back, a crown of thistles on his head, and a chain of nettles round his neck. He was too old to resist. He begged for mercy, but was handed over to a guard and taken to the Town Hall, now the centre of activity in Paris.

The citizens crowded the building and would hear of no delay. Foulon must be tried at once. They feared he might outwit them, and they would not be baulked. The lust of torment had seized the tormented. Bailly's pompous speeches received no attention. In vain he assured the angry mob that the old man would be tried in due course by the Assembly. They insisted that he had been tried and should be hanged immediately, since everyone knew him to be guilty. Lafayette was summoned, while there were threats uttered that the very Town Hall should be burnt down if the prisoner were spirited away from the eyes of the gloating public.

Lafayette arrived to find the Hall in tumult, with Foulon seated on a chair before his judges, trembling, though he was surrounded by defenders and piteously attempting to ward off his own doom. Lafayette had believed that he could calm the most violent mob of Paris by his presence. He suggested that Foulon should be imprisoned in the Abbaye, and believed that he had spoken wisely. That was a cunning argument which spoke of accomplices and suggested that tortures might wring confession from this hardened old man. As Lafayette paused, the crowd began to clap. "To the Abbaye." They would have been won to the idea, had not the prisoner clapped too and sealed his own fate. "They are in conspiracy," they shouted, and listened to no more entreaties of the general. Foulon was seized, despite his guards, and dragged by a whirling sea of citizens from the Town Hall to the street.

In the Rue de la Vannerie there was a grocer's shop with a great iron lantern. It would be easy to suspend the victim from this. There could be no more talk of trials and no more doubt as to his guilt. Three times the wretched man was hung to the iron bar; for twice the rope gave way and a fresh one had to be brought, while he went down on his knees and cried for compassion. When all was over they cut off his head and carried it through the streets of Paris with hay stuffed in the mouth. He should taste in death what he had offered to the living people. The women fought for fragments of his clothes. He had given them little enough—he should, at least, bequeath these relics.

Vengeance still stalked in Paris and sought a second object. Berthier, the son-in-law of Foulon, was also an enemy of the people. He had supplied provisions, they said, for the soldiers who were to have butchered the nation. There were furious murmurs that he had cut the crops when still green to raise the price of grain. No wonder the bread bought in Paris was black and bitter to the taste of even the hungriest. They thrust portions of loaves at Berthier when he entered the city. A fantastic procession accompanied his carriage. "Slave of the rich and tyrant of the poor," they pronounced him. He grew pale when he saw the hideous threatening of men and women beneath the glare of torch-lights. It was the evening of the day when his father-in-law was murdered.

The second prisoner was taken to the Town Hall at nine o'clock to answer to the electors. Berthier was more dignified than Foulon. He answered the charges against him, and did not ask for mercy. The people dragged him toward the lantern, and he made a brave fight for freedom. He would not go down on his knees, he would kill to save his own life if he could reach a weapon. But resistance was useless for brave man or craven. Berthier fell wounded, and suffered indignities in death that he would not have endured in life. Through the brilliantly lighted gardens of the Palais Royal they paraded a ghastly spectacle—the head of Berthier on a pike. A direful voice silenced the laughter and jesting of the throng of merrymakers. "Let the Justice of the People pass by." The Mayor had been powerless to prevent this outrage, and there were savage expressions of sympathy among the law-abiding class of citizens.

Bailly and Lafayette resigned their offices in consequence of the wild democracy that put men to death without pretence of trial. They were persuaded to keep their positions, and were satisfied by the protest. They had learnt that they could not enforce their commands, but were too convinced of their own strength to feel any wish to retire into the background now.

Camille Desmoulins, the mob orator, even dared to jest on the action of the people. His pamphlet "Rogues recoil from the Lantern" had a great success. There were men and women with a terrible delight in cruelty, and these had begun to realize that they might exercise it to the full in Paris.

To Versailles

There were riots in the provinces, equaling in violence the riot for the unpopular minister's life-blood. Nobles were besieged in their castles and forced to hide in remote places from the fury of the tenants, who remembered bitter days of injury. The idea had seized the peasant that he would be free for ever if he could only destroy the papers which bound him to ignoble bondage. They were too poor and hungry to care for the reforms of a National Assembly. They wanted that cruel "right of dove-cote" abolished, and all the feudal dues and forced labour of the past.

The nobles scarcely ventured to resist since they were overpowered by numbers. They took refuge from flaming mansions in the inns of the district, and thence emigrated to other lands, unless they lacked money. Meantime, the marauders feasted royally and had their fill of destruction. The agents were roughly handled because they had been accustomed to extort tribute for the absentee.

The whole nation must be in arms to maintain any sort of order. The citizens would be the best soldiers, it was thought, and soon the old French Guard was formally dissolved. The National Guard took its place in September. They declared one day that they would go to Versailles, and no leader could resist this decision. All Lafayette could do was to reinforce the Versailles militia by a regiment from Flanders, which would probably defend the Court.

There were rumours in Paris that the King would escape to Metz, the border fortress whence further flight could be rendered easy. It was the growing resolve of the people that the King must come to Paris. He would be under the eye of the National leaders there, and would have less chance of flight once in the capital.

The Queen was unpopular as ever and earned a new nickname, "Madame Veto." It arose from Mirabeau's upholding of the King's right to veto absolutely any measure passed by the National Assembly. The Royalist party would have the monarchy still honoured, but they were beaten, and a fresh insult from Versailles caused a blaze of wrath in Paris.

The Regiment of Flanders had been warmly welcomed by their brothers in arms—the Body-Guard of the King and royal family. These were the ancient retinue of the greatest Louis—these had retained the magnificence of Versailles in its glory. They were handsome men of gallant bearing, clad in dazzling uniforms of blue and silver, with swords and scarlet-lined cloaks and hats adorned with black cockades. They offered a banquet to their new comrades, and held it in the Great Hall of the Opera by the special favour of the King.

It was an extravagant feast for a time of famine, the food of each guest being reckoned at some thirty livres (sixty francs). The three hundred guests did not fill the vast room, which was illuminated by candles. It was a Court function, and must be brilliant even if the mass of the French people were crying aloud for bread. The beauties of Versailles filled the boxes to honor the soldiers they intended to win over to their party. These officers might defend their lives and property against a vile crowd of ruffians. Smiles and bright jewels and fine dresses were lures that made appeal to the bravest men.

The common soldiers were admitted at a certain stage of the banquet, and plied with wine which made them loyal as their officers under the influence of the Court and its perilous fascination. They drank the Queen's health and remembered all the charm of the fair Austrian. She entered the Hall and stood among them, a vision of queenly grace. She advanced with the Dauphin in her arms and the King by her side, still dressed for the chase, his favourite pleasure. Royalty had its day again. There were cheers and delighted salutations while Marie Antoinette went graciously round the tables. Swords were flashing now from scabbards, and the band began to play the popular air, "O Richard, O my King." When the Queen had slowly glided from the Assembly, hearts were at her feet as in the old days when her beauty dazzled and she was untarnished by suspicion.

The black cockade of Austria replaced the national tricolour. The red, white and blue she would not wear though the King had accepted the ribbon from his people. They trampled the Revolutionary emblem under foot at Versailles, and the story spread to Paris among a people palpitating with new rage.

If the Court would not come to the capital, the people would go to Versailles. The resolution was taken suddenly, and it was taken by the women dwelling in the meanest streets of Paris. The men were inactive and did nothing to make the bread cheaper. It was foolish to see one's family starving when Louis' heart was kind, and he would give food if he knew the want of it. The women in the narrow streets of Paris talked incessantly and then they acted on the impulse of the moment.

Events had been canvassed eagerly by women of the market, always to the fore on public occasions and tenacious of their privileges. The narrow streets of Saint-Antoine, the poorest quarter, had its Amazons in the humble shops where cloth was sold and shoes and wine, perhaps, though that was the proper trade for men. Those who lived in squalid garrets lingered long over their purchases, and told the piteous tale of weeping children. Soon there would be nothing, not a slice of bread, not a soul to buy it. And these lazy rascals in the Town Hall! They were wasting time and money while they wrangled there. It was as if they did not heed the suffering of their own order. Why had the Estates been summoned? To relieve the poor of burdens, not to create important posts for such as Bailly, the Mayor, and Lafayette the General.

So they talked fiercely and answered the summons of a drum that some young woman seized and beat to call the others. From the streets and staircases, from the shops and houses they mustered, clutching weapons in toil-worn hands and trying to emulate the first successful rioters. The National soldiers kept Paris in some sort of order, but were powerless to check this wild onrush of women pouring in thousands toward the Town Hall where those others only talked.

The women swept through the building, headed by their leaders, who were neatly dressed in white and bore themselves courageously. They captured the Town Hall as though they were making holiday, dancing and singing till they became angry when neither Lafayette nor Bailly appeared to answer their demands. Men came readily to their help and would have done great damage, for there was talk of burning papers, but Maillard, one of the Bastille heroes, made himself their leader and he would not suffer lawlessness. A young man of twenty-six, clad in sombre black, he had coolness and determination. He was known as a brave soldier. In a trice he had the regiment of women behind him, marching to Versailles from Paris.

REVOLUTION!

Through the King's gardens of the Tuileries they insisted on passing though a guard attempted to check them on the march. They had increased in numbers and made spectators shudder—a reckless mob, decked with gay ribbons, and shouting "To Versailles" whenever they ceased the cry for bread. The market women were prominent, and with them they dragged women of higher rank, whom they met along the road, impressing them into their ranks. There were pretty young girls among them, but soon these were as terrible as their coarser companions. It was a wet autumn day, and mud splashed their garments and disfigured their faces. They presented a sorry spectacle before the town of Sevres was reached.

Here Maillard had to halt and reason with the fiercest in order that he might keep them from plunder of the houses. They were out for food and would take it where they found it. The general of the forces protected the Sevres potteries from damage as well as the bakers' shops. He had a hard task but proved equal to it, marshalling the tired women toward Versailles with their hunger unappeased.

Couriers from Paris were accosted and made to dismount from their horses, which the viragoes bestrode in triumph. Ladies in silk shoes, whose carriages met this wild procession, had to foot it on the dreadful roads. It was useless to expostulate. The numbers were formidable long before Versailles was reached.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon and dusk was falling. The National Assembly were rudely disturbed at their council by the shrieking women. It was Maillard who earned their gratitude by suggesting a delegation. Fifteen were chosen to approach the bar of the Revolutionary meeting.

Maillard spoke for the women, declaring that actual famine was the cause of their strange disorder—and that subtle insult which had trampled the tricolour at Versailles. He spoke well and the Assembly listened, consenting to dispatch their President, Mounier, to the King.

Five women accompanied the President to the King's presence, among them one, Pierrette Chabry, who was chosen to speak to His Majesty, but fainted at the ordeal. She was received with great kindness by Louis, who gave her wine and kissed her in a fatherly fashion. He promised everything that the timid envoy demanded, but it went ill with her when she faced the mob outside the palace. Soldiers saved her from actual violence, and she returned to the royal presence and received an assurance in writing that the King would comply with her request. The King was genial and wrote the document, afterwards showing himself on the balcony to the women who were assembled round his palace. Bread had been promised. The good news was sent to Paris, while the National Assembly had a sorry time of it in the absence of the President.

Mounier came back to find a woman in his place instead of the Bishop of Langres, whom he had left there. The Assembly had been the scene of ludicrous conclaves, the deputies attempting to go on debating while the invaders denounced and; insulted the unpopular deputies, kissed their favorites and cried "Bread, not so much speaking!" It was useless to strive against such interruptions. Mounier was shocked by the sight on his return.

The market dame was ejected from the President's chair and the absent deputies recalled to receive the announcement that the King had formally accepted the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He then gave orders that the people of Paris should be fed, and a wild banquet took place with guests too noisy for that solemn council.

Drums beat loudly to herald the arrival of Lafayette from Paris. Torches revealed the wet, splashed soldiers he had brought to defend the palace. He went forthwith to ask the King's orders, and assured him that his life was at the sovereign's service, that his men were loyal.

Necker was at Court now but he did nothing to meet the dangers of the crisis. Lafayette obtained the King's sanction to the demand that the Body-Guard should be replaced by the citizens of Paris. The rabble had succeeded in their march on Versailles, and made merry that November night, sitting round bonfires and exulting with weird cries.

From Versailles

The King had spent the day shooting and was noting his bag in a little book with the keen interest that national affairs could never rouse in his slow nature. He was vexed to be disturbed by a courier riding at full speed to announce the arrival of a number of tattered viragoes, come to Versailles for food, and perhaps blood, if their first quest failed.

Through the pouring rain the King galloped, anxious for the safety of his wife. She had gone to Trianon to spend the day, and was wandering in her beloved gardens. Did some voice warn her that she was never to see the place again when the messenger summoned her to the palace, representing the danger of the mob who were bent on addressing royalty? She took a mute farewell and hurried to the room where her ladies gathered in alarm. She saw for the first time a sea of faces threatening and angry. She had looked indifferently upon a cheering crowd too often; she had walked proudly through subjects who were silent and morose. She went into the King's council-room when he came back from his day's sport wet and weary. She was accustomed to discuss all public business with the Ministers of State. They could not shut her out on this occasion, pleading any weakness on her part. She showed a wonderful serenity in the face of danger. She was abler than the baffled sportsman to assume the reins of authority. In the evening she requested her women to leave her. She had no fears and meant to sleep alone. Fortunately, they refused to obey her orders. The night did not pass without an invasion of the palace.

The sentinels were startled to see a rabble bursting through an unlocked gate in the private gardens of Versailles. A shot fired on the crowd excited them to murder, and the marble court re-echoed to the noisy steps of men with sinister intentions.

The foot of the Grand Staircase was guarded by two soldiers of the Body-Guard. They made a brave defence, but were stabbed at their posts and done to death, while the mob scaled the stairs and came face to face with the second sentinels. One of these, Miomandre de Sainte Marie, was heroic in his attempt to send back the desperadoes. He tried to appeal to their old loyalty, but there was a hostile charge and he found himself saved by the Body-Guard from the clutches of his assailants. The dainty, fragile doors were shut, but it was plain that they could not long keep out the multitude who clamoured for the Queen.

In the Grand Hall, Du Repaire played a noble part, holding himself upright and soldierly before the entrance to the Queen's apartments. He heard abuse of "the Austrian" issuing from vengeful lips, and realized that the life of his mistress was in jeopardy. There was a grim struggle, in which Du Repaire seemed likely to go under, but he managed to wrench a pike from the hands of an adversary and wielded it right skilfully. Miomandre de Sainte Marie rushed to the Queen's rooms, meanwhile, and shouted to her attendants that it was time to escape. They must remove her quickly for he stood alone against two thousand men.

Marie Antoinette was awakened. It was early dawn and there was just light enough for her to see the terrified faces by her bed. There was no time for an elaborate toilet. The Queen hastily put on a cloak and petticoat and fled to the King's apartments in the Bull's Eye, while her women bolted doors behind her and covered her retreat.

The little Dauphin was brought to his mother by the royal governess. They all admired the Queen's courage, for she was tranquil before the danger of awful humiliation and possibly more awful death. There were only the valiant men of the Body-Guard to keep out the invaders from the Bull's Eye. Soon they might burst into the room and drag the Queen from her family. She anticipated this fate for herself, but was quite absorbed in fears for her husband and the children. She listened calmly to the baffled fury of Paris as it stabbed her bed in the room which was found empty, and pierced an imaginary queen with pikes.

Stools and benches were heaped up to defend the Bull's Eye. Muffled knocking sounded on the doors and voices that sounded friendly. "We are the Centre Grenadiers, once the French Guards. We have come to save you." It was long before a brigadier would advance to open to possible traitors. There were military embraces when the Grenadiers entered. "Let us be brothers," they cried in the arms of the Body-Guard. All differences were forgotten since they had come not to kill but to save the Queen.

The French Guards were driving from the palace the disorderly plunderers who wandered at their pleasure. They carried their wounded fellow-soldiers to an infirmary, where they were disguised as pauper-patients. It was not easy for the new-comers to undo the mischief that had been wrought on the fifth night of October.

Lafayette had slept when he ought to have watched, according to the belief of indignant Royalists. He had been worn out by his fatiguing journey from the capital, and had not expected that danger would come so soon. He was roused from a short rest to discover that the attack on the palace had been made. He blamed himself on seeing the ejected crowd outside Versailles, and spoke to them loftily of loyalty and the wisdom of restraint.

In the Bull's Eye, the King urged Lafayette to ensure the safety of his Body-Guard. Some had assumed the tricolour, but others were reluctant. Louis declared that they should be the first care of any who truly cared for him. The people called for their King to appear before them on the balcony. He was loudly cheered as he stepped through the window to accede to this request, and when they demanded his return to Paris, he satisfied them by agreeing to this also. He had bitter memories of his former entrance to that city on July 17th, but he could offer no alternative. He came back into the room to find Lafayette entreating the Queen to show herself.

She was naturally afraid of the menacing furies who had clamoured for her life a few hours before. She shrank from the ordeal, and at length went to the window with her two children. There was a cry of "No children," and she faced the crowd alone with marvellous composure. Lafayette passed to her side and dropped on his knees to salute her. The knightly action pleased fickle Paris, and a lusty shout of approval went up. Now the cry was for the Royal departure from Versailles. The National Assembly had to go too, because Mirabeau had decided that they would not lawfully be separated from the King.

The procession set out with accompaniments so grotesque that they called for laughter. The militia carried loaves on the points of their bayonets. They had seized fifty waggons of corn and flour from Versailles, and were sure that there would be bread enough now that they took with them "the Baker, his wife and the little apprentice."

These last sat in the royal carriage with very little left of the semblance of royalty. They had to endure the hideous cries of the march and the dances of fish-wives at every halt, while they must appear to countenance every degradation of their personal retainers, disarmed and bareheaded, carrying the accoutrements of their conquerors. All the pride of Versailles was in the dust. It was for Paris to triumph now. The Parisian soldiers were the heroes of the day. They had saved the King and Queen to adorn this return march. They deserved the congratulations of the women, who had also got their way.

It was drizzling and there was no attempt to make a fine appearance. The draggled women would have shorn the glory from the smartest regiment, and, indeed, Lafayette did not show to advantage. The Frenchman, who had a share of vanity, was tired by his long vigil and the consequences of his brief slumbers.

They arrived at Paris to be welcomed by Mayor Bailly, as unfortunate as ever in his speech to monarchy. He described the dismal 6th day of October as glorious, forgetting the pain of that early dawn and the grave dangers of the palace. The King was entering the capital to do the will of his subjects. Marie Antoinette might wince, but the time had gone by when she might have turned the tiresome functionary's speech to ridicule.

The King and Queen would have sought their own palace of the Tuileries, but the Mayor would not hear of it. They must visit the Town Hall and do honor to the rulers of Paris, now the Commune. They must sit on the royal dais and enjoy a solemn ceremony. They were very tired, but the King, at least, must speak to his people.

It was nine o'clock and darkness had long fallen over Paris, but the glare of torches would light up the triumphant spectacle of the royal captives if they would appear at the windows of the Town Hall. They had gone through too much to protest against this proceeding. They saluted in the usual way from sheer force of habit. The old cheers rent the air, but to-day they had a new meaning. The people of France rejoiced to see the sovereigns of the country and rejoiced to feel that they were captives. Paris would sleep after long watching and rest secure since Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette were sleeping in the Tuileries.

Red Heels and Red Bonnets

The Tuileries had been the neglected residence of kings since the majority of Louis Quinze—a great barracks of a place, with dusty, unfurnished rooms and badly fitting locks. On the night of October 6th, its darkness showed black against the illuminated streets of Paris. It must have seemed the entrance of a prison to Marie Antoinette, whose dreams that morning had been disturbed in an apartment, sumptuous as any fairy habitation, whose life had been passed without knowledge of discomfort. She had met violence for the first time on that long, wild march from Versailles. The faces of the jeering crowd haunted her feverishly, and the next morning she woke to find herself still surrounded by the curious and spying, for Paris was determined now that the King and Queen should be a daily spectacle for the citizens.

Louis was asked how he would lodge, but, truth to tell, he was indifferent to hardships other than that one which possessed him—he had lost his hunting. He replied roughly, "Each may lodge as he can; I am well enough."

The upholsterers came and fitted up the palace to a semblance of royal state, but life there had none of the gaiety of former courts. There were too few of the nobility left to carry on the old tradition that the French Court must be unaffected by misfortunes, and the Queen herself had changed radically since recent trials had come as dark shadows of the future. Her follies and extravagance might be published in the free press of the Revolution, the slanders against her might be cried by newsvendors in the very gardens of the Tuileries, but Marie Antoinette was occupied with the cares of a mother. She did not even join in such festivities as the courtiers still attended. The Princesse de Lamballe had been faithful in the midst of dangers. She was in the Tuileries with the King's sister, Madame Elizabeth, a young and saintly woman who devoted herself to the royal family in their adversity.

There was still etiquette, yet it had an element of grimness in such surroundings, for the Tuileries was exposed to the sights and sounds of Revolutionary Paris. Red-heeled gentlemen-in-waiting tried to maintain the elegance of Versailles, and were shocked by the reception of deputies of the Assembly who did not wear Court dress. There was a salon named in imitation of the Bull's Eye, so called from the shape of its noble windows. But all the dignified seclusion from the Third Order was wanting in this hastily-decorated palace, which should have been the royal residence had the Bourbon kings understood their duty to the people.

Now, indeed, the Bourbon was a show to the nation and a plaything which they might break easily, did they tire of it. Inert and slow in mind, Louis did not resent the intrusions of all Paris. He believed still that his people loved him despite the humiliations of the year. He was content to live quietly, seeing much of the royal children, themselves the most popular of puppets in the eye of Paris.

Madame Royale, with whom her mother was much occupied, was eleven years old, a quiet, thoughtful princess of a sincere and pious nature. She sewed with Marie Antoinette, and prayed with her aunt frequently. They shrank from publicity, but were serene in the sight of the Parisians, winning a certain admiration for their composure.

The Queen had begun to suffer at once from the delight her humbler sisters felt at the beginning of her downfall. The Austrian had always stirred jealousy in France even when she was far removed from contact with the women who now watched her humiliation. She held her head superbly, and had a regal carriage. Once none dared accost the Queen, though she liked to wander about Paris unattended. Now, they came beneath her windows and held conversation freely. It was good to give advice and see that the proud Empress's daughter took it meekly. The very day after that attack on Versailles the market women were before the Tuileries. There were no body-guards to shelter the royal person. Marie Antoinette was a woman, as they were, and could satisfy their feminine love of power.

The Queen appeared at her window, ever ready to do as the times demanded; if she cherished animosity, she did not show it. She had the advantage in self-control over these women, clamorous to gratify the whim of the moment. They begged her to remove the bonnet she wore that they might see her clearly. It had been enough to catch a brief and fleeting glimpse of plumes and head-dress in some royal procession ten years ago. Every one was equal this glorious October—the chant of liberty sounded continuously from the neighbourhood of the Tuileries.

Marie Antoinette did their bidding, and gave the ribbons from her bonnet to a woman who asked for them in token of friendship. The petitioner had addressed the Queen in German and was happy to receive a reply in the French tongue. The descendant of the German Caesars had forgotten her native German, she declared to them. They were in high good-humour at such news, and ventured to think the Queen herself would wrong no one if only those courtiers were dismissed who proved the ruin of royalty.

Madame Elizabeth was alarmed when the boldest of the market women climbed to the windows of her apartments to see the Princess's toilette. She moved to a higher floor and pursued her daily tasks serenely. She was less troubled than the King and Queen by the procession of the late bodyguard going round the public promenades of Paris under the escort of their conquerors. The brave soldiers were welcomed enthusiastically, it is true, yet they could never again form a shield against publicity. They were absorbed by the tumultuous life of Paris, surging round the Tuileries, and destroying the peace of the inhabitants.

The Dauphin was only five years old. He alone enjoyed the sight of curious citizens peeping into the little garden where he dug with such energy. He was a pretty, fair-haired child, and had winning, easy manners. He would invite them to enter unless the number was too great, when he presented flowers gravely. The National Guard allowed some of their number to escort him, and he played at being a soldier. It was the delight of the spectators to see the happy child in uniform, shouldering a gun to imitate their exercises. By and by a regiment was formed for him to lead. The children under the command of the royal Dauphin wore the same uniform as the French Guards, with white gaiters and a three-cornered hat adorned with ribbons. Louis XVI smiled affably upon the merry regiment, saluting the flag as they passed him. The Dauphin made affectionate signs to his comrades from the Tuileries and would have given worlds to join them.

It often seemed to the King that there would be little danger to the throne in a city so well disciplined and cheerful. The theatres were always filled, and the cafes were frequented by thousands. He might have gathered at the plays, had he attended, that the aristocrats were derided: the Jacobin party made a point of insulting them and applauding liberty. There were constant interruptions from the people, whereas, in former times, only the young nobles had been allowed to interrupt the actors. The churches were still thronged by the faithful, a sign, the King thought, of stability, for he was a zealous Roman Catholic. He practised all the forms of religion in the Tuileries, welcoming the Queen's newer devotion. The royal couple were unconscious that the faith was dying in France. Mirabeau held it not, the greatest of contemporary Frenchmen and the Revolutionary party were active to destroy the Church, which they regarded as a heavy burden on the nation.

Some wind blew to Marie Antoinette the presages of evil that passed unnoticed by her husband, although she still played cards with the few courtiers who had not joined the emigrants. It was necessary to please the throng of pushing nobility who hastened to seek a welcome at the Tuileries because they would not have been received at Versailles. The prestige of Royalty was fast vanishing, and one could read contempt, had one the wit, in the very audience gaping at the public dinners which were consumed on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the palace.

From the Palais Royal the distant hum of voices bore suggestions of hatred to the ears of Marie Antoinette. These gardens were the centre of ceaseless oratory and corruption in the Revolutionary times. There was always some orator haranguing the multitude on the evils of the old order and the wonder of the new system—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. They made a great parade of the latter, and rather grudged Royalty the right to walk in their grounds at certain hours when the public was excluded.

The Marquis de Favras wished to save the King and Queen by a bold plan, which included the arrest of Lafayette and Necker. His conspiracy was said by foes to embrace the intention of summoning a vast army to defend the Tuileries and to oppose the National Guard of Paris. They had no mercy when he was arrested and put on trial. The people were in court shouting constantly to the judges, "To the lantern with him!" He was hanged in the Place de Groves in February 1790, protesting his innocence to the delighted witnesses. They had got their way, and the first of the aristocracy had fallen. The tumult of excitement reached the palace, where Madame Elizabeth was overcome with grief. She knew De Favras to have lost his life because he would have saved hers. She could offer no consolation to Marie Antoinette when the widow of the dead man was brought to a public dinner in the Tuileries. Surrounded by hostile deputies, the Queen dared show no sympathy, lest she be accused of treason towards the nation.

From May to October the royal family were allowed to live at Saint-Cloud, a country residence where the Court had dwelt in greater freedom than at Versailles. It was a relief to escape from the spying eyes and the piercing voices of Paris, but sadness must dim the eye there, since in every glade and pathway there were memories of companions now lost. The Comtesse de Polignac was particularly missed by the Queen, who had delighted in her wit. She had the Princesse de Lamballe, lovely and self-sacrificing, yet the blank was never filled.

There had been a growing belief in Mirabeau's capabilities at the Court of late. The Queen might unite with him to save the tottering monarchy. She had energy to do something while the King hesitated ignobly. Mirabeau had heard much of Maria Theresa's daughter which led him to suppose that they could work together. During that summer an interview was arranged several times, and did not take place owing to the Queen's repugnance. She called the famous leader of the Assembly "the monster," and his terrible head rose before her always when she had memories of the 6th of October. She believed that he was of those who had come to Versailles to kill her.

On July 3rd the interview took place at Saint-Cloud, whither Mirabeau came secretly. He was accompanied to the entrance by a nephew, and charged him with a note, saying as they parted, "If I am not returned within three-quarters of an hour, give this to the Captain of the Militia." He would go alone into the garden on that summer morning, but he had dark suspicions and protected himself in this manner. There might be the treachery of the Crown to fear or the betrayal of some member of the Assembly. Mirabeau loved men, but there were many who hated him. He was too great a man to have few enemies, and he knew that he was going to do what many would condemn.

He saw the Queen, and was dazzled by her charm, for she received him warmly. He formed a high opinion of her determination and strength of character. When he went away from Saint-Cloud, he had resolved to save the monarchy and destroy, to some extent, the National Assembly.

Mirabeau, was playing, henceforth, a double part, corresponding as the secret agent of the Court, and speaking still the language of the Revolution. In his heart he loved the idea of the rule of kings without the powers of despotism. He had some of the inordinate vanity of his ancient, southern race. This led him to cling to the nobility, and resent the loss of his title when distinctions of rank had been abolished. He hated to be described as "Riquetti Senior, called Mirabeau." He began to put his servants in livery when others were discarding such signs of aristocracy. He felt bitterly that he was not well regarded in the higher circles of society. He was too exaggerated in manners and clothing. His ugliness might not injure him with women of middle rank, but it displeased fastidious beauties.

Mirabeau cursed the arrogance of the Revolutionaries, and resolved to be their master. He worked against them privately, and meant to declare war later. He received an income which relieved him of the humiliations of poverty. He was of a nature to spend freely, and loathed the economy of the new order. He was proud and happy to win the confidence of a queen who, he declared, was "the only man" the King had in his party. He had made plans for the Queen "to try what a woman and child can do on horseback." He recalled Maria Theresa, and her appeal to soldiers to defend her rights. He was disappointed that Marie Antoinette refused to leave the King.

Henceforth the greatest man in France must have regarded with mockery such ceremonies as that of the Field of Mars, held to commemorate the taking of the Bastille. The 14th of July was at hand, and the nation would make holiday. These Parisians loved a theatrical ceremony in the open-air, if they might themselves be audience and actors. The fete was to be on a vast scale, surpassing those of the Grand Monarch. The King must go to take a solemn oath to support the new Constitution, whether he believed in it or not. Paris had him safe now, and could depend upon his presence to add luster to the scene. They summoned the National Assembly and the army and delegates from every part of France, divided by this time into eighty-three departments.

Twelve thousand workmen had been engaged to build the amphitheatre, which was to hold 300,000 persons. They were lazy at their work, or so thought the eager organizers. It was publicly made known that the help of every loyal citizen would be welcomed as an act of patriotism.

The appeal was mightily successful, a vast concourse going daily to perform the hardest spade-work. Rich and poor found themselves side by side in the open Field of Mars. The Capuchin monk hauled a dray with some bold cavalier, and the hawker, leaving his street-cries for the day, laboured with some dandy from the Palais Royal, who sang in spite of himself with all the lusty chorus. For the workers were gay, and added the sauce of jesting and buffooneries to their honest labour. Drums and trumpets drowned the noise of spades and wheelbarrows, and the merry encouragements shouted by one comrade to another.

Here a lusty fish-wife pushes the wheelbarrow which has been loaded by a fine lady whose delicate white hands are blackened. She feels that equality, so long desirable, has been established, and laughs to behold the procession of men, headed by young girls with green boughs and tricolour streamers. They march to the strains of "Ca ira," the echo of Benjamin Franklin's phrase, now turned into a popular song against the aristocracy, who are to go to the lantern.

The sober nun pauses for a moment and regards her disheveled companion with surprise, but resumes her work whole-heartedly. Fate has paired her with an opera-dancer, rouged, curled, and adorned with vanities. To-morrow it may be a rag-picker, not too choice in her language. The Carthusian, she sees, has left the cloister to consort with water-carriers and charcoal-men. The scented Marquis shakes hands with him and the printers in paper caps, and the advocates and judges and the makers of their wigs. All with sound limbs are expected to be patriots. Even a disabled soldier, long since past his prime, toils as best he can, although he has a wooden leg. Some say there are 150,000 helpers, Lafayette and Bailly among them, and Abbe Sieyes, who is a wiry man of energy. The King comes to see the progress of the patriots and is loudly cheered by them. He knows the part he has to play now, and will go through with it on July the 14th when the Field of Mars is ready.

The Federates are in Paris at daybreak, assembled by the Bastille or the ruins of that fortress. The vast procession enters the Field of Mars by a bridge of boats where triumphal arches declare the sentiments of the day. "The king of a free people is the only powerful king." They insist on their freedom. Here is another: "You cherish this liberty, you possess it now; show yourself worthy to preserve it."

The 300,000 spectators are not daunted by the weather, for it rains, and a multitude of coloured umbrellas are raised to the accompaniment of songs and dances. There are mock combats, too, between men from different districts—a man of Lorraine against a Breton, a Provencal against one of the northern delegates. The time passes quickly before the King is led to the gallery, where he shares the honours with the President of the Assembly. The members of the royal family take their places in a private box where they can see the vast altar, raised by voluntary labour. It is heathenish, perhaps, with its antique vases and incense, its statues of Liberty and Genius, with the pennon bearing the one word, "Constitution." The very priests on the altar-steps must wear tricolour over their white vestments. Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, cannot make the ceremony inspiring. He is to give up the priest's office and walk to martial music once again. The silence of Mass is broken by the salvoes of artillery, which proclaim to the four corners of France that the oath is now being taken. "I swear it"—the twenty-five million must echo the words which the General Lafayette repeats, dismounting from his white charger and ascending the King's gallery.

His voice rings clear, "We swear to be always faithful to the nation, the law, and the King." Louis is as audible when he speaks, and the Queen promises not for herself alone but for the little Dauphin she holds up in her arms.

The sun shines brilliantly upon Paris making holiday. Every one can don the Cap of Liberty, red as the blood which must flow before the Republic of France shall be established. Even to the quietest rooms of the Tuileries the song penetrates too shrilly

"ca ira, ca ira, To the lamp-post with the aristocrats; ca ira, ca ira, The aristocrats we'll hang them all."

The Night of Spurs

It had been the hope of Mirabeau to save the monarchy and establish the rule of a king who should be advised by representatives of the nation. The greatest genius of France distrusted the permanent rule of the six hundred. He knew that they might come to exercise the sway of tyrants, and therefore held it best for the liberty of the French that they should give back some measure of power to Louis XVI, a monarch not too greedy of authority.

How it might have fared with the Revolution none can tell, but it is certain that the death of the first man of the Assembly affected France disastrously. Henceforth, it was to be governed by men of ordinary talent, differing in aims, and, after the fiery splendor of an ardent patriot, burning with but a feeble luster before the people they would fain control. Mirabeau worked to the last, his enormous energy leading him to rise at seven and spend the whole day in laborious occupations. He spoke very often in the month of March, when fatal illness came upon him. There was much to do in the year 1791 and not many able to do it. He did not spare himself in the cause of friendship. It was to the interest of La Marck, who had introduced him to the Court party, that Mirabeau should speak on the question of some mining rights, and Mirabeau spoke, although begged to remain in the country, where he had gone to seek fresh air. "Your case is won," he said, "but I am dying." He had a strange revival of strength and visited the Italian opera, but in four days he saw the April sunshine from his bedroom and realized that his place on the world's stage would never more be filled. "I shall die to-day," he told his friends. "When we have come to that, nothing remains but to perfume ourselves, to crown ourselves with flowers, and, surrounded by music, to enter as pleasantly as we can into the sleep from which we shall never awake."

The King's cause was lost. There had been signs that the walls were closing round the royal prisoners in the Tuileries. The flight of the nobles had not been prevented, but there was much trouble to be met before Louis's old aunts, the former enemies of Marie Antoinette, were allowed to journey from Paris to Rome, where they hoped to practise the old faith. To be a priest now was as bad as to be a noble. Thousands of the clergy left France because they refused to take an oath which placed them under the government of the State, and bade them seek both wages and election to their office from the citizens.

There was renewed murmuring when the King expressed his intention to retire to Saint-Cloud to perform his Easter devotions. He was denounced for encouraging refractory priests, and though he entered his carriage with the Queen he was not allowed to proceed on his journey. For two hours the royal couple sat amid the insults of the raging crowd outside the Tuileries, whom Lafayette could do nothing to control, though there were National Guards among the people.

The King tried to pacify the Assembly the next morning by a speech declaring that he recognized the priests as servants of the State. It is doubtful whether he spoke truth to the people, for his mind was bent on flight from his tyrant subjects at all costs.

There was a Royalist in command at Metz, which was not too far from the domains of Leopold of Austria, the brother of the Queen. Thither a message was dispatched secretly, warning the fortress that the royal fugitives would leave Paris on June 19th. Mirabeau would have directed the plan had he lived, but now the desperate monarchs had to trust another man. Count Axel de Fersen was a Swedish noble, inspired by true devotion for Marie Antoinette ever since that day when, as boy and girl, they had met at a ball at Versailles. He was quiet and manly and had the qualities of a hero. It was his pleasure to make arrangements for the safety of the woman he loved so well. The risk of his own life meant nothing to him if the Queen were saved.

Every member of the party was to be disguised, since the Court was the object of suspicion. Fersen himself was to drive the great "berline," or black and green painted coach which would hold all the members of the little household. The passports were prepared with false names; the Duchesse de Tourzel, the royal governess, was to be the nominal head of the party under the title of Baroness de Korff. The Queen was to change places with her, and the King to be the great lady's valet; while the Dauphin, dressed in a girl's clothes, was to call the Baroness his mother. Three tall bodyguards accompanied the fugitives, chosen for their physical strength and power of remaining long hours in the saddle. They had to wear the yellow coats of couriers, a gorgeous habit which must have aroused attention in the streets.

The usual ceremony of le coucher  was performed on the night of June 19th. Then the disguises were assumed, and the runaways left the Tuileries to join Fersen, dressed like a coachman and playing his part to perfection. He drove the party to the gates of Paris in a cab, which was abandoned for the comfortable berline. Four horses were harnessed and set off at a fine speed, for it was two o'clock, and dawn was approaching. They reached Bondy, where fresh horses were ready, and Fersen was bidden to leave them. He was unwilling, but he had orders, and must console himself on his departure with the token of gratitude which the Queen gave him when he took her hand for the last time—a heavy ring he wore till death. The Queen's waiting women followed in another carriage, and as the summer morning dawned, the hearts of all were light. They were careless of maintaining their disguise, for the King sat in the same carriage as his supposed mistress, and continually exposed himself to the gaze of passers-by. The postilions were paid too royally, and the postmaster at Chalons was said to recognize the royal features. Even before this at Viels-Maisons a peasant had guessed the secret, but he said nothing, and the carriage and its occupants drove serenely off.

It was four o'clock when the clatter of horses sounded in the streets of Chalons. The fugitives were afraid of being arrested in this large town, where news might well have been received from Paris. They congratulated each other on good luck when the road was resumed again, but a well-dressed man passed the berline at the foot of a hill and muttered, "You have planned ill!

The first soldiers to accompany the royal family to Varennes, en route for Montmedy and the frontier, were to have been waiting at the posting-house of Somme-Vesle, but the house was silent and the road deserted when they reached there. They saw a few peasants going to work, but the uniforms of their protectors were nowhere to be seen. The troops had been waiting at this station anxiously, and had been objects of interest to all passing them. Now they had given up the hope of the King's appearance, and left the posting-house. If the berline had been fifteen minutes earlier the lives of all within it might have been saved.

The next stage was reached with a like hope and like disappointment. No troops were waiting. It was evening now, and every one was tired. Sainte-Menehould was in arms when the berline drew up there—two forces with conflicting patriotism were the dragoons of D'Andoins and the local contingent of the National Guard. The square of the little town was full of evening saunterers, and the Queen looked out to be saluted. The dragoons were to withdraw lest the people should suspect the handsome carriage, but it was useless now to plan well or badly. Drouet, a young man of twenty-eight, was returning from work and examined the countenance of the Baroness de Korff narrowly. He had been a soldier, and had seen the Queen at Versailles. He thought he knew Marie Antoinette's turn of the head and shoulders. He was certain that Louis Seize was in the carriage, and he let it go with a flourishing of whips, knowing that he could overtake it. The Town Council were acquainted with the matter, and plenty of men and women added evidence to prove that the soldiers in the neighbourhood must have been waiting for the King. It was decided that Drouet, the postmaster's son, should ride after the berline and arrest the King, unlawfully about to leave his dominions. He was a stalwart young fellow, and could ride furiously if necessary.

To Drouet the mission was congenial. He took with him only one companion, an innkeeper, Guillaume, and rode down the eastern road towards the frontier. The heavy carriage had rolled before the riders and sent back its postilions. Drouet changed his plan when he heard that the pursued were not going straight to Metz, but heading northward to Varennes. He must take to the woods, avoiding the royal troops, and seek to intercept the berline before it was beyond the reach of French law. With his companion he galloped along the forest ridge, high above the open plain where Louis and his Queen were sleeping as they drove. It was a race between the dreamers and the wakeful. The dreamers had the start, but they would have hastened yet faster if they had realized those two figures intent on cutting them off. France should never own the rule of Austria. So the ex-dragoon had determined, when he received the honor of pursuing royal quarry. He was afraid of the troops which would protect the King and Queen, but he rode undaunted. It was eleven o'clock when he reached Varennes, to find that the berline had not yet arrived.

The berline, indeed, was on a hill-top, and might be dragged through the town before its inhabitants had heard of its strange occupants. Drouet rushed to "The Golden Arm" and gave warning at the inn that the King of France was bound for Austria. His vehemence startled men to action, and the dreamers were awakened by the crash of misfortune. They had no need to fumble for the passports or urge their drivers to complete the journey. All was lost, and they stepped into a street where the drum and tocsin sounded and the voices of a numerous populace were raised to a pitch of burning patriotism.

The local National Guard opposed the belated troops when they came upon the scene. In vain for the King's men to shout "Montmedy." There was a deafening cry "To Paris!" and by seven o'clock the berline was rumbling back again with its unsuccessful fugitives, disheveled and faint from their long journey of the day before.

"The King is taken." The news reached Paris, where many rumours had been afloat before the 20th of June. The fear of an invasion of foreign armies was banished. Bouillc, the treacherous commander of the Royalist troops, should be deprived of his command, while three men were appointed by the Assembly to secure the return of the King to Paris.

The commissioners met the royal carriage about half-way to the capital, and two of them—Barnave and Potion—took their seats in the berline, after reading the decree of the Assembly. Barnave sat between the King and Queen, while Madame Royale had to stand to make room. The Dauphin sat on his mother's lap, and Potion was packed between Madame Elizabeth and the royal governess. It was an uncomfortable drive, particularly for the hapless captives. They had suffered for one day the heat and dust of summer and the agony of fears that they might never reach the frontier. They had two more days of misery to undergo, for the progress was slow and impeded by crowds at every stopping place. They had lost dignity and the appearance of it. The King, as usual, cut a most unkingly figure in a soiled brown coat and unkempt wig. The Queen wore a grey dress which was stained and torn, but she bore herself with fortitude, offering refreshments to the jailers and talking rapidly to friends and foes.

The Dauphin was friendly and spelt out the words on Barnave's coat buttons, "We will live free or die." He was to learn the meaning of them later. Meanwhile his mother gained a friend and drew a Revolutionary from his party. She had several interviews with Barnave, which ended in the young man's devotion to her cause.

Petion was coarse and behaved with much familiarity, eating and drinking and enjoying the consternation of Royal ladies at his manners.

The carriage reached Paris in the evening, but the sun shone brilliantly, revealing the sorry spectacle over which the people feasted brutally. The King was surrounded by a double line of soldiers but they did not pay him royal honours. They reversed arms, as was the custom at a military funeral. The Parisians beyond them remained covered and, for the most part, silent. Strict discipline ensured the safety of the captives, but they were too wretched to feel grateful for this silently contemptuous reception.

The Queen entered the Tuileries last of all, placing her husband and children first, as she continued to do from the moment of that ill-fated flight to Varennes. Paris hated the Austrian long years before she attempted to revisit her own kingdom. Paris would hate her more fiercely since it knew that she would have called her brother to her aid to regain the power that had been won by the citizens of France. She understood the feeling of the mob but did not fear them. She entered the palace, a Queen still, though she had lost her crown.

Marie, Wife of Roland

Marie Antoinette was allowed none of the privileges of her imperial descent after that most woeful flight to Varennes. It was held that the King had given up the rule of France by condescending to a flight beyond the frontier. The idea of monarchy might be propped up by the Royalists still in Paris, but it was Lafayette who gave orders in the very palace of the Tuileries. And in the Government there was to be another queen, ruling for a short period of time, and suffering the same penalty as her namesake; this was none other than Phlipon the engraver's daughter—Marie-Jeanne Roland.

Louis XVI accepted the new Constitution as it behoved him. He was subservient to the will of the men who brought him back to be a puppet or a figure-head. He agreed to the dissolution of the National Assembly, possibly feeling that the body had never wished him well and would be best dispersed. He agreed to the summoning of a Parliament that was to pass laws and be chosen by the active citizens. It was only to hold office for a year, and might include none of the former members of the late Assembly. There was the chance of ridding the Court of tyrant deputies, and secretly the King believed that he would be rescued ere long by his wife's warlike kinsmen and the clever scheming of the nobles who had emigrated.

Mirabeau lay in the tomb of the Pantheon, whither France had taken him with more than regal honours. Lafayette had laid down his command and gone into the country, where he had estates; Robespierre and the rest had been scattered to the four winds, but a new Government was formed in October 1791, and a woman led it by the clearness of her mind, the force of her wit, and sincere love of country.

MADAME ROLAND

The power in the Assembly was chiefly in the hands of the men from the Gironde, a district in the South of France. The Girondins were young for the most part, and of a singularly pure nature. One of the elder members was Roland de la Platriere, formerly inspector of manufactures in the neighbourhood of thriving Lyons. Roland had married rather late in life, and brought to Paris a woman whose existence had been bounded for many years by the humblest duties of a housewife in the provinces.

She must have been of good courage, Marie Jeanne, generally known as Manon. She had been brought up very simply, as became the daughter of an honest burgher claiming nothing higher than some artistic talent and a moderate income.

It was in Paris that Phlipon's only surviving child was reared. She saw the sights of the city, but was seldom dazzled by any glimpse of splendor. Her mother was resolved on her education, and she had masters for music and dancing and gave much attention to drawing, for which she had inherited a talent. She read eagerly, and was a pupil who repaid the care of her instructors. She was conscious of her own ability and wrote of it frankly, describing herself, also, as very pleasing in appearance,—not vanity, as can be judged by the portraits which survive.

Like Rousseau, she loved the stories of the Greeks and Romans and saw all the glory of their deeds. She took scant interest in the fortunes of France at that epoch. It was not till youth was past, indeed, that the woman who swayed a ministry became absorbed in politics. Life in a convent passed happily with schoolgirl friendships, one of which long flourished. She wrote frequently to her young companions after she had left them, but the course of her existence was not eventful. She had several suitors, but would not be mated rashly. Sound common-sense was one of her characteristics, and ambition guided her to the marriage she desired ardently with the man of learning and family, Roland de la Platriere.

He was dry and austere, but Manon Phlipon found his companionship attractive. She was not frivolous, and adored letters. There was an element of romance about this middle-aged pedant, for he claimed the privileges of nobility and boasted ancient lineage. Manon had lost both her mother and her fortune. The character of her father made her fear that their home would be unhappy through a second marriage. Therefore it was with satisfaction that the comely young Parisian joined the household of Roland, not harmonious unfortunately, since it numbered several members of her husband's family who warred against the new-comer.

Yet the busy brain was occupied, and it was no dullness that restrained the wife from playing an active part during those years in the country when she devoted herself to child and husband. She became acquainted with the details of Roland's work as inspector of manufactures, she was considered the best doctor of the district, and gave help generously whenever there was sickness. Her only daughter, Eudora, proved a disappointment, because her character was light and frivolous. The wise mother placed her in a convent and threw herself into the career of Roland. She went with him to Paris, and when the post of Minister of the Interior was offered to him she took a conspicuous place in the direction of affairs.

There were few prominent members of the ruling body who did not know and respect the vivacious hostess who never obtruded her views at the famous dinners in her salons, once occupied by Madame Necker. She chose to be always in the background, and was often silent while matters were discussed that she understood much better than the speakers, but everything came before her in that time of doubtful action. Her judgment was passed on all the leaders of the moment. She had seen Mirabeau, and esteemed him a man above the common—she described him as "great by his talents, little through his vices," but always the master did he choose to command. She knew Robespierre well, and thought him a man of mark, though nothing of an orator. She disliked Dumouriez the gay courtier, and believed him to be false and likely to betray his colleagues.

GENERAL DUMOURIEZ

Dumouriez perhaps nettled the wife of plain, unpretentious Roland on that famous occasion when the new minister of the Interior went to Court in the round hat, simple costume, and shoes tied with ribbon. There was still some attention paid to etiquette in the Tuileries, and one of the gentlemen-in-waiting approached Dumouriez with an anxious face to comment on the strangeness of the King's new ministry.

"No buckles to his shoes," he explained in an anxious whisper. "Ah, monsieur," gallant, sophisticated Dumouriez replied, "all is lost!

Accustomed though she had been to an upper floor not too well furnished in the rue Saint-Jacques, fair Madame Roland could better adapt herself to new conditions, and soon became the centre of that Girondin party, whose work was of such vast importance. She had a genius for friendship, and many of the brilliant young men of the day sought her council. She could prevent a heated argument by her tact and wisdom, and guided her husband without showing that she was the bolder spirit. She would inspire the faltering with decision, and convey to the lukewarm something of her own enthusiasm.

For this woman of the Third Estate who had made it her business once to be a pattern housewife, was devoted to the realm of France, ready when the time should come to lay her sacrifice upon the altar. She wrote of King Louis as a man of ordinary merit, placed in a position where he needed extraordinary skill. Her own character was decided, whereas he could settle nothing. She had all the strength of mind which he lacked in the transaction of public business. She had a breadth of view which that other Marie could never grasp. She was working for the State while the Queen and her followers were working for their personal interests.

It was plain that war must be declared whether France were reluctant or eager. The countries of Europe had been startled by the practical dethronement of a Bourbon. They had resolved that monarchy must be supported even against the wishes of the people.

Marie Antoinette was corresponding feverishly with Fersen, who would have gained the help of Sweden had not the King been assassinated at that time of troubled history. She was trying to bring about an International Congress with armed force at the back to overawe the citizens of Paris and punish them for these first dread years of revolution. Her brother Leopold died just as he was about to march to her aid, and her husband was obliged to read aloud a declaration of war against her nephew, then known only as the King of Hungary.

War was decreed by the ministry in April 1792. The attack had been made on France, in fact, in August of the previous year, when the Declaration of Pilnitz was drawn up, a compact between the Emperor, Marie Antoinette's brother, and the King of Prussia. It declared that they would use force, if necessary, to restore absolute authority to Louis, King of France. Events delayed action, and meantime Paris, in its own defence, demanded that a camp of 20,000 volunteers should be formed against the enemies of Revolution.

Both King and Queen had been filled with hope that the army of the Girondin ministry would be defeated. They were resolved to welcome an invading force that brought them hope of rescue. It was sensible to pretend to approve the measures of the Parliament, since Parliament had them in its clutches. It was another thing to allow the formation of a body capable of resisting the model army of Prussia. The King hesitated over this decree, which was bracketed with a second against the clergy who refused to consider themselves the paid servants of Government. He decided on the 19th of June, the anniversary of his flight. He would veto the establishment of the camp of 20,000; he would not banish the priests, so loyal to his own faith.

While the King delayed, while Dumouriez, Minister of War, was summoned to the Queen, who did not find his manners boorish, the ruling spirit of the Girondins had realized the necessity of action. Mme Roland, deploring always the weakness of her husband's colleagues, wrote, at a single sitting, a letter to the King, stating the necessity for complying with the demands of the patriots. In language simple and yet forcible, she gave Louis to understand, that he would be exposed to the attack of his whole kingdom unless he listened to these arguments. The letter was signed by the ministers after many difficulties had been raised in the salons of Roland.

The plain-spoken letter was handed to the King and he read it, rejecting the good counsel of his ministry. The rulers of the kingdom were dismissed, and the veto was issued to the disgust of patriots in Paris. Their answer to the arbitrary power of monarchy was a procession to the Tuileries.

The mob beat on the King's door and demanded that the veto should be removed, the patriot ministers restored to office. Louis faced them with the courage he showed at certain times of danger, and replied quite coolly. He accepted a red cap of liberty, and drank from a bottle offered by one of the rascal crowd, bidding them observe that he was not afraid.

The Queen and her children were barricaded while the people roamed at large through the great bare palace. When the stream of citizens approached them, they shrank before the curious gaze of those who made light of royal privacy, but bore themselves bravely, and pretended they could see no chance of insult. The Queen put a thick and dirty cap on the little Dauphin's curls, an action she loathed, but one which pleased the intruders. She was eager to show attention to the deputies who stayed behind when the noisy rabble had departed, and a sense of salvation made her unbend to them. She offered to show them the brief ceremony of her son's undressing, and instructed the sleepy child to declare that he loved the nation. When they, too, had left the occupants of the desecrated building she wept. The humiliations of the day had been heroically borne. Now there was reaction, and she might well envy Mme Roland, that other queen who had been defeated in her bold act of protest but would rise again to splendid sovereignty.

The March of the Marseillais

Volunteers were asked to defend France from their King, to strike a blow for liberty that should make its rule supreme. The South were the first to answer an appeal for "five hundred men who knew how to die." They mustered at Marseilles, bold Provencals for the most part, black-browed, sturdy, and of hearts undaunted by the dangers of the march to Paris through a country which had orders to stay them by any means that should seem powerful.

They were galley-slaves, some assert, men of irregular life and the lowest character. Not orderly citizens, it is probable, yet they were true to their promise and they "knew how to die." Four and twenty hours sufficed to select the five hundred from a host of volunteers. Two days only could be given to drilling the chosen recruits and appointing officers. The Marseillais were to march under men they had themselves approved. They had their own leaders and their own discipline. It was a rapidly organized body which set out at nightfall on the 2nd of July and sang the song which had been first heard by the soldiers at a banquet to welcome the messengers from Paris, demanding help against the tyrant.

Mireur had sung the song, ignorant of its origin. His voice was one that raised echoes, and the words had something stirring, martial. Soon the whole city rang to it, and Rouget de Lille, the bold composer, made the Hymn of the Marseillaise express the feelings of the marchers, whose blood ran swiftly, whose patriotism was aroused. Armies were to sing it after them, gaining courage from the strain which made them weep the tears of burning exaltation. A nation was to adopt it as the anthem of all Frenchmen. No wonder that the grim Provencals trod more firmly than the regulars; no wonder that they never fell by the wayside but were all ready at the end of that amazing march to answer to their names.

So, well armed with sabre and musket, dragging three pieces of cannon, they set out in the sultry July weather of the South, their minds set on victory, their hearts defiant, not a doubt among the whole five hundred of the object before them which they should accomplish. "They have left their sunny Phocean City and Sea-haven, with its bustle and its bloom: the thronging Course, with high-pendent avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange-trees on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that crown the hills, are all behind them. They march on their wild way, from the extremity of French land, through unknown cities, towards an unknown destiny; with a purpose that they know."

THE DEPARTURE OF THE VOLUNTEERS.

Meanwhile, in the city towards which this steady regiment was marching, there were rumours and suspicions that brought other volunteers to enlist as eagerly. Lafayette, the Hero of Two Worlds, had become so unpopular as to be burnt in effigy. He had been moved by the invasion of the Tuileries to protest against the violence of the Jacobins, the party ready to do and dare, while the Girondins theorized and kept the King in office. He was allowed to speak in the National Assembly, but he was no longer the delight of the French nation. They murmured that the general was taking too much upon himself, and accusations of disloyalty were brought against him. He was young still, but he played little part in the stirring times that followed. His gallant, handsome figure never occupied again the centre of the stage when the drama of King and people struggling against each other was carried on before the eyes of startled Europe.

On July 22nd, a proclamation was made in Paris that the country was in danger. It was not generally known that Marie Antoinette had desperately called upon Austria and Prussia to take vengeance on the rebels who refused to submit to the royal authority and seemed inclined to storm the royal palace. She chose to regard her own life and her husband's as the hostages of Paris, a city which should surely be destroyed by fire and sword if any harm should befall either Marie Antoinette or Louis Seize. Yet, ignorant as the nation were of this fierce correspondence, they suspected treason in the Tuileries, and had learnt that a hostile camp was forming. The emigrants would return with that vast army under Brunswick. It was time to make ready for a royal reception when they did come. The example of the South was followed. Brest took up arms, and there was competition for the role of soldier in the capital, those too short in stature bewailing their misfortune, and those too old leading forward sons whom they would sacrifice for liberty without a pang. Some ten thousand left Paris, and throughout the quarters the rumours of war made the very air seem foul with suspicion. The Assembly was disturbed at midnight by an inroad of men and women shouting "Vengeance, they are poisoning our Brothers." There had been a dark report that the bread served to troops at Soissons was not the usual camp bread. The citizens were dispersed by promise of inquiries, but on the morrow there were other rumours rife.

It was July 29th when the Marseillais came in sight of welcoming patriots, straining their eyes from Charenton down the dusty roads. The regiment had covered five hundred miles at the rate of eighteen miles a day, and they had been encumbered by the weight of cannon. Their rations were scanty, and their faces looked drawn and weary when they marched in fine order across the bridge to the strains of their song and answered to the roll-call. They were refreshed by the enthusiasm of the men who came to meet them. Their sore feet were bathed, and a dinner was served to them at the "Blue Dial," where they rested. The next day they made a public entry into Paris with their drums and colours before them. Great was the applause of Saint Antoine, the quarter where poverty and patriotism mingled bravely. Petion, the Mayor, came forward to embrace them, for they were men of the South and loved such tributes well. They put down their muskets in the barracks of New France and were regaled by a banquet. They had not tasted food, however, before the cry "To arms!" came shrilly from the citizens.

Out into the street the warlike Marseillais rushed, finding the grenadiers from the Tuileries drawing their swords upon a terrified but defiant populace. There was wrath against the volunteers among the defenders of the palace. The grenadiers had come out to show that they too were patriots, deserving of like honours.

Swiftly the Marseillais followed the soldiers who fled before them. One or two fell before reaching the drawbridge of the Tuileries and knew no more of jealousy or revolution. The rest gained their quarters in safety, and were on the alert for the next move of Paris with its new force for action. The Swiss were the most reliable protectors of royalty, men as fearless as lions though they were but paid mercenaries. Their discipline was perfection. Louis could rely on them to obey orders, and felt that under Mandat, their leader, any attack on the Tuileries would be well opposed. He had in all about 6600 men in the palace.

THE NIGHT OF THE 10TH OF AUGUST, 1792.

On the night of August 9th the alarm bells sounded from the steeples. Nothing had been done yet, though it was a week since the southern patriots had received tumultuous welcome. The bells booming from the Abbey tower were answered by the peals from St Anthony, and the tocsins of St John and St Gervase. Soon there was a rioting of sound in the night-silence. Surely this was a call to arms, but insurrection did not follow, and some scorn was expressed by those gentlemen in the palace who had come to offer their services to the King. Within the Tuileries, the reinforcements had gathered with a clattering of hoofs and tramp of many feet. The Royalists began to jest at the failure of the signal, saying, "Tocsin does not yield." But where was Mandat, the commander? He had answered the third summons of the Town Hall and had not returned to the palace yet.

In the city through the hours of darkness there was a strange shifting mass of men, doubtful whether it were safe to advance alone. One waited for the other, Saint-Antoine seeking counsel of Saint-Marceau. If some hung back, the rising could be checked and punished. There were cowards in Paris, and these lay abed and feigned slumber on that wakeful evening of the 9th. Mlle de Theroigne, a beautiful young girl, was riding through the streets with pistols at her slender waist. She brought back traitors to the guardhouse and saw that they were sentenced. Four of them met the same fate as the unhappy Mandat, on whom the King relied. He was accused of having proposed to Mayor Potion to meet force by force and was cut down on the steps of the Town Hall. The royal family would not have taken the few hours of rest they needed, had they known of the horror of that death. The courage of the citizens was revived by such a victory.

The Queen rose at dawn to watch the sunrise with Princess Elizabeth, who sought to turn her thoughts away from the ominous preparations of the soldiers. The two women exclaimed at the beauty of dawn, reddening the roofs of Paris. It was Marie Antoinette who turned away first and began to plan feverishly for the safety of her children.

The King obeyed the request of his wife by showing himself before the defenders of the Tuileries, drawn up on the western terrace. He was a weary, disheveled figure of a king in violet coat and tumbled wig; he did not win their admiration. The Swiss must die for him, since discipline demanded that they should obey their superiors. There was a hint of mockery in the salutes they rendered, and Marie Antoinette saw the covert smiles and bitterly repented her impulse of the moment. If it had been Fersen, the noble and commanding—she must still try to inspire Louis, her husband, but what an irony that made him succeed to the Bourbon throne when there was need of a strong ruler to crush these revolutionary citizens!

Outside the long front of the Tuileries there was a dense crowd under the command of Santerre, the mighty brewer, who gave orders from the Town Hall. The red-coated Swiss were awaiting the command to fire. They looked to the priming of their weapons, while the courtiers drew their swords. The sun lit up the pikes and scythes of the attacking multitude. The steel gleamed in the Court of the Carrousel while King Louis set out with his Queen and the Dauphin through the gardens to the riding-school, where protection could be sought among the National Assembly which held its meetings there. The Dauphin kicked the leaves which had fallen early from the trees that summer. He was thankful when a grenadier of the Royal Militia carried him, for he was a delicate child and could not keep pace with his father striding ahead and his mother dragging him, thoughtless of comfort. Marie Antoinette had been weeping and had lost her beautiful serenity.

From the little box where reporters of the debates in the Assembly were given seats, the royal fugitives could hear the sound of cannon. Their hearts beat faster when the first rally of the Swiss had swept away the mob from the Carrousel. All might be over now, thanks to the mountaineers' stern courage. The Marseillais returned the volley, and from that time the noise of shot and breaking glass was constant. It was impossible from the riding-school to know who fired or advanced, but the sounds soon proclaimed that the people of Paris were storming the doors of the Tuileries.

The King signed a last order to the guard to bid them to cease firing. The commander scorned to obey the words, and scrawled as much hastily on paper. He crushed the paper in the pocket of his uniform and proceeded to direct the defence. He would not give the order to cease firing till the mob had begun to sack the palace. Then he saw that resistance was useless, that his men would be cut down without mercy. He commanded them to fall back, and instantly the Swiss retreated. They did not break their lines till they were well out of the palace. Some took refuge in private houses, some were rescued in the street by patriots who admired their heroism. Fifty were taken prisoners by the National Guards and massacred by the populace, despite the mercy of the Marseillais. Fury had been aroused in Paris by the effort to beat off the nation in that last assault upon tradition and the King tradition had given them.

Many of the five hundred lay wounded and dying, yet their last words had been entreaties to their comrades to avenge their death. These still chanted the marching song along the river when the two hours' fight was ended. It was a hymn of victory now. The Queen heard and shuddered. She knew that they had struck down the tyrant as they had promised those who called them from the South. Louis was beside her in the riding-school. He had done nothing all that terrible day except give that last command for the defenders of the palace to cease firing. He had waited for his own cause to perish and the cause of that little son, now complaining of the heat and inaction of a long summer's day. It was the Tenth of August 1792, and with the windows of the royal household was shattered all that had remained of the authority of Louis Seize,

The Hostages

The royal family were lodged henceforward in the Tower of the Temple, which had once been a residence of the Count of Artois. The master had fled the country, leaving a man in charge for whom some rooms were furnished. These were in the Tower, a high and narrow building added in the later Middle Ages to the ancient Temple. There were four stories and many small rooms which would serve for these captives, since the pretence of freedom was abandoned henceforth. No bodyguards were brought to protect the royal household. They had to be watched by men sent from the city by Santerre the brewer, who directed the military forces. These municipal officers were changed regularly, and varied in their attitude toward the State prisoners.

At Versailles there had been always softness and luxury to atone for uneasy warnings from the country. There had been splendor all around them which served to blind them to the nakedness of the poverty without. Few at that Court could understand the remote, suffering people—a wall of etiquette was between them and the world where there was hardship. The life in the Tuileries had been a rude shock to Queen and Princess. In that barracks-palace they had seen and heard the life of the Parisians, no longer awed by the presence of royalty. They had come into contact with fear and cruelty and the passions of an uncontrolled multitude. The Temple stripped them of the last pretence of separation from the Third Estate, for whom they had contemptuously decreed a lowly costume. They were soon living in small rooms with one valet-de-chambre to attend on all of them. He had been the attendant of the Dauphin, and begged to be allowed the privilege of remaining with him in misfortune. He dressed the hair of the King and also of the Queen and the princesses. He was the companion of the little boy in his hours of play and exercise, making him enter into games of battledore and shuttlecock, and seeking to diversify the walks in the horse-chestnut alley by quoits or football when running was too wearisome.

THE TAKING OF THE TUILERIES.

Clery was not the only servant of the fallen monarchs. They had at first a dozen of one sort and another, highly paid and skilled in cooking dainty dishes and such work of rich men's households. Twenty courses for each meal were served by the diminished retinue. The King had costly wines to drink and a library of many hundred volumes. He did not feel keenly the hardships of this imprisonment, being of simple tastes and easy nature. He was occupied in teaching the Dauphin to color maps and recite passages from Corneille and Racine. He had his old interest in geography, and made it interesting to the little boy, who took to his lessons readily, since there were no children of his own age now to amuse him. The Queen, for her part, instructed Madame Royale and spent long hours in weaving tapestry with Elizabeth, who was her companion. The Princesse de Lamballe and the royal governess accompanied the family to the Temple but did not remain long in that gloomy prison. The faithful Princess had been content to sleep on a truckle-bed outside the Queen's chamber, but she was sent away to the prison of La Force, for it was decreed by the people, "There must be no one here but Capets." The very title of the King had passed out of use now in Paris. He was Louis Capet and his sword was taken from him, an indignity that wounded him most cruelly.

Two spies were introduced into the restricted household of the Temple, Tison, a hard, malignant man, and his wife, who seemed of gentler nature. They were to watch the prisoners more closely than was possible for the municipal officers—and were also to denounce those same officers if they were guilty of any act of treachery.

It was difficult to disarm the suspicion of the people, alert to see treason in the most innocent acts. Even the little Dauphin would whisper his prayers for the Princesse de Lamballe and Mme de Tourzel, his governess, lest the municipals should be offended. The Queen was in the habit of reading the history of France to her children in the morning. It was said that she tried to inspire her son with feelings of vengeance against France because she read of the Constable of Bourbon taking up arms against the country. Simon the shoemaker was charged with the duty of inspecting the works and expenditure of the Temple. He never left the Tower, and was insolent to the inmates, saying to Clery loud enough for the King to hear, "Clery, ask Capet if he wants anything, for I can't take the trouble to come a second time." The very tapestry worked by the princesses was not allowed to leave the Tower, because it was feared that they were trying to communicate in the designs with the friends to whom they wished to send it.

On the 2nd of September the royal family were allowed to walk outside the building of their prison. They heard the clamor of the people in the distance and were hurried within by the municipals. Matthieu, once a friar, came to them with threats of vengeance. "You are ignorant of what is going on," he said to Louis; "the country is in the greatest danger; the enemy has entered Champagne; the King of Prussia is marching on Chalons; you are answerable for all the harm that will come of it. We, our wives and children, may perish, but you first before us; the people will be avenged."

"I have done all for the people," said the King; "I have nothing with which to reproach myself."

News was hard to gain for the unfortunate hostages, waiting anxiously to hear that Brunswick and the emigrants were coming to their rescue over the vanquished bodies of the French, their former subjects. Clery told them all he knew as he dressed their hair for the evening toilette. A street-crier came to the Temple enclosure and called out every evening a summary of what took place in the Armies and the Assembly. It was the valet's care to listen from the King's cabinet, where there was always silence. He could not always break the tidings of disaster. It was announced sometimes in a manner much more terrible.

On the 3rd of September the captives were not allowed to walk in the garden They sat together in the rooms where they had dinner, and the King watched with schoolboy interest the workmen pulling down the houses near the Temple and the wall of the gardens. Danjou, the guard for the day, stood with him, noting the great beams that fell amid clouds of dust. He was afraid of what was doing in the city that fair autumn day. He was a zealous patriot, but he did not love wanton cruelty. He was brave, and full of hope and energy. It seemed to him that the sounds he heard were sinister while he listened through that careless conversation with the King in the high window of the Temple.

There was the noise of songs and mocking voices, and presently the crash of gates and onrush of a crowd from Paris. They were within the gardens, intoxicated with wine and lust for blood. The massacre of the aristocracy had begun as soon as the fear of victory for the royal allies seized them. They bore a trophy of their victories over the royalist prisoners with them—the head of the Princesse de Lamballe on a pike, and they trailed her body on the ground.

Tison's wife screamed loudly, seeing the outrage from a lower window. The mob thought it was the Queen, and exulted laughingly. They raised the head farther, and the King saw it with horror. He recognized the beautiful face with the hair still powdered. He called out that Marie Antoinette must not look at it. She sat a long way from the window, but a man in the uniform of the National Guard tried to insist on the prisoners all appearing before the people. "They want to prevent your seeing the Lamballe's head, which has been brought here to show you how the people avenge themselves on tyrants," he said coarsely; "I advise you to appear."

The Queen fainted, and the children burst into tears, caressing their mother as she lay unconscious. Clery and Madame Elizabeth tended her while Danjou exercised all his eloquence and courage in persuading the mob to leave the Temple. He had been afraid of a massacre of the royal hostages, and fought hard against their lust for killing. "The head of Antoinette does not belong to you," he told them; "the department has rights; France confided the keeping of these great criminals to the city of Paris; it is for you to help us to keep them until national justice avenges the people." He had to keep them at bay for an hour, the hardest of his life, perhaps. But he succeeded, and the Queen was saved—to the pain and bewilderment of seeing in dreams that beloved head, and to the torture of constructing for herself the whole sad tragedy.

On the 20th September there was a chance of delivery, for Dumouriez, the leader of the Girondin forces, was turned, and Prussian and Austrian troops were only four days' march from Paris. But that day the rescuers were put to rout near the windmill of Valmy. They had to turn and abandon the monarchs who were to be saved by Europe. They had been most strangely, most ignominiously beaten. It was a fine military achievement of Dumouriez, the light-hearted gallant whose nature Mme Roland so distrusted.

A Republic was declared the following day by the people. There should be no talk now of King and Queen. The proclamation was heard quite clearly in the Temple. The King went on reading, undisturbed by the voice he heard, and the Queen bent over her embroidery, wondering how far away were those armies. She sickened now for news of the emigrants. Surely they would save the Tower captives from the fate of pretty, helpless De Lamballe, whose rank alone had doomed her. She could hardly have believed, had she known it, that those highly trained Prussians had failed before the new soldiers of the Republic.

The Month of September

After the fall of the Tuileries, the Girondin ministry had come into power again. Once more they gathered in Mme Roland's salon. Brissot, the Norman deputy, was all for the war that would compel the King to declare his policy. Louis might take the opportunity of aiding the party of Revolution, or he might declare himself openly against it, in which case it would be easy to call him traitor and set up a Republic. Handsome Barbaroux had called for volunteers and met the gallant response from Marseilles. Buzot, who won the heart of Marie-Jeanne Roland from a husband, elderly now and growing enfeebled, was also an advanced Girondin. They had enemies in the Assembly and enemies in Paris. There was the Commune or Municipality, which claimed to direct the actions of the Revolution. It had been foremost in the attack on the Tuileries and was violent through success. Secretly appointed, the members were bold in their demands. They despised the older body, and condemned its powers as feeble. They had overthrown the King and saved the people by that gallant rush to the royal palace when the prudent would have stayed them. They were going to have their way, and show Roland and his men what force could do to crush the treason of these aristocrats, with the monarchs of Europe in alliance.

DANTON

Danton, whose voice reverberated with some of that passion which had made Mirabean so mighty, had been president of the club taking its name from the meeting-place at the convent of the Cordeliers. Men who listened heard once more an orator whose powerful personality swayed them more than his actual words. He was strong and shaggy, and believed to be a lover of the people. The Girondin party had to receive him as Minister of Justice, though he had little in common with these men of dreams and visionary ideals.

The patriots were frantic in their cries for justice on the old oppressors of the country. Let their houses be searched for arms, since there was reason to believe that they encouraged Austrian and Prussian armies to advance on Paris. Longwy and Verdun fell before the evening. The national danger called for stringent measures. The Town Hall raised the flag which had once called forth so many volunteers, and this raised a spirit of new violence. The nobility were more than ever suspect. 'Why should not the new Minister of Justice summon them before a tribunal to answer to the charge of treason?

Danton so far yielded as to allow the domiciliary visits by which men were sent out from the Town Hall in tricolour sash and cockade to knock at the doors of fine hotels and demand entrance without ceremony. They were dazzled in some houses by the sight of luxuries they had not hitherto imagined. The sumptuous furniture and personal appointments they now saw roused a passion of envy and revenge in many a loyal citizen. They spared neither the fine lady's boudoir nor the scholar's library. Everywhere they found costly articles of the toilette the uses of which they did not understand, and silver which was too beautiful for food cooked by plebeian households; jewels that had been worn lavishly by wearers careless of their wealth, and clothes that had once been part of the radiant spectacle of Versailles.

None could defend themselves against the intrusion of rough men in Municipal uniform. They were from the Town Hall. They had the orders of Danton, Minister of Justice. It was their duty to discover whether arms had been concealed or fine horses, of which the patriots had need to drag their cannons. There were few like Santerre the brewer, who possessed dray-horses of such strength that they were famed throughout Paris and were always at the service of good patriots. One of these steeds was so immense that it was wont to figure annually at a fair, disguised by coverings, as an elephant! Santerre was the soul of kindness; he would lend his horses and give away huge draughts of red wine for which his brewery was famous. It was another story with those of the First Estate. They hid their wealth, and grudged it to the cause of the army which, no doubt, they were hoping to see defeated.

Mme de Stael, the daughter of Necker, now in exile, was loud in her expostulations. She parleyed for a long time with Manuel, one of the search-party, deigning to remind him that they both were members of the world of letters. That plea did not serve well during the visits of the Municipal search-party. They arrested many writers; even Beaumarchais, late distrusted by the King, had become an object of suspicion to the people. They hunted him, forcing the once bold satirist to become an abject fugitive. He was rescued finally by Manuel, but never regained prosperity after he had left the prison.

Two thousand stand of arms were discovered among the dwellings of the patriots' ill-wishers. They were confiscated for the use of Brunswick's opponents. The suspected persons placed in various prisons totaled some four hundred. The charges against them were not always quite satisfactory, for it was open to doubt what "anti-civism" might be in 1792. The definition of a citizen was always changing. Yet they would be safer under lock and key, where plotting must be useless—they could be considered hostages of war and tremble before the vengeance exacted for defeat in battle or the blood shed by the patriot army.

The Royalists fled by every road that might be open; but guards watched at the end of every street, and barges were stationed to prevent flight along the river. Guiltless tried to escape with the guilty, since it was useless to protest against denunciation by one in favour at the Town Hall. A priest with an enemy would be dragged to the dungeons, charged with refusing to take the oath to the civil constitution. The charge of writing pamphlets was one means of bringing down the wealthy. The presses were said to be free, but they were free only to the upholders of the Revolution.

The news of Brunswick's forces approaching caused a wild fluttering among the captives. They took heart of grace again after days of desperation, and, outside their cage, the citizens enrolled themselves to the sound of an alarm gun. "To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare!" So Danton inspired them.

The voice of Marat croaked continually against the danger from the Royalists still within the walls of Paris. There were some thirty thousand, and there was talk of a rising of the prisoners. Once get rid of this element of foreigners, agents of the old order, and soldiers without uniform, and the Town Hall would see to the safety of the people.

MARAT

The Assembly believed Danton to be acting against them, and refused to notice his appeal for aid in directing the movements of Paris, which was frantic with terror of an army brought at the instigation of the Queen, who did not love the country. The Committee of Watchfulness became all powerful under Marat, who preached massacre, and on September 2nd the woeful work began.

The Friends of the People allowed twenty-four prisoners to be taken from the Mairie to the Abbaye. It was giving them up to death, for the six carriages were surrounded by an excited crowd, and the cries proved the temper of the spectators. "There they are, there they are—those who would kill our children and our wives. Come, help us; kill them!" In the very vehicles the unfortunates were butchered, and in the courtyard of the Abbaye. They were priests who would not take the oath, not members of an arrogant nobility.

The justice of the People was to be the supreme test now of loyalty or disloyalty. The tribunal was under the presidency of Maillard, who had led the women out to Versailles. He assumed control of the frantic mob, and administered a certain kind of legal trial before condemning prisoners. Many escaped, thanks to his influence, for he would not yield to the tyranny of voices calling for vengeance without distinction. He was a strange wild figure, with his great height and suit of closely fitting black. He had some knowledge of the law and some knowledge of humanity.

Leaving the Abbaye, the avengers went to the Chatelet Prison and spared only about forty out of two hundred prisoners. The thieves claiming to have stolen only from aristocrats met with compassion. It went ill with the victims of Royalist tendencies. After they had met their fate the taste for blood was whetted. There were other prisons and they all held aristocrats.

September the 4th saw the assembly at La Force, where there were many women, including Mme de Stael, whose pleas had been so unsuccessful. She was saved from death, at least, but the Swiss prisoners of the Tenth of August met no response to their cry for mercy. One of them led the way to death with the unfailing courage of his regiment. "I go first," he said, "since it must be so: adieu!" He appeared outside the prison gates where the murderous pikes were waiting. He flung himself upon them and died heroically. None should say henceforth that it was men from Marseilles alone who knew well how to die.

The beautiful were to perish with the brave at La Force and were to be as long remembered. The Princesse de Lamballe had been lying on her bed when she was roused to be removed to the prison of the Abbaye. She was reluctant to leave one place of terror for another. She must arrange her dress if they would insist on taking her, for it was disagreeable to appear before the crowd without that dainty air of elegance associated with her person. They suffered her to make a hasty toilette, remarking grimly that she had not far to go. She was received by a threatening array of sabres. The chief adviser of the Austrian woman, they declared her. She had indeed been true in friendship, but her spirit was not strong to sway imperious Marie Antoinette. Yet no pleading could avail now to save poor, beautiful De Lamballe the crowning humiliation. Her head was severed with an axe and carried, with its fair locks waving, to the Temple. That building was encircled by a tricolour ribbon, so that the Terror might not reach there. Royal hostages must be saved till there came further tidings of the army.

At Bicetre the massacre became wilder, none being questioned as to opinions or parties. The sick and poor were seized by their own Order, and even children left the prison where cruelty had been their lot, to meet death instead of freedom.

The people of Paris had given themselves up to lawless violence, and cared nothing for a reckoning that would come long after the blood was spilt beyond redemption. Marat defended the massacre which Roland condemned so hotly. Marat was determined on the doom of the aristocracy, and cared not to feign any pity for his fellow-mortals.

The dark days in Paris had been followed by dark days in the provinces. There was an increase of theft and the dread of utter lawlessness. Blows were struck by the Assembly before they finally lost their old standing. They gave place on September the 20th to the National Convention, which declared France a Republic.

To this convention the most distinguished men of the two former assemblies were elected, forming separate parties now at variance. Robespierre, the lawyer from Arras, led the deputies of the Mountain, so called from the high benches where they sat. They included the more vigorous Republicans and were chiefly deputies of Paris, while the Girondins were of the South and advocated moderation. It was not long before the Convention split on the question of the massacres, said to have been encouraged by the Mountain. They had another dispute of higher importance as the year drew to an end. Robespierre would have had Louis XVI put to death without the formalities of a royal trial such as had been given to King Charles I of England. The Girondins were in favour of imitating the Republicans of England, who had become the first of free people, but the "patriots" were not with the party so averse to regicide—their cry was for Equality, and the proof of it by the trial, not of King Louis Seize, but of plain Louis Capet.

The Iron Chest

There had been at Versailles a certain locksmith, Francois Gamain, who had been in the habit of going to the palace to instruct the royal blacksmith. Under his superintendence, Louis had learnt the art of lock-making, and being wishful of finding some safe place for his private papers, he had summoned Gamain to the Tuileries.

It was necessary to cut a hole in the wall near the King's own bed-chamber, a task quite congenial to Louis, who hacked at the woodwork during three nights, since the whole affair must be a secret. Durey, one of the valets, had to carry away the chips and throw them in the river, while Gamain fixed in the masonry an iron door forged in the workshop, near the royal library. There were many bolts and hinges, and the corridor was not well lighted. The smith demanded that his master should hold the candle throughout the May Day on which he laboured, while Durey must be in attendance too and give any help that was necessary. The papers were concealed in the hole, and the iron door locked by a key which was hidden in a sealed casket under one of the flagstones of the palace.

Flight had been in the King's mind when he disposed of correspondence that might incriminate him in the eyes of revolutionary subjects. When the attempt was foiled, Gamain was seized with terror. He would have left the country himself if he had had sufficient money, for the Tenth of August might have revealed his secret to the furious mob bent on ravaging the Tuileries. He was possessed by a sense of danger till the trial of the King seemed imminent. Then he decided to give evidence against the man who had trusted him, and came from Versailles to make a confession. On the 20th November 1792 he approached Roland, the Girondist minister, and declared that in May of that same year he had been concerned in hiding treasonable correspondence.

Roland went with the smith to the Tuileries and began the search for papers. They were found under the wainscot and removed from the palace, wrapped in towels. It was a large bundle, and contained letters proving that the Court had been in correspondence with foreign countries in the hope of an invading force which should give back to it the power it had lost. Roland was one of the was party, and was enraged by the discovery. There were patriots to be convicted by those papers, Barnave among them. He had been corresponding with the Queen since the fateful journey from Varennes when she had won his loyalty. He was in prison as a suspect, and might be condemned at once. Mirabeau's treason was plain enough. Let his bust in the Hall of Convention be veiled with gauze! Later it should be thrown down and dashed to pieces if he were proved to be guilty. Meantime, the trial of Louis Capet approached, and Gamain's confession must affect it closely.

On Tuesday, December 11th, the King was driven through the streets to the Hall of the Convention under the charge of Santerre, bustling and important. The President received him with a curt permission to seat himself, and the Fifty-seven Questions were brought forward, embracing the documents which they held to prove him guilty.

For three hours the business continued, Louis being strangely quiet and composed through all the cross-examination. He demanded legal counsel before he withdrew, and shared a humble loaf of bread with one Chaumette in the committee room.

Three counsel were granted to the King, Malesherbes, an old man of seventy, undertaking a service which some thought dangerous and refused. He was joined by Deseze, a younger lawyer, and Tronchet, a man advanced in years. They had documents in plenty to study along with the indictment. Louis helped them as well as he could, but he was slow of brain. The patriots of the Mountain were eager to have the case settled, and attacked the Girondists, accusing them of delay to serve their own ends. It was decided after much storm in the Convention that Louis should plead on Wednesday, December 26th.

Accompanied by the three advocates, the King came to the bar at nine o'clock that winter morning. He was grateful to Deseze for the eloquent pleading, and added a few words to it, expressing regret that he should have caused blood to be shed. Poor, kindly man, he was suffering for the sins of previous generations.

Still the struggle continued between the two parties of the Convention, the Girondins becoming afraid to utter their belief that Louis was a prisoner of war and should not be put to death were he to be proved guilty; the Mountain growing vehement in their demand for haste, and making wildly applauded speeches in the Club of the Jacobins, where women also assembled to utter patriotic sentiments.

Foreign Courts were ablaze with indignation that regicide should be contemplated by this people. Two decrees of the Convention had caused consternation throughout Europe. On the 19th of November, help had been promised to any nation willing to shake off the fetters of despotism and follow the example of France, the new Republic. Furthermore, religion had been set at naught by a deputy in the discussion of a scheme for National Education. He had avowed himself an atheist, and the Churches of other countries recoiled in horror. What a state was this when a nation openly instigated other nations to rebel and proclaimed its disbelief in religion! It seemed capable of sending a King to the scaffold. Both Spain and England intervened and availed nothing with the people. It was arranged that the Convention should vote, name by name, on January 15th. Petitions might flow in to demand the King's acquittal or condemnation. They would not weigh against the decision of Paris and her rulers, the 749 deputies to whom all things were relegated.

From Wednesday to Sunday the voting was protracted, each deputy mounting to the steps, where he gave his verdict as to guilt and punishment. The wintry dusk was succeeded by night and again by dawn, and all France, all Europe waited. Banishment was the pronouncement of many, and imprisonment till the war was over satisfied the patriotism of certain of the Girondins; but some voices decreed death, and they were found to be in the majority. Robespierre was among them, and Philippe, once Duke of Orleans and prince of the blood, since elected to the Convention under the name of Philippe Egalite.

DUKE OF ORLEANS

The scene was sombre in itself, for a King's life trembled in the balance, yet Parisians thronged the galleries, dressed with magnificence and enjoying the excitement. They ate and drank and speculated on the end of it. Some of them would soon meet that death which now they treated lightly. A sick man came wrapped in blankets to plead for mercy, and hoped one vote might mean everything to Louis. The President declared Louis Capet guilty and the sentence death. Delay was voted against by Philippe Egalite and others. The King was to be allowed a confessor, but no time in which to make an elaborate ceremony of confession.

Royalists could not protest to any useful purpose. A few priests distributed pamphlets demanding that their King should be delivered, but they were sent to prison and help came from no other source. England and Spain were powerless, the former, indeed, having furnished an example of regicide. Louis himself heard the sentence quietly, for he was resigned to the end of life and sought refuge in his faith. He had never discarded it, though France would banish priests. He told his little son never to avenge his death, and said farewell to the family in the Temple the night before he was to leave them for ever. They had feared the worst when he had been taken from them some weeks before. The Queen exacted a promise that her husband would visit her again in the morning, and he broke the promise, holding himself absolved because it was for her sake. He wished to spare her suffering.

Marie Antoinette lay awake and heard the King's guard come for the book of prayers which Louis wanted. She recognized the steps which left the Tower quite early in the morning. There was silence in the street where so often a crowd had assembled, and the Queen wept bitterly as the roll of drums sounded in the distance. Faint cries were hushed at the Temple gate when the King passed through. How different this order was from that mad tumult which broke forth at the news of Louis XV's illness. Then there had been churches open for prayer all through the night, and solemn services whereat the very priests wept. The courier who brought the tidings of the Well-Beloved's convalescence was nearly smothered by the kisses of distracted subjects. His horse received a share of the embraces, and every street was loud with joy because the King was cured. Now his grandson, of life unblemished, passed toward the scaffold and none greeted him with pity. The shops were shut and the windows down in Paris, generally so lively. Only one carriage drove through the town. Preceding it Santerre rode, mounted on one of his famous horses. His handsome bearing drew the attention of any spectators that were present, as he waved a naked sword. More than once he stopped to inquire if the King wanted anything, but they had reached the place where the guillotine stood when Louis made his first request. He would pray alone in the carriage for a while, leaving thoughts of this world far behind him.

After five minutes he descended and removed his coat to comply with the order of the executioner. He would have spoken to the people gathered in large numbers around the scaffold, had not Santerre given a signal for the drums to beat, so that not a word was audible.

"Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven," the priest exhorted, and the son of sixty kings had lost his head at the hands of the Republic They cried aloud then, "Long live the Nation," and Paris echoed to it as the newsmen called shrilly against the walls of the Temple where Marie Antoinette sat, alone now save for her two hapless children.

The Fall of the Gironde

The execution of the King of France united the enemies of that rebel nation and caused division among the men who had decreed it. Roland sent in his resignation and awaited the result in strict retirement. He had long been disgusted with the turn that the Mountain gave to a ministry formed on the finest ideals of Republican liberty, if it did not approve of strict equality. He had raised up a humble Swiss named Pache from some obscurity, finding him an indefatigable worker who would receive neither salary nor honor.

Pache had been brought from the mountain home where he lived in a simplicity that was charming to all followers of Rousseau. He spent his days there in studying botany, his evenings in teaching the harp to his daughter Sylvie. "Provided that he had periwinkles in his garden, black bread and milk food on his table, and romances to play, this wise man wished for nothing more." There was much admiration among the Girondin party for the protégé of Mme Roland when it was whispered that he was satisfied with a hunch of bread for his daily meal in office hours and remained at his desk to eat it. Such modesty was especially to be admired after Pache was entrusted with the most responsible tasks of the government of 1792. It was this man who directed France during the terrible crisis of the war, but it was only after Valmy that his name became known to the awe-stricken public. Mme Roland herself begged him to assume authority quite openly. She must have felt a terrible chagrin from the moment of Pache's first council-meeting. Then the ambition of the industrious servant was revealed in all its strength and singleness. He silenced the elderly, unpopular Roland, allying himself with the most wildly enthusiastic friends of Revolution; these he put in offices of importance, and himself became Mayor of Paris. Marie-Jeanne wept tears of indignation to see her own wide influence vanish. Many a time she brooded over the ingratitude of this Swiss zealot in the humble rooms of the flat in the Rue de la Harpe which sheltered the former Minister of the Interior. Pache wore still that air of benevolence which caused him to be always "Papa Pache" to his followers. He never ceased to play the harp in domestic seclusion, even after the most bloodthirsty days of vengeance. There was something terrible about the inconsistency of the rural student. He foreshadowed the men of the Terror whose hearts were tender for wives and children, and whose sentences doomed to death hundreds upon hundreds.

Early in 1793, Pache demanded that twenty-two of the Girondin party should be deposed from their authority. They were the members of the Constitution always opposed to vigorous practical measures. France was under the cloud of the dark storms soon to burst over her. Armies threatened in the camps of Europe, kings banded themselves together against the new administration of the free Republic. If blood were necessary for ultimate peace, blood must be shed without compunction. The sentimental scruples of the Gironde could be silenced once the Mountain were in power. Plots were on foot to let the Queen escape, the hostage who must be held, lest losses in warfare should bring about the fall of Paris. It was not the fault of the Royalists that Marie Antoinette did not escape. She would not leave her children, notwithstanding all arguments in favour of her flight from the dreary imprisonment of the Temple.

The captives were treated with greater severity after the defeat of Dumouriez at Neerwinden in March 1793. The general, generous and bold in action, was a traitor to his country. He went over to the Austrian camp with that cage of favourite canaries he must always have taken to the battlefield. He had ancestry of a dramatic talent, and delighted in the sensational transference of his noble services. His men had refused to follow him in a march on Paris, where the citizens suspected he would set up a king of his own again. His defection brought down the power of the Gironde, lately exulting in his victories. The Revolutionary Tribunal for the judgment of enemies of the Republic was set up that same month, and, in April, Danton proposed the Committee of Public Safety.

France was under martial law. This was no time for gentle measures, said Robespierre, and the speakers in that club of the Jacobins, now numbering the rulers of the future. The gathering, once attended by white-robed monks of the Jacobin Order, had changed in character since the speech-making days of 1789. It met in the noble hall with its fine pictures and splendid library, close to the church of the Jacobins. Women crowded its galleries and applauded the austere lawyer from Arras whose constant repetition of certain doctrines attracted many listeners. He had none of the flashing eloquence of Mirabeau, yet he rose rapidly to supremacy, and in the house of Duplay, the carpenter, received the homage due to a great leader. St Just, the beautiful, tempestuous hero of his native village, was also the devoted follower of Robespierre.

In May 1793, the Girondins came to open conflict with the Commune of Paris, which they had long opposed in secret. They hated the ascendancy which the people of the capital had gained, and feared the popular element which had lately ruled the Mountain. Men of the middle class themselves, they would have had a Republic for the rich, as their enemies declared, "Liberty without Equality" the friends of the people muttered, and showed their distrust of the first Revolutionary party by carrying Marat, the popular hero, shoulder high when he was acquitted of the charge of anarchy which the Girondins brought against him.

On June 2nd, Paris rose, assembling an armed force about the Tuileries where the Convention sat, and demanding that the leaders from the Gironde should hand in their resignations or be expelled to the number of twenty-two. News had come of a rising of hungry patriots at Lyons, which the Royalists had subdued by the help of a Girondin force. Hanriot, made General Commander of the National Guard, had artillery to back this demand. "Gunners, to your guns!" was the famous order which sealed the fate of the suspected deputies. The Convention voted their exclusion, and they were outlawed as rebels in July, because they had attempted to stir up their departments against the capital and had even allied themselves with Royalists rather than be under the yoke of the Commune.

Marie-Jeanne Roland had been sent to the Abbaye on May 31st, rejoicing that she might give herself up to her love for Buzot, now that she was separated from her husband by the prison bars. Freedom was hers, she felt, though she suffered the discomforts of a prisoner's life. She could write long, passionate letters to the man she loved, and compose the memoirs of her strange career while she had youth and courage to face death.

Meanwhile her husband escaped from his enemies and lived in Normandy, eating out his heart with jealousy and disappointment, since his career was at an end. The outlawed deputies were scattered throughout France, stirring up revolt against the Mountain, known soon as the Jacobins. They were eager for civil war, allying themselves with Royalist towns; but they met defeat, for the Jacobins were stronger and of more practical mind, Louvet, Guadet, and the rest of the outlawed Girondins became wanderers, hunted and weary. Everywhere they met danger in the desperate attempt to seek their beloved southern country.

None were willing to receive them. Through Brittany they made their way, without shoes and without the food that would have enabled them to travel quickly. They had to divide at Quimper, so that some might embark on a brig taking them to the Gironde. At Bordeaux they were dismayed by the terror of the citizens. The Convention had done its work too well for those dubbed traitors to find any place of concealment. Guadet was sheltered by his own father after piteous appeals, yet would not offer a refuge to his companions. They would have perished miserably had it not been for Mme Bouquey with heart of gold and a convenient well in her country garden.

It was autumn when she offered a home to Guadet and all his fellow-patriots. They were tired out and in rags by this time. The supper served to them was almost a dream of former days, since they had been outlawed for weeks, meeting rebuffs and closed doors everywhere instead of welcome.

Seven men required more nourishment than Marinette Bouquey could procure easily. She was only entitled to a pound of bread per day, because she was supposed to live alone. She had to risk her life in coaxing the butcher for extra meat when her eggs and vegetables failed her. She was never hungry herself, she averred, when the seven fugitives sat down to table. She was always gay and good-humored in this period of constant watchfulness and anxiety. At the least alarm, she managed to smuggle the outlaws from the house into a kind of grotto which had a cellar underneath, used only in the gravest peril, for it was chilly and dark, and more stifling than a tomb. They worked by the light of a lantern, four of them writing their memoirs. News came from Paris through their kindly hostess only. They learnt in November that Mme Roland was now in the dreaded prison of the Conciergerie, and that over twenty of their friends had been executed by order of the Tribunal. They clung to life obstinately, though they endured tortures in this living burial. Buzot's heart was torn by separation from the woman he loved and the fear for her safety at the mercy of the Jacobins. Potion remembered the days of swaggering insolence when he had driven with the King and Queen from Varennes. They were powerless alike, thankful for the meanest place of sojourn. Round the house were men thirsting for their blood and ready to betray their hostess.

It was a month after their first reception when she told them weeping that she could no longer harbor suspects. Her husband threatened her from Paris, and the neighbourhood was menacing. They took to the road again in the beating autumn rain, and met their cruel fates later than Mme Roland and the husband who refused to survive her.

Marie-Jeanne had been in prison since the 1st of June, save for a brief space of liberation. She spoke often of the twenty-two who preceded her to the scaffold while she wrote down her events of her thirty-seven years. How peaceful had been that early life with the mother she loved dearly! How happy the days spent with the learned Roland in the rustic abode of the Beaujolais! The brilliant evenings, surrounded by gallant and earnest men, longing to bring prosperity to France, were a far-off vision in the gloomy sojourn where flowers bloomed for but a few hours after Bose managed to convey them thither. There had been many faithful to Marie-Jeanne. She was proud to reflect upon the part she had played. Queen she had been in reality as certainly as that Marie Antoinette, who now was seeking consolation in the Catholic faith and the society of her children. Eudora had been torn from her mother's arms, and that mother had lost faith long ago. She was occupied with different cares from those of the prisoners of the Temple. Her pen flowed easily over the pages recording her own history. She had been destined for great fame—she was conscious that the end was coming. In the spring of 1792 she had taken apartments on a six-years' lease. She had been blind then to the fact that her life was coming to conclusion. The certainty of death did not daunt her, even as she went before cruel Fouquier-Tinville at the judgment bar. The Public Accuser questioned her brutally, and she answered him with scorn. It was possible to sway men still while she stood in her white robes, with her black hair hanging to her girdle.

But the last hour was coming fast, and there were preparations to make. She left long written counsels to Eudora, the daughter whose flightiness had been a bitter grief to her. She said truly that her husband would not live to read them. She was calm and queenly as she passed through the streets on a tumbril, trying to cheer the fellow-prisoner who was taken with her. She asked for pen and paper at the very scaffold that she might "write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." She was refused, and surveyed the statue of Liberty with a certain mockery, crying, "O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!" Yet she made no other appeal, and laid her head down before a man who feared the sharp knife of the guillotine, that her heroism might help him to die easily.

It was November the 8th, and Roland set out then to roam the countryside. He was discovered on the 16th with a cane-sword through his heart and a writing at his feet, to declare that no longer would he "remain on an earth polluted with crimes."

Buzot also fell by his own hand, in a field of rye where he had hidden with Petion, his associate. Little was left of their former pride of bearing. They had seen Barbaroux carried off, with a pistol-wound tormenting him, to be guillotined in Paris. He had looked handsome on the mattress where they bound him to float him down the river. His black hair framed his ghastly face, and he was still the bold Girondin though he lay a-dying. Men of Marseilles carried with them admiration to the death. Petion and Buzot envied him a little, perhaps, in the dreary, hopeless struggle against their country-people. Hidden under the pine-trees, they mutely questioned each other if they should take their own lives or be dragged to the scaffold by their enemies. When the peasants found them there was some belief that a kind of duel had taken place. The rye was beaten down, and they had fallen towards each other in the tawdry, discolored clothes with the empty pockets.

Bordeaux bore them long in mind. Mme Bouquey, too, was punished for her womanly compassion. She was accused of "pity towards the unfortunate," a charge criminal in the eyes of Jacobins! Ruthless was the Tribunal to the Girondins, ancient allies and lovers of fraternity.

The Terror was begun in France, aided most skillfully by the instrument good Dr Guillotin had once urged so strongly as the most humane means of ending life for criminals. Louis XVI had died under the knife he had interested himself to perfect. The instrument soon made notorious the name of the man who introduced it, though he used his power desperately to save doomed wretches from the machine he had praised with the enthusiasm of an inventor.

The Trial of Capet's Widow

Just two months after Marie-Jeanne Roland suffered arrest, a captive of nobler blood was taken also to the Conciergerie. On August 1st, Europe was defied by the French Republic's issue of a decree that Marie Antoinette, late Queen of France, should be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. War was distracting the new rulers and testing their capabilities as it once had tested those of the Girondins. It was a death-struggle in which the country was engaged, and on the result of that struggle the life of Louis's widow now depended.

There was civil war in the North and West, waged by the defeated members of the National Convention. Normandy had risen to defend the patriots, and Charlotte Corday, a beautiful woman of the Norman nobility, had struck a blow at the whole faction of the Jacobins by killing Marat. The People's Friend was mourned by the people, and death decreed for the fair fanatic, who declared herself to have been "a Republican before the Revolution." Charlotte Corday was led to the guillotine, active as ever in this period of danger. There was panic at home since the assassination of every other good citizen would prove as easy. This woman had "killed one man to save a hundred thousand." There were desperate men in France, likely to emulate her patriotism. It would be folly to risk an attempt to rescue Marie Antoinette on the part of some enemy of the Committee. They had enemies, as they knew to their cost; but if the army took their sons and brothers to destruction, the wife of the tyrant should pay for it. She had always been false and treasonable.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

On August 2nd, the walls of the Temple enclosed a silence that was ominous of the future. Madame Elizabeth was left there, serene in her resignation, and Madame Royale bidden to cling to the aunt she must henceforth regard as a mother. The little Dauphin had been removed from them on July 3rd, his fair head being a precious hostage to men fearing the dismemberment of the Republic by Austria, Prussia, and England in a moment of victory. This child might be of use to France still, for he was held to be Louis XVII, the descendant of the Capet line, and acknowledged by the other kings of Europe.

Marie Antoinette had fought against the separation in vain, losing, when the guards came to take him, the proud composure she had hitherto preserved in misfortune. The scene had been one of violence, in which the mother overcame the Queen and descended to entreaties. She did not show the same spirit when they came to remove her from her daughter. In her eyes the boy had been the representative of the kings, his fathers. She had cherished hopes in secret that she might yet see him ruling a submissive people. She had few hopes left when she bade farewell to her companions and passed into solitude greater than she had known throughout the dreary years of bondage. She could not now feel pain, she assured her captors, after striking her noble head against the low lintel of the door. She did not feel terror, though she must have known that the sounds which came to her in the summer darkness meant defeat in battle. France was in extremities, awaiting a terrible invasion with vengeance to follow it. She listened to the distant marching songs in silence. Perhaps she thought of Fersen, making valiant efforts for her rescue. Perhaps she was too worn by sorrow to have retained the love she had once bore him.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY TAKEN TO EXECUTION.

The Conciergerie was darker, gloomier, more unhealthy than the Tower of the forbidding Temple. There were many other prisoners there, but they were not all noble. The Queen was to be kept alone with costly maintenance enough, but fewer attendants than were necessary for her decent comfort. A young girl named Rosalie became devoted to her service, and the porter's wife was kindly, but men sat in her room all day long, and at night her door was guarded. The room itself was small and low, and lighted only by a barred window. It was partly underground, and so damp that the inhabitant suffered cruelly. Her health, which had been failing, was worse in this seclusion. She had books to read if she asked for them, but she saw nothing beyond the walls of her cell, and the awful solitude was seldom broken.

She might not knit, since the use of needles was forbidden. Steel was dangerous, and messages could be conveyed by stitches, as the women of the people knew too well during the time of the Terror. They took their knitting with them to the public trials of the aristocrats they rejoiced to see fallen. They were said, in some cases, to have recorded the names of those to whom death should be meted out during the years preceding Revolution. It had been the safest way of keeping secret evidence against their oppressors. Terrible were the results of some apparently harmless piece of work, made by the busy hand of a peasant or merchant's wife. The Queen should not avail herself of a like method to communicate with her enemies. Austria would have her if the jailers did not look well to the royal bird they had caged at last.

Not even ink and paper must be allowed, or a pencil which would serve her purpose. Mme Roland could spend busy hours writing a life's experiences. She could gain solace from such occupation, being a woman of high mental powers. The descendant of the Hapsburgs must be idle, as she had chosen to be in former years. Let her make existence tolerable by friendship with the humblest servants. These last put flowers on her table and bought her various articles she wanted. It was soon an amusement to her to watch the guards playing a game of cards. The fearful monotony of life might break a stronger spirit. She broke down several times at the sight of the porter's little son, for mother-instincts were the strongest within her during this time of desolation. She longed to know how it fared with the frail child she loved devotedly.

He was to be brought up to an honest trade, they had said, by the advice of Chaumette, the Republican whose bread Louis XVI had once shared. He would have a rough life of it, but he would soon forget the luxury of Versailles. It had not lasted long, that childhood of excessive care and petting. He would make a brave man yet, for he had learnt already to speak a little coarsely.

The Queen wept over a glove she kept in her bosom, and a lock of hair she cherished to the end. She would never again see the son they had taken from her; the conviction grew with the dark summer of solitary brooding. Otherwise, she retained firmness and self-reliance that would dispense with the help of a maid in dressing and the performance of little household duties. She had a doctor who said the cell was not fit for a captive to inhabit, but nothing was done, and the heat of the month of August tried her unbearably. News never came from the outer world, and she longed for the success of Austria. Fersen was talking wildly of a march on Paris, but she did not know it. The English were in Toulon, and her position became more dangerous daily.

A certain inspector of the police came one day with a companion who left a bunch of flowers behind him. The Queen found a note in them when the two men had left her cell. She was closely watched, and could not write a letter in reply to the offer of help from without her prison. She racked her brains to think of a safe substitute for pen and ink, and decided to prick some words with a pin, promising to be ready. She had friends within the Conciergerie, and the note was conveyed to the right persons. Marie Antoinette waited, nevertheless, for rescuers who never came, since there was treachery afloat and the whole plan was discovered. Another cell was chosen for her, and she had to endure a still more rigorous captivity. There was a dreadful uncertainty as to the issue of the war when the Queen was brought to answer for her former crimes against the nation.

It was 14 October, 1793, according to the old reckoning, but the names of the months had changed, like her own title, on the documents they published. It was the 23rd day of the first month of the fourth year of freedom. The trial of the widow Capet was decreed for the second year of the Republic. It was the new era, and a new calendar had been introduced with four equal seasons and twelve months of thirty days each, the five odd days being left for special festivals in honor of Genius, Labour, Actions, Rewards, and Opinions. The Republic was dated from September 21st. Vendemiare, Brumaire, Frimaire were hence-forward to be the three autumn months; Nivose, Pluviose and Ventose the period of rain, wind, and snow; Germinal, Floreal, Prairial were to symbolize the season of seed and flowering; Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor, the summer of heat and fruition of all things. Weeks were to be abolished in favour of decades or periods of ten days—three to each month. The tenth day was to be the day of rest, and the Christian Sabbath was to cease under the Republic.

Of such changes Marie Antoinette was ignorant when she left her prison to be tried by a court significant of the equality of the new era. There was a hatter in the jury and a barber, as well as a famous surgeon. The judge was Herman, a man of formidable aspect; and Fouquier-Tinville, earning his salary as Public Accuser by zealous, industrious hours, was present—lean and brown-skinned and terrible to those he questioned, though he had a wife and child at home devoted to his fortunes.

Stately and imposing the widow looked, approaching the court where so many curious spectators were waiting to applaud her downfall. She had lost her beauty, and her sight was dimmed by the rigors of her imprisonment, yet she had not lost distinction. Her pale cheeks were painted red, and she wore black in startling contrast to her pallor. She was wearing robes suited to her present forsaken state—very different from those supplied by the Court modistes  of Versailles. On her grey, abundant hair a cap rested in token of her widowhood. She had forsaken the foolish head-dresses of old days, and would have felt them now too wearisome. Vanity had forsaken her with that following of frivolous companions, nearly all now dead or in banishment. She had lost youth quickly, they might have thought, who did not know the scorching fires of pain she had endured with fortitude.

She gave her name clearly in answer to the judge's question, "Marie Antoinette of Austria, some thirty-eight years old, widow of Louis Capet, the King of France." She was allowed to sit down when Fouquier-Tinville began his speech for the prosecution. There were many charges brought against her; some of them were true. She was accused of having sent millions of gold to Austria to aid them in the war with France. That was false, but she had nevertheless been guilty of treason against the country over which she reigned. She denied that charge with all the other charges, and once only was moved from her cold, disdainful attitude by the base story of sins which her little boy had been forced to attribute to his mother. The Queen would not reply to the questions pressed upon her in connection with this subject. "I have not answered," she said with a cry, "because nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a mother. I appeal to all the mothers that are here.

Her persecutors had lost ground by the wicked attempt to vilify; women in the galleries were roused to pity and men to indignation. The seven hours' sitting had come to an end in the midst of hubbub and commotion. Robespierre, who was not present, cursed the Republican who had brought this change, because he thought the Queen would now be freed. The trial was resumed at five, and lasted very long in the smoky hall where it was conducted. The Queen was wakened from her last sleep the next day to meet the further evidence against her.

There was a witness from the nobility who revived the ancient pride of Marie Antoinette. She was able to answer the questions relating to her extravagance and frivolity without emotion. She denied firmly her implication in the plot to obtain the Diamond Necklace. Even her friends had been doubtful of this mysterious affair. Her enemies thought it a good occasion to recall it.

She was defended, and her defenders allowed to speak after Fouquier-Tinville. The night was drawing to an end, and she was fatigued by the strain of it. Four o'clock had struck when she was summoned to hear the verdict. They had decided that she was guilty of the indictment brought against her. She had conspired against France, and had influenced the late King dangerously. She was responsible for the attitude of enemies of the Republic. She was sentenced to death and made no protest, returning to her cell with the old dignity, and demanding pen and paper that she might have the privilege of writing to her husband's sister. She assured Madame Elizabeth that her one regret was for the children she must abandon. It was a noble inspiration that ran through this letter, betraying qualities Marie Antoinette had seldom shown in the days of her first splendor.

She would not see the priest, because he had not been true to the old order, and had taken the oath required by the Civil Constitution. She changed her black dress for one of white muslin—elegant and flowing. She put on a pair of high-heeled shoes, and cut off the locks of grey hair that would impede the executioner in his duty.

It was October 16th, 1793, according to the old calendar when Marie Antoinette was led from her prison to the tumbril waiting to convey her through the streets to the guillotine. No privacy was granted to the Queen suffering the last humiliations of the guilty. Her hands were bound, and the windows of all houses were full of heads, peering out to see the woman who had caused such bitter hate and jealousy. It was raining drearily, as it rained that autumn day when Versailles was besieged by angry women. Some of these were rejoicing that the Austrian should know discomfort in her turn. Very few pitied the stately figure, still erect and displaying all the aloofness her people had resented. Her face was very pale, and she did not move nor speak.

The guillotine took her life at noon, and in that same hour a victory was won for Republican France so glorious that, had it been a day sooner, it might have saved the last indignities of a head shown to subjects who were once admirers of its royalty. The battle of Wattignies should indeed have saved Marie Antoinette from the scaffold, because it relieved her enemies from the fear that they would lose their cherished liberties.

The Reign of Terror

One belief was in the minds of the nine men composing the all-powerful Committee of Public Safety in the dread year of 1793—Triumph of the Republic, Destruction of the Enemies of the Republic. Their creed was simpler still when Maxmilien Robespierre joined the body, for his speeches had long impressed the audience of the Jacobin Club with one idea—treason was the cause of all the misfortunes of the patriots, and the only remedy for them—the guillotine.

Billaud-Varenne was the man to work out this idea with all the coolness that was necessary for a thorough-going reformer. Wild fury was abroad in Paris and sufferings too terrible to be related here, yet he went about his ruthless task methodically, and dragged to the scaffold friends and foes alike. Danton had been the first to bring into prominence the obscure young advocate whose time was mainly occupied in writing plays. Danton was sacrificed by his protégé, remembering well his opinion—"Billaud has a dagger under his tongue." The Girondins owed their tragic fate to him, who was largely concerned with the downfall of the royal hostage. His name signed every death-warrant, and Fouquier-Tinville, business-like and oddly ignorant of the dread he had inspired, was encouraged by the pitiless nature of a man approving every wholesale massacre.

1793

He had a sinister aspect with hard eyes and sarcastic lips; he increased the fear of his victims by a yellow wig which covered sleek black hair. No other man could convey so well the impression of inhumanity, though money was valueless to Billaud, and he did not corrupt himself for the sake of power. His married life was happy with the beautiful girl he had loved in his humble student days before the Revolution. He continued to live on the fourth floor of a mean street, contented apparently with the society of this one woman, for he had no friends, and was left, at the end, without a single supporter of his cruelty.

Couthon, the cripple, was active among the nine, playing a leading part wherever there was need of energy, in spite of his infirmities. His appearance was distinguished, and he had hours of refined pleasures in the apartments he furnished with great elegance. Those who approached him to ask a favour were emboldened by the sight of the cripple, gently feeding a young rabbit or playing with a beautiful little boy, his infant son. They were deceived by apparent courtesy, and shocked to see the change coming over the placid face when the methods of the Revolutionary tribunal were criticized. There was the tiger-instinct in Couthon, these said afterwards, remembering the fierce glare of the eyes and the treacherous softness of his manners. He was defended by guardsmen, like all other members of the Committee, and it went ill with any who spoke openly to him at a private interview.

The prisons were filled under the sway of these nine tyrants, making all men victims who could be described as dangerous to the public happiness, forsooth! It was not upon aristocrats alone that their vengeance descended swiftly. A servant of some age and respectability was publicly guillotined for disrespect to the nation in a moment of intoxication. The trainer of a parrot which had been taught to acclaim the King was sentenced, and the bird taught by loyal citizens to utter more Republican sentiments. The relatives of an emigrant incurred suspicion, however innocent they might be, and few were as fortunate as Victoire de Lambilly, the plucky little Breton lady who pleaded for her husband's life.

It would have been hard, one imagines, to find a charge against this merry little woman with the brown eyes and chestnut hair. She was a devoted wife, yet she had not fled with her husband, who joined the opposing princes' army. She took refuge in a convent at Lamballe, and was arrested as an ex-noble, Comtesse Mouessan de la Villirouet. It was true that she had been born of an aristocratic family and had been guilty of marrying a man of rank, but, she pleaded indignantly, how could blame be attached to her when she had never treated the peasants badly or meddled with the politics of France? She was a simple house-wife, interested chiefly in her children, all young, for she herself was barely twenty-six.

She was more successful than the majority of mothers—in answer to a pleading letter she was allowed to have her children with her in the prison. Her cell became a place of delight after they came. She never complained of discomfort, and bore the ignominy of constant spying and searching in the cheerful spirit which was her ultimate salvation.

It was merry in the convent of the Ursulines that winter, and the quiet Bretons of Lamballe marvelled at the light-hearted nobles, shut up in miserable confinement, when they heard of an evening the sound of dancing and gaiety. The prisoners were keeping themselves warm in accordance with the clever plan of Citoyenne Villirouet.

Months passed before there was a chance of leaving the cold and hungry life of the old convent, where two hundred prisoners were crowded into the space for twenty. They had done little harm, these wives and daughters of emigrant Breton nobles. Victoire saw no reason why she should not make an appeal on their behalf. She seized the opportunity of visiting a member of the Convention who chanced to stay at Lamballe, and, dauntless in her mission, succeeded admirably. Her light face and delightful personality would have won her own freedom from a harder man because she had none of the disdain of a fine lady. She would not be satisfied, however, till all her companions were liberated and ran hither and thither to get the papers signed which would release every captive at the convent. She had to rise early and meet the chance of a rebuff, but she was happy in accomplishing the miracle. Her husband returned later, and was disguised as his boy's tutor. It was Victoire's cruellest blow when the Count was discovered and sent to prison.

Life in the Depot of Paris was far worse than in the convent of Lamballe, where the other prisoners had been of high rank. Here Victoire, who had joined her husband, met the horrors of association with real criminals. There was disease, and dirt, and wickedness among them. The jailer guarded his charges with the aid of two great bull-dogs. A frailer spirit would have been broken by the treatment of such a man, but Victoire was indomitable, and made a friend of him. She was allowed to spend the day with her husband by especial favour, and declared herself happy in the terrible den which they shared with many other inmates. She had to work for these privileges, selling spirits in the absence of the jailer's wife. The intense heat tried her most, for the atmosphere was not purified by a hot stove burning day and night. Her throat was hoarse when she pleaded for her husband, put on trial before the Tribunal and removed to the prison of the Abbaye.

Seldom had been seen a wife so heroic as Victoire, arrayed in white and burning with the fever of her mind. She won the hearts of the president and the judges. There was hardly a dry eye when she had concluded her eloquent appeal of more than forty minutes. The citizens embraced the pleader tumultuously when the sentence was given, rejoicing in her great joy and admiring her devotion. A cry of satisfaction greeted the husband and wife as they were reunited. "Long may you live!" they shouted. "Long may you be happy!" It was an instance of the fickle favour of the mob, for they would have hooted Victoire had she been condemned with the Comte de Villirouet. But there was something splendid about this little aristocrat's eager pleading.

So the prison doors were sometimes opened for such reunions and family rejoicing. They closed heartlessly too often for less favoured suppliants. Old men were refused last glimpses of their loved ones, and the most beautiful were known to beg in vain. Money, it is true, could accomplish certain alleviations if it could not always buy the judges. Fouquier-Tinville was not a man of luxury, and did not take bribes, though he was accused of sharing the profits made by a kind of pleasant shelter known to Paris as the home of Dr Belhomme.

The doctor had received patients before the Revolution in a roomy house with a garden, where the inmates could walk in quiet seclusion from the outer world. Most of these suffered from mental disorders and were a source of considerable profit, for the physician's fees were heavy. Another class of boarders flocked there presently, paying stupendous prices for the privilege of residence. One after another, very wealthy prisoners were allowed to leave La Force or L'Abbaye, both prisons of a gloomy nature. There was some talk of rheumatism or perhaps fever, but it was generally understood that Belhomme was in agreement with the agents of the Public Prosecutor, and handed over part of the proceeds as a reward for silence. The Duchess of Orleans was among the favoured, and had tender passages with Rouzet, a member of the Convention. Citoyenne, the widow of Philippe-Equality, should be rightly named. She was one of the gayer members of the little society which assembled in the greatest delight at having escaped the dangers of the guillotine. One was quite safe with friendly, jovial Belhomme, provided one had a heavy purse. He was sorry when the purse was emptied to send away an old friend in favour of boarders who had resources still to be exhausted.

They paid enormous sums for the poorest food and the barest chambers. There was great talk of the pleasant life the inmates led and the luxuries of the table. Pretty, popular actresses were there as well as prisoners of noble blood. They continued to have admirers, and there was always music and dancing. The table was not well supplied, in reality, and only the richest could afford meals brought in from Paris, where the finest cooks now served the public, because their masters were dead or had emigrated. The humble citizens could often afford more lavish viands than were set before the hungry who had bought their lives at a great price and had little left to sustain them. They waited anxiously in long rows for the announcement of a meal, and rushed into the dining-room, sorely forgetful of the ceremony of the old order. Versailles would have disowned the courtly ladies, snatching some dainty before another could consume it, or the dandy pouring out a glass of wine without a thought for his neighbour. Coffee and cream and sugar were almost fabulous in price, and the ill-kept rooms only had what furniture the boarders could get to furnish them. Nobody dared to bargain with the proprietor, whose lightest word could give them up to certain death. Ingratitude was painful to him, and he was wont to meet it with reminders of the great benefits conferred. There were numbers clamouring in the Conciergerie, the most dreaded of all prisons. It was easy to fill his house as quickly as it emptied. The Rue de Charonne was a kind of paradise, seen from afar. There was lamentation amongst the hopeful prisoners who expected to be taken there on the day that Belhomme was arrested in 1794.

Andre Chenier, the imprisoned poet, would have found the doctor's house a more desirable refuge than his prison. He had been the victim of a true respect for monarchy, trying to win the people back to their duty to tradition. He was disgusted with the blood-thirsty Revolutionaries, being a man of refined and dreamy character. His mother was a Greek, and had a romantic history. She had been dazzled by the stories brought back from the Court of Louis XV by her father, Santi Lomaca, who was haunted by the splendor of the French. She was married to Louis Chenier, Councillor to the French Ambassador, in fulfilment of her long desire. She dowered her son with the poetic faculty and a temperament half oriental.

Andre grew up with a love of liberty that must be pure and noble. He hated brutality, and showed that hate too plainly. Camille Desmoulins denounced him, at the same time applauding loudly a brother whose play had been pleasing democratic Paris because in it tyrants met their deserts. Marie Joseph Chenier was both a Jacobin and a regicide. Andre Chenier fled to Versailles, now lonely in its desertion. He was taken on a visit to some friends, themselves suspects, and brought before a Revolutionary Committee.

Denial was useless to the questions put by such accusers Andre was innocent, but his very nature was abhorrent to men of coarser mould. They took him to the prison of Saint-Lazaire, a horrible cage for a poet, with its moaning prisoners and evil smells. Huddled together, each man was afraid of his neighbour, for the whole reign of this Terror might be conjugated, "I am afraid, thou art afraid, he is afraid," etc. Spies were perhaps lurking outside the nail-studded doors, along the teeming galleries. Eight or nine hundred victims were here when the poet arrived to give utterance to the revolt that was in every soul of them. Andre resigned himself to death, but he would not die till he had written verses immortalizing the awful struggles of the victims of the Terror.

Love awoke in the prisoner for the companion of his fears. "The Young Captive" was the poem he wrote in honor of Mlle de Coigny, a beautiful woman, generally held to have been unworthy of such adoration. She did not keep the verses addressed to her; she did not understand the soul of Andre Chenier, burning with indignation and alive to every injustice done to captives whose crime was often true nobility.

The family of the poet were not submissive to the decree of imprisonment, and wearied the authorities with appeals on behalf of the young son. Barere, in whose hands were many lives, made vague promises of liberation, but death was certain, and took place unknown to the old man, who was delighted to receive a definite statement that his son should come out of prison in three days' time.

Andre Chenier came out at the time appointed in a cart that took his body to a place of burial where no honor could be paid. It was long before the poet's grave could be discovered—long before France realized that the Revolution had executed a son of the greatest promise in the world of letters.

Marat would have applauded the discovery, for he did not love the learning of the French people. A man of curiously powerful intellect and a physician of some note, he would abolish the signs of luxury he called "monuments erected to the glory of princes."

One of the decrees of the Jacobins was to order the destruction of all tokens of royalty and nobility. The portrait of Louis XVI was torn down at the Louvre, and the Academie francaise perished with the monarchy.

The sans-culottes  were at the height of their power. They were given this title originally because they wore trousers, a mark of unfashionable costume to the world of Paris. The aristocracy wore culottes, i.e. knee breeches, and tightly-fitting stockings, whereas workmen were clad in trousers of cloth and fustian. The sans-culottes  were patriots nowadays, and insisted on customs that would carry out their beliefs in fraternity. They established the idea of dining in the street, compelling wealthier citizens to adopt it at great practical disadvantage to themselves. In a poor quarter there was risk of losing forks and spoons at a fraternal dinner where the man who had prepared nothing might share with his neighbour.

Hanriot, the commander of the National Guard, delighted his following by adopting this mode of life on behalf of unwilling householders. He knew how to speak to the sans-culottes, and urged the arrest of rebellious society freely. "My comrades! keep on arresting! Those who do not like it may go live wherever they please." He had an army at his back. It was not easy to resist him or to diminish his influence over the working-classes. He became more or less unpopular only when he could be reproached with ostentation. He was nicknamed Robespierre's Ass, because he was devoted to the Incorruptible, and rode through Paris on a sorry steed, an action which was likely to arouse the bitter jealousy of foot-soldiers at that time.

There were strangely distorted notions of liberty under the Terror, whose menacing shadow fell across the sunniest lives of France. The free Republicans were afraid to visit friends in any way suspected. Even if such were innocent, there was the spy ever ready to bring a charge of plotting. The quiet citizen, paying all dues and tacitly accepting the principles of the new order, was liable to arrest because he did not take an active part in the work of levelling the nation. It was useless to protest loyalty. Actions won the approval of the sans-culottes  provided that they were violent. Many, ardent in the first days of deliverance from tyranny, began to long for the monarchy again, recognizing that they were slaves to a system more fickle and more cowardly.

The materialist regretted the taxes which fell heavily upon the poorer quarters. Black bread had to serve for every purchaser, and there was a struggle round the baker's shop each morning. The tradesman was obliged by the demands of the Government to sell at heavy increased prices, and the purchasers did not find they had gained by having no luxurious Court to be supported. Only paper money might be used—a danger to the citizen, for it was often of little value when received. Indulgence in luxuries rendered any man liable to imprisonment, and noisy pleasures were at an end for Paris. The grotesque dance of the Carmagnole  was whirled through in the streets, conveying as little mirth as the scenes of trial which had once been reckoned more exciting than the drama of the stage. It became dull, at length, to watch victims who were unable to defend themselves to any purpose. The sight of blood began, at last, to nauseate the general public for whose welfare it was shed so freely.

Old people mourned the destruction of the Catholic Church, which had played a vital part in their earlier life. No services were held except such as desecrated the churches, and men and women died without prayer or Mass said for their souls. Children were born into the world without the ceremony of baptism being performed, and superstitious parents shuddered. It was enough for the intellectual to declare themselves always guided by pure reason. There were thousands of people in France quite rudderless now that they had no longer the guidance of religion. The bells were silent, and there were three days of rest instead of four. A passionate yearning for the past seized some, and they welcomed the death which was decreed for them because they had been heard to speak too well of the old order.

The Incorruptible

There was a time when Robespierre, beloved of Paris, might have checked the awful monotony of the passage to the scaffold. He was, by nature, opposed to violence and bloodshed, being more than any man of his time the follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But the Terror gave him what his ambition craved, the leading place among the people, and he would not risk that precious role by denouncing the insatiable lust for lives that had seized upon a section of society.

He had climbed by very gradual steps to the supreme height where he sat enthroned in 1794. Born in the northeast of France, the quietly aristocratic town of Arras had produced a lawyer, differing little in first youth from the generations of lawyers who preceded him. The family of Robespierre was almost noble, counting members of honourable eminence in the profession of the law. There were, too, dignitaries of the Church among them, and the prefix of aristocratic names had been dropped only a short while before the Revolution, which forbade such marks of distinction.

In May 1768, Maximilien-Marie-Isidore was christened at the church of the Madeleine some few hours after birth. He was the eldest of four children, the issue of a love-match wherein the family of Robespierre were thought to have condescended from their rank and ancient pride. Another son and two daughters were born before the mother died some seven years after Maximilien's birth, and the father left his family to shift for themselves, never taking kindly to his duties afterward, and roaming to rid himself of life-long sorrow. The children were well educated, but lacked money sorely as they grew up, and Maximilien had to suffer many humiliations to his pride when he was a fellow-student with Camille Desmoulins at the University of Paris. He had an honor it was ironical to dwell on in his later days, when he was singled out from among his companions to read a Latin speech in the presence of Louis XVI, the guest of the college, very soon after the glories of the coronation. He acquitted himself well, no doubt, being a clever youth of great composure; but he was not a worshipper of kings, and chose always to follow the teaching of Rousseau, an ill-disciplined genius, unlike himself in temperament.

The student returned to Arras after a career of distinction, and took up a regular life in the family house, which was a harmonious setting for a frugal, narrow household, being a formal, plain dwelling, without any of the lavish architecture figuring in the quaint streets of the northeast country. He was happy in his work and the society it opened to him. There was cultured leisure for the lawyer who had been elected a member of the Academy, and in spring Robespierre had a certain taste of the frivolity of the intellectual kind when he dallied with the other founders of the Rosati, a society which met to drink wine and wear garlands of roses in the classic manner. He wrote verses, not too brilliant, and made his reputation by defending an admirer of Benjamin Franklin, who had alarmed a spinster neighbour by putting up a lightning-conductor on a house at St Omer. This local glory was eclipsed in 1789 when Arras sent Maximilien Robespierre to Paris as a deputy of the States-General. There was a general feeling in the family that the fortunes of the eldest son should be promoted by the sacrifices of the others. Charlotte Robespierre gave up her tiny income to her brother, and was satisfied by an assurance that she should never be forsaken. The new deputy must have additions to his modest wardrobe, which contained always suits of warm brown ox olive green. He was of a very clear, pale complexion, described by writers of a later time as "sea-green," and studied the effects of his toilette. Although a poor man, he never neglected his person, and would appear in times of dangerous disturbance immaculately arrayed, with buckles on his shoes, silk stockings, powdered hair, and carefully shaven countenance.

ROBESPIERRE

No sensation was made by the deputy of Arras in that Assembly where so many greater men assumed the leading roles. Robespierre's greenish eyes and insignificant features were inconspicuous as his voice, which was too weak to dominate an audience of several thousands. He was present at the taking of the Tennis-Court Oath, and gained slighting attention because he stood with two hands upon his breast, "as though he had two hearts for liberty." The first time he came forward to rouse the people was the day when the women came into the Assembly at Versailles, and he demanded an inquiry into their loud-voiced grievances.

Once moved to Paris with the other deputies, Robespierre did not find his pride hurt by the shifts of poverty. He was always obliged to economize, dining on fifteen sous, and unable on one occasion to buy necessary mourning. Part of his scanty pay as deputy went to Charlotte, whose claims were eager if she thought her brother likely to forget them. It was possible to live in a garret of the great city and be constantly invited to dine with the great in Paris.

Robespierre began to win the favour of the people of the capital by constant repetition of the popular beliefs. He spoke very often at the Jacobin Club; dull wearisome speeches he read by the aid of spectacles. He had risen to be president of the club in 1790, and began to work against the traditions of the monarchy. He had no grudge against the King and Queen as private persons, but he did not believe that they were of use to France. Every man should have a vote, regardless of land or property, he repeated in the dry and formal tones that rendered an audience mocking, if it were accustomed to being roused by giant Mirabeau.

One ardent disciple, at least, Robespierre gained with the general favour of Paris. Saint-Just, a wild and beautiful boy, was devoted to him. He had friends among the first rulers of the Republic, numbering Danton and Desmoulins.

Danton succeeded Mirabeau, being of the nature for a leader. He had qualities which Robespierre lacked—fire, and the love of companionship, and the readiness to seize power in an hour of danger, and the subtle magic of a singular personality. Still the deputy plodded with his frequent speeches and reiterated phrases, the anchor of the Revolution, so long as he continued the one creed he had adopted from the beginning. "One empty word does not create a Republic," he would repeat, "it is made rather by the character of the citizens." He urged forward the destruction of the old order, swept along by the people who made him soon their idol. Cold and incorruptible, there was a permanent strength in him they trusted. He turned on the Girondins when their control of the country slackened. He was attacked by them, for they were virile, and despised him as pretentious and too virtuous. He was accused of aiming at the dictatorship through the will of the people. He bided his time and kept silence, noting the false nature of Dumouriez, a man born with the fascination over men so foreign to Robespierre's own austere nature, and the meddlesome traits of Brissot, a character of finer idealism. They fell, and he profited by their fall, for Danton would not suffer himself to lead the Terror. He was strong, and knew it to be stronger. He chose to retire from the turmoil of public life to the country, where he contracted a second marriage. Robespierre took a place in the Committee of Public Safety very shortly after Danton left it.

During all the dread days of massacre and regicide, the dapper little lawyer was retired in his quiet lodging. Few visitors were admitted into the fourth floor of the Rue St Honort which was filled now by medals, prints, and tokens of the recognition of a patriot by the people of the city which had made him their foremost deputy. The family of Duplay, with whom he lodged, guarded their famous guest like fierce watch-dogs, driving off poor Charlotte Robespierre when she would have sought a shelter. He was not to be troubled by private affairs. He had to decide the fate of a Republic. Lonely was the life of Maximilien because he chose loneliness. He had too little in common with his fellow-men.

At first, the tribune of the people had been firm in his principles and deserved the name "Incorruptible," when so many were corrupted by the bribes of power and place. Temptation came to him in the shape of ambition. He would let the Terror hold France in deadly grip lest he should lose his unique prestige among the commons. He made some effort to check the ceaseless insults to religion, because he was wise enough to see that such excesses would bring about reaction. Men would be disgusted by the fanatics rushing up and down Paris to destroy the priests, and holding sacrilegious services in the churches which they would not have open for their original purposes. He did not want that reaction, for his sovereignty would fail if mercy prevailed against tyrannical government. Saint-Just did not want it, for he knew that the system of Terror supplied soldiers for his armies, which would be disorganized by a new reign of peace. Couthon, in charge of finance, did not want it, because he feared that the national coffers would not be well filled if the new exactions could not be enforced, Gold was plentiful from the plunder of the wealthy and the stern discipline of the lower classes, who dare not refuse to pay lest they be accused of "incivism," a dreadful crime, punished by the guillotine.

The procession of tumbrils must thread its way drearily through the streets from the prisons still too crowded. Spies must "beat up game" by the most extraordinary accusations. One man was arrested for keeping the silver of an aristocrat in his house, another for residing in a chateau once belonging to an emigrant.

Friends should be sacrificed if there were need of it. Robespierre's pale eyes glittered when he heard how Danton and Desmoulins had become earnest in their demands for mercy. The extreme party who had made a mockery of religion were guillotined, and it seemed there would be fresh victims before the knife was to rust again. Danton had been a close friend, but friends made mistakes sometimes. He had made a mistake when he left the pleasant country, so soothing to his nature, and began to talk of releasing captives from their dungeons. There was only one man to dictate the wishes of the people and hold fast to the purifying of the Republic of France by blood. The Incorruptible must not shrink from a course abhorrent to his nature. He did not wish ill to a former colleague, but he placed the safety of the citizens before the safety of the individual. With a firm hand Robespierre signed the death-warrant of the mighty Revolutionary.

Danton had asked why there should be still so many victims, neither Royalists nor conspirators, since these had perished early. There must be innocent names on the lists of doomed heads. He spoke to Robespierre in friendly-wise and was a little daunted by the answer.

"And who says that any innocent man has perished?" The query was abrupt and menacing. It was not long before Danton was arrested and, by the wish of the Dictator, was not allowed to plead his cause at the bar.

Desmoulins must be given up to judgment because his pamphlets had begun to preach humanity, and this meant opposition to the Terror. Was there no such word as "pity"? bold Camille demanded. He was happily united to a woman he had loved when, as a struggling student, he had seen her a pretty child running in the alleys of the Luxemburg green gardens. Lucile was his now, and much that had been beyond the dreams of hot-headed, stuttering Camille, unable to find work as an advocate, and writing agitated demands to his father for "six louis or a bed." He had lain softly since those days, and had reason to cling to life for the sake of pretty, childish Lucile. But the spirit of truth and justice woke within the orator of the Palais Royal, and his last pamphlets were for liberation of the unrighteously condemned and the triumph of compassion. He thought to have Robespierre on his side, for they had been friends since college days in Paris; but Robespierre would not yield, and, hesitating not long to act, persisted in the Terror, which claimed two fresh victims for the spring-time.

In March 1794 Camille received the news of his mother's death with a dim foreboding that his own was not far off. He spent the day weeping, and when night fell heard the measured tread of soldiers coming to arrest him. Lucile clasped him in her arms, and would have protected the father of her sleeping child had not he decided to meet fate carelessly. With one agonized glance round the home where he had spent his happiest hours, the writer on behalf of mercy opened the door to admit his captors. He looked back to the window where Lucile stretched out her arms to him in mute farewell. He thought of the first vision he had had of her in gracious childhood. His window looked out on the Luxemburg gardens, always haunted by that memory. He wrote letters to his wife far surpassing the pamphlets which had raised him from obscurity. "I was born," he said, "to compose verses, to defend the unfortunate, and to make you happy."

Lucile followed her husband to death in April, for Robespierre had not scrupled to use his power against a former hostess. He was alone in his pitiless isolation above the rest of France. He could not have believed in the guilt of Danton and Desmoulins, but he thought not of guilt and innocence. He was the Republic. He must live on while all around him perished. The noise of the tumbrils came to him when the evening shadows filled the quiet apartment of the Rue St Honor. Did they bring an ominous warning that the tide which bore him upon its crest would soon begin to ebb?

Thermidor

"Robespierre will follow me; I drag down Robespierre," so said Danton, ascending the scaffold by the judgment of his former friend. "Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with the governing of men."

Robespierre's hands were stained with the blood of the man who had himself created the Revolutionary Tribunal and craved pardon for it "from God and man." But Robespierre went about the business of living, without echoing that desire for an obscure life to which some of his greater colleagues had given utterance.

The word "virtue" was everywhere. The people had taken it up eagerly, thinking it good for the Republic. Their nation was in ill odor with Europe, scandalized by the overthrow of all religion. Disorder seemed to be rife in the France which had tried to worship Reason. The festival, in which the printer's beautiful wife had been enthroned on the high altar of Notre Dame as Goddess of Reason, shocked the God-fearing, and that festival in the Church of Saint Eustache, where there was every appearance of a tavern in the choir, "decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables over-loaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors: whosoever presented himself took part of the good things: children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason in azure mantle sat aloft, in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of chapel balustrades, of Priests' and Canons' stalls."

The rumour of this wild orgy did not fail to spread abroad, causing mortification to Robespierre, a decent man, whose family had been connected with the ancient Catholic faith. He swept away Hebert and the party delighting in excess of irreligion. When the guillotine had deprived them of their heads, they could no longer mock. They could never cause again such consternation to the reverent in foreign lands. It was time for Virtue to be established. The people must have festivals on the Tenth Days which were now free from labour.

France was doing well at home and abroad that summer. Her armies were victorious, her crops promised to be most plentiful. It was fitting that the Republic should give thanks for conquest and prosperity. Robespierre was prepared to proclaim his own belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, governing all the world. He had often spoken against those who refused to recognize a deity. The Republic itself was Virtue, he declared, and all its enemies were vices excited against it and paid by kings. Anarchists, corrupt men, and atheists were the agents of Pitt, the English statesman, who was so great a traitor to the cause of Liberty.

There should be festivals on the Tenth Days, not only to the Supreme Being but to Liberty, and the martyrs of Liberty, and to hatred of tyranny and traitors. The inscriptions lately put on churches, dedicating them to Reason, were torn down and others substituted, explaining that they were to be used for the worship of the Supreme Being. Rousseau's remains were removed to the Pantheon, and a pension given to his widow, For, in this, as in all actions, Robespierre had a master. He knew the writings of Rousseau by heart, though the scenes of violence staining Paris were not displeasing to him, the follower of a man detesting bloodshed. He decreed the establishment of religion with an air of satisfaction, and the prisons were more crowded than ever, the carts bore daily a heavier load of victims to the executioner.

Spies had been encouraged, wretched creatures, often men disbanded from the Revolutionary army. They wanted to earn money and found it very easy. They thronged in every cafe, in every theatre, and every public place, making up their lists of "suspects." Seven thousand prisoners were counted soon, and the lot of these became much harder. "Grey hairs and youthful forms, countenances blooming with health and faces worn with suffering, beauty, and talent, rank and virtue were indiscriminately rolled to the fatal doors. Sixty persons often arrived in a day, and as many were, on the following morning sent out to execution. Night and day, the cars incessantly discharged victims into the prison. The extent of the calamity had rendered men suspicious even of those they loved most. Every one assumed the coarsest dress and most squalid appearance. An elegant exterior would have been the certain forerunner of destruction. With trembling looks they gazed round the room, fearful that the very walls might harbor traitors. The sound of a foot—the stroke of a hammer—a voice in the street froze all hearts with horror. If a knock was heard at the door, every one, in agonizing suspense, expected his fate. Unable to endure such protracted misery, numbers committed suicide."

There were some to applaud when an attempt was made on Robespierre's life, for his name it was that chilled the blood of all the so-called enemies of the Republic. Cecile Renault, a girl of twenty, had it in her heart to follow Charlotte Corday, but she was not successful. She asked to see Robespierre, but the family of Duplay, with whom he still lived, refused to admit her. She persevered till suspicion was aroused, and she was seized and taken before the Committee of Public Safety. A basket she possessed was searched and found to contain knives as well as the articles of a woman's dress. She refused at first to acknowledge the purpose of the knives, but said that the clothes were to adorn her own person, if she were sent to the guillotine. Fouquier-Tinville perceived that she loved fine raiment and thought to humiliate her. She was clad in filthy rags when she appeared for trial again, but made very light of this treatment. She died cheerfully, and the Jacobins received Robespierre with enthusiasm because he had escaped assassination.

He became more powerful still, and was adored by a little court of women. He was not ill-pleased to hear that an old woman looked upon him as the Messiah. He alienated numbers of adherents by his manner of conducting himself at the Great Festival in honor of the Supreme Being. There were already rivals, eager to condemn his arrogance. "Men of the high hand," they called Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon, because they betrayed contempt for other mortals as inferior.

The 20th prairial (20th June) was full summer, and Robespierre set off jauntily from the Rue St Honore. He had forsaken the sober raiment of his first choice and clad himself in a light blue coat with black silk breeches and waistcoat of white silk, richly embroidered. White stockings and gold shoe-buckles proclaimed his pride of appearance, and indeed he was to be priest and prophet henceforth, the hero of this day of festival. His carefully powdered hair was adorned with feathers oddly out of harmony with his cast of countenance. There could never be anything unrestrained and joyous about the bearing of Maximilien Robespierre. He carried the bunch of flowers, fruit, and ears of corn rather awkwardly. The tricolour sash did not suit him, but he must wear it to please the patriots fawning to-day on him alone.

The garden of the Tuileries had a royal spectacle, recalling to some the old order they despised. The Convention sat in an amphitheatre with groups of the people on either side of them. All wore wreaths according to their years, ivy and olive crowning the old people, oak being symbolical of the strength of manhood, myrtle decking the brow of beauteous youth, and violet being the flower of the immature on that occasion. Figures representing Atheism, Discord, and Selfishness were burnt by Robespierre, the President, after he had delivered one of those set and formal speeches in which his soul delighted. Pompously he applied the torch, and from the ashes of the burning statues rose the figure of Wisdom, somewhat blackened by the flames. He made a second speech—on the duty of rooting out the vices arrayed against the Republic—before the procession started to the Field of Mars, the scene of former festival.

Robespierre did not hear the jeers of his enemies when he walked apart from them in the supreme place of honor. He was gratified by the public admiration, and the hissed-out "Tyrant" passed by him unheeded. Beneath the boughs of a tree planted on a lofty mount, the Convention seated themselves, with fast rising jealousy of this member who would make himself an idol. Songs and music did not soothe their sense of injury, nor that most patriotic spectacle of youths drawing their swords and swearing to defend their country.

The pride of Robespierre was wounded before the crowd, who resented the honours heaped upon him. A man approached and said with amazing boldness, "I like your festival, Robespierre, but you I detest mortally."

The luster of the brilliant tribute was dimmed by this coarse reminder of rivals eager to displace him. He complained of the insults rather peevishly to colleagues of the Assembly. Their want of sympathy galled him. He succeeded in passing a law, concerning the trial of suspects, in the face of opposition.

Until this time, there had been some pretence of a legal trial, with witnesses and jury. "To calumniated patriots the law gives patriot jurors as defenders; to conspirators it grants none." Henceforth, the basest injustice could reign unchecked.

The Committee grew alarmed, fearing every day to be brought to trial without defence. Robespierre retired from their meetings in disgust because they would have suppressed the sect which honoured him as prophet. He left Couthon, the energetic cripple who was wheeled about Paris in a bath-chair. Saint-Just was with the army. It was time for Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois to reveal their enmity.

The Jacobins welcomed Robespierre and he continued to speak in that club. Couthon was applauded when he declared that the followers of Danton and Hebert were still attacking the Republic. There were wild stories spread by dangerous persons that members of the Committee were to be brought to the bar in great numbers, but there were only about six men tried in all, and they deserved their fate.

The familiar sight of tumbrils was ceasing to please the people of Paris, who no longer paid for chairs to watch the guillotine at work. They had grown weary of the spectacle which was repeated constantly, and nearly all the aristocrats had fallen. Death was climbing down to the lower orders, and casting shadow over humble households. The first dreadful massacres of September, 1792, had been caused by the real fear of an invading, ruthless army. The Republic was out of danger, and ordered executions because it had become a habit.

THE SUSPECT.

Formalities were discarded in the tribunal over which Fouquier-Tinville presided. One man protested that his name was not down on the list of the accused. "What signifies that?" said Fouquier.

"Give it, quick!" The prisoner was sent to the scaffold with the others.

The lists of people to be executed were called by hawkers underneath the windows of the prisons. "Those who have gained prizes in the lottery of Sainte-Guillotine" they called to the doomed wretches, living from hour to hour in an agony of expectation. The jailers would wake the night silence, sometimes, by the turning of keys and clanging of doors, to create panic among their charges. Natures became brutalized very quickly, even after Robespierre's sublime declaration of religion. After his new law had passed, the Public Accuser gloated over fifty or sixty a day, saying, "Heads fall like tiles. It must go better still next decade; I must have 450 at least." The spies renewed their efforts, making up lists at random. One was accused of using aristocratic language, another of having drunk wine on a day when the army had been defeated. There was abject fawning on these creatures in the prisons. Every one caressed them and spoke humbly to them in the hope of winning mercy. The "evening journal" was the jest they loved most of all the grim jests made on the Terror. The names read out caused such passionate farewells, such tears of anguish. Heroic self-sacrifice was a cause of laughter. An old man would take his son's place if he could, a lover that of his mistress.

Robespierre was the author of the system, the victims believed, as they were driven past the rue St Honore where he sat writing the speeches that should ruin the rival faction. Pache and Hanriot were on his side and would support him against jealousy and malice. He was surrounded, when he ventured out, by armed friends declaring themselves his bodyguard, and the family of Duplay all loved him.

In his absence all went well with the Government, the army winning fresh glories which brought honor to Carnot, a member not supporting Robespierre. He was tempted to wish for defeats, since victory was not to be of his making. He spoke slightingly of victory over armies in the field, and said France needed victories over factions. Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois were profiting by his retirement. He would denounce them in Thermidor. He made his great speech on the 8th, still trusting to words when his comrades would have made use of weapons.

Billaud, who would have liked to reign in Robespierre's stead, answered him. The famous speech of the Republican was not to be printed before further consideration. It was a check to Robespierre, and the Jacobins voted the expulsion of the deputies who would thwart their favourite. There was a scene between Saint-Just, recalled from the army, and Collot. The next day Billaud insisted on the arrest of the member of the Jacobins who had "threatened the faithful deputies." He threw off all disguise, and openly attacked Robespierre, averring that he intended to become absolute master of the country.

Robespierre turned at bay, his face white, his eyes flashing. "Down with the tyrant!" The voices were vigorous, and the cry was repeated. The misdeeds of the official were recited, and he was not allowed to speak. His friends were arrested, and cries of "Accusation" levelled at the tyrant. "I share the crimes of my brother; let me share his fate." Augustin Robespierre had not forgotten the family pride in the able elder brother. The decree was passed, and Couthon, Saint-Just, and Lebas were included in it. "To the bar! To the bar!" It was too late that day to accede to the wish of the Assembly. Hanriot was placed in the hall with his allies, after vainly trying to rouse a force in their favour. Paris had long been tired of the Terror, and would not free the authors of the system. Shops closed on the route followed by the victims would be open on the morrow if these five passed by in the tumbrils. There was feverish excitement in the places of confinement, for liberty might be coming to free the condemned. There was hope while Robespierre sat in the Luxemburg, proclaimed an outlaw. His friends might yet summon armies to save him, but fear had left those wont to tremble before him. He had been confused by the onslaught of his enemies. He had shown bewilderment to the crowd.

The prisoners were dismayed by Hanriot's discovery that the gunner he had led had deserted him. They were in extreme peril, and could not make any useful decision. Lebas shot himself, while Augustin Robespierre and Hanriot threw themselves out of a window. Saint-Just had a weapon but did not attempt to make use of it. His beautiful oval face was serene in expression, while the others were frenzied. Couthon dared not plunge a dagger in his heart, and Maximilien hesitated long before clapping a pistol to his head. He inflicted a wound that was not fatal, only breaking his jaw, and failed in the attempt to escape the knife which had so long done his bidding.

The Dictator was brought before the Committee in a disarray that told the story of his downfall. He still wore the light blue coat he had donned so proudly for the day of festival. In Thermidor, it was soiled, and the blood oozed on it from the wound roughly dressed by a surgeon.

It was the 10th of Thermidor when the "outlaws" were dismissed by Fouquier-Tinville without the mockery of a trial. The scaffold had been erected for them in the Place de la Revolution. A group of women danced round the cart which bore Robespierre, livid and exhausted. Friends of victims, done to death during the tyrant's sway, cursed him volubly. The windows were crowded with people, inspired by the same interest that had brought Eleanor Duplay, who loved the lodger, to watch the tumbrils he sent rolling past the Rue St Honore. As he passed to his death the gendarmes pointed their swords toward the man in the stained blue coat whom the nation had once acclaimed. They spoke of Danton, and wondered if this tyrant would be as sturdy in defiance of the guillotine. "The death of thee gladdens my very heart," a woman called out, clinging to the tumbril.

Saint-Just died with courage, and the reckless spirit that had made him notorious in early, youthful follies. The advocate from Arras was the last to lay his head before the executioner. Stoicism gave way for a moment of human pain and fear. He gave a sharp cry, and thus ended the Reign of Terror. The shouts of applause rang through Paris and echoed over Europe. The tyrant was gone. "Long live Liberty!" Better, indeed, to be a poor .fisherman than to meddle with the governing of men.

The Little Apprentice

The day that saw the death of Robespierre and the end of the Terror removed from the stage of the Revolution a figure always mysterious in history. "Simon the shoemaker" fell under, the guillotine. He had forsaken his old trade and turned politician, being arrested for an attempt to go to the assistance of the outlawed leader, then in the Town Hall, whence he might have been removed.

Simon had been guardian of the heir of the Capets—Louis XVII—till six months previous to the Thermidor. It was with him that the Queen saw the little boy go forth from the royal apartments in the Temple. It was through him that she endured a long martyrdom, hearing of the boy's treatment and gradual corruption at the hands of the jailers.

Chaumette, the Republican, who had shared a crust with Louis Seize, was inspired with a desire to make the son of Louis Seize a useful member of the commons. He had read Rousseau, and was influenced probably by the statement that Emile "honoured a shoemaker much more than an emperor." He had been an artisan himself, and had followed many occupations. "I wish to give him some education," he said of the little Dauphin put under his care; "I will keep him away from his family so as to make him lose the idea of his rank."

There was another reason for the choice of honest Simon, He was held to be a true patriot, since the 190) ?> sight of royal suffering never moved him in those early days of rigorous imprisonment. He had gained honor among the Republican rulers by revealing a plot to rescue the Queen and her family. Chaumette judged wisely that he would not succumb to any temptations that Royalists might offer for the person of the heir to the fallen throne of France.

The Dauphin clung to his mother when the Municipals removed him to the second floor of the Temple Tower. He realized his loneliness bitterly now that there was none of that retinue to care for him which had made his household so expensive in the old days of Versailles. He had been attended by duchesses and marchionesses, rustling in silks faintly scented with perfumes of the East. Governesses had been elegant and refined, and nursemaids women of some claim to rank in the nurseries where everything was softest luxury. Since the trials of existence began, there had been the tenderest attentions of his mother, always stately and beautiful, with white hands and gentle voice that rarely uttered a harsh word.

No wonder the child shrank from the wife of Simon with her coarse features and clumsy caresses. She did caress him in his early captivity, being a woman without sons of her own, and pleased with the honourable situation that relieved her from drudgery. She was to have 4000 francs a year for this light employment, and her husband 6000 francs. There was nothing to do beyond sitting at ease in the comfortable chairs provided, and eating the good meals served at the expense of the nation. She had boasted to a neighbour that she would be fetched to her work in a carriage. She wished all her gossips of the cobblers' quarter in Paris could have seen her ruling the spoilt son of sixty kings.

Simon ill-used the charge entrusted to him by the State. He taught him to sing the Carmagnole and the Marseillais, and to speak disrespectfully of the three women still surviving in the other apartments of the Temple. He tried to poison the boy's mind by stories of the Queen, his mother. She was wont to spend hours at a narrow opening through which she could see her son taken up to the battlements for exercise. She tried in vain to get satisfactory news of him. It would have caused her agonies to think of the heir of France wearing the red cap of liberty and taught to swear terrible oaths against God, his family, and aristocrats. Mercifully she was spared the full knowledge of the truth, and died before there was worse to be related. She knew that they had taken away the black coat worn in mourning for King Louis, and she was told that he was ill. He had never been very healthy, even when he could run about the grounds of Saint-Cloud or Marly. The food given by Simon was unsuitable, and the wine forced upon him made Marie Antoinette's son still sicklier. He detested wine, as she had done, and liked to drink pure water.

The Dauphin's aunt and sister were alarmed after the Queen had gone to execution. They heard sounds of movement one night which led them to believe that Simon was conducting his charge to some place from the Temple. Looking through the keyhole, they saw packages conveyed by stealth. The whole day there had been much running up and down, and Simon's wife had breathed asthmatically from her exertions. She was a stout woman, and was occupied in counting linen and saying farewell to friends in the guard-house. It was a night of dense fog when the Temple gates were opened and a cart rumbled out of it, bearing the cobbler and his wife to a less celebrated dwelling.

There were stories told in later times of a child smuggled out in a basket of soiled clothes by Simon, who had not allowed his goods to be examined. A child hidden in a paste-board horse was said to have taken the Dauphin's place in prison. According to these narratives, a deaf mute had been chosen, and dressed in similar clothes to those worn by the Dauphin. When he awoke from a drugged sleep it was useless to question him, because he could not answer. Fright seized the guardians appointed to look after him in Simon's place. They were in horror of the guillotine, and adopted the most desperate measures.

The prisoner was walled up in his room, without fire or light except the faint glimmer of a lamp, which did not allow him to be clearly seen from the barred wicket which was the only opening allowed. The door was securely fastened and never opened, except for the conveyance of food to the buried child. That was often passed through the wicket as one passes food to caged animals. Men came to look through now and then, but did not enter to hold conversation.

In her old age, Mme Simon was fond of persisting that the fate of her "little Charles" had not been death. Claimants had some grounds for pretending to be Louis XVII while she was still upholding the story of the bundle of soiled linen. The Dauphin's sister, indeed, had believed that her brother was being taken away on the sinister January night. It was some time before she heard reports to convince her that he was still living in the Temple.

The unfortunate child survived in all probability, though there must be doubts of his real end always. A child was certainly kept in the awful terrors of solitude with a bell he dared not ring to summon his tormentors, without a voice to cheer his days, or an arm to protect him in the night.

It was a rat-infested place, with swarms of vermin, which he learned to keep from the bed and chair on which he sat. He would place an old hat containing the remains of his unrelished meals, in the centre of the floor, to attract his only companions, and would then crouch as far away as possible while they devoured the food. For six months his bed was not made and he was too ill to attend to it himself. He had been used to a certain amount of regular exercise under cruel Simon and would have welcomed his gaoler back again. The faces of the men, sent in turn to peer through the bars, haunted him after they had departed. He sat all day long without occupation, forgetting the happy times of early childhood He wondered in his brighter moments where his sister was, and the aunt who had promised to look after him. He became unkempt and dirty, for he did not wash himself. He had been used to much personal attention, and had never learned to do anything for himself.

A guard spoke to the authorities of the condition of the child and was dismissed for his trouble. Madame Royale was anxious concerning the fate of her only brother, but she might not see him. She was relieved when a compassionate man named Laurent was appointed. He was kind to the princess and did what he could for the Dauphin, but the child was still alone.

Laurent feared to compromise himself by showing too much kindness. It was dangerous to express sympathy under the tyrant sway of Robespierre. Gomier the physician came, at length, to solace the little prisoner, diseased from his long and dreadful isolation. He tried to amuse little Louis, but it was hopeless to rouse the gaiety of a victim treated more grimly than the children sent to the guillotine before their mother's eyes. There were awful stories of infant slaughter in the provinces, where the condemned were drowned in great numbers to save the ever-working knife of the guillotine.

The Committee-General visited the Temple during the winter which followed Thermidor. Pity was awaking after the fall of the Terror, but pity could not save the boy, now suffering from a kind of fever He could not take walks when permission was granted, and hated exertion in his feeble state. He had been an engaging child when he was the idol of a Court, and even now he was grateful to the few who eared for him.

Physicians tried to revive the life of Louis XVII without avail. His strength ebbed daily, and the announcement of his death was made to the nation in June 1795. He was a little more than ten years old.

After the Deluge

The news of Robespierre's fall was received with acclamations by all who trembled beneath his merciless sway. Hastily men left Paris to convey the deliverance to the country districts, and everywhere these were welcomed by a very genuine joy. In the prisons hope fluttered, despite the knowledge that the accusers of Robespierre were themselves of as harsh and cruel a nature. An old woman in the street strove to communicate with one illustrious person behind bars—Josephine Beauharnais, afterwards the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. Lifting up her dress, she repeated the action till the prisoner called out, "Robe." Then she placed a stone in her lap and repeated the former signal. "Pierre," cried Josephine, beginning to understand the meaning of these gestures. The old woman joined the dress and stone, and made a well-known sign to indicate the manipulation of the guillotine. When she was satisfied that her pantomime was successful she began to dance with joy. What mattered it that Fouquier-Tinville still survived, and Billaud of the gloomy countenance and yellow wig, and Collot d'Herbois, who had revenged himself by wholesale massacre on the people of Lyons because they had once given him an ungracious reception at the theatre where he acted?

Couthon, whose little silver hammer had tapped busily at the doors of houses, dooming them to destruction, had met the fate due to his relentless measures. Saint-Just, the soldier famed for beauty as for boldness, could no longer rule in the State and in the army. Lebas who had married a daughter of Duplay the carpenter, was rightly punished for friendship to the late dictator. Soon the house of Duplay in the Rue St Honore should discover how accursed were all those busts and pictures of their lodger. Charlotte Robespierre denounced them, and scrupled not to pour out her accusation against both brothers. She saved her own head, but had to live under a false name and withal most miserably.

It was Lecointre of Versailles, a bold Thermidorian, who brought charges against the rivals of Robespierre, averring that they had acted through ambition rather than through noble motives and that they were likely to continue the system of the Terror. He read out no less than twenty-six articles, embodying his accusations, on the 12th of Fructidor (August 29th). Billaud rose in his own defence with all the eloquence that was his by nature and profession. "If the crimes with which Lecointre reproaches us," he said, "were as real as they are absurd and chimerical, there is not one of us, doubtless, here present, whose blood ought not to stain the scaffold. What do they want, these men who call us the successors of Robespierre? I will tell you, citizens. They want to sacrifice—I repeat it, to sacrifice liberty on the tomb of the tyrant."

He defied Lecointre to prove his guilt, though he had been an ally of Robespierre, St Just, and Couthon, and nothing righteous had urged him to bring about their downfall. He posted up in Paris an apology for his principles and conduct, and the citizens hooted him in the streets and burnt him in effigy, calling out, "Down with Billaud! Down with the drinkers of blood!" He had no sworn followers like Marat and Robespierre. He had to stand alone against the judges of his wickedness.

The days dragged slowly before the actual trial of Billaud and his accomplices. He was at large still in Paris, where there was general hatred of his conduct. He went home regularly to the young wife in whose eyes he was perfection. Then in an unguarded moment he used words which the Thermidorians chose to regard as a challenge. "The lion is not dead when he slumbers, and when he awakes he exterminates all his enemies."

The Jacobin party had been crushed and their sessions forbidden. There was such a general desire for order and law that military force seemed preferable to the ruthless injustice of the guillotine. Yet the mob rose in the 12th Germinal, crowds of hungry men and women flooding the streets of Paris and crying lustily, "Bread, Bread and the Constitution of '93." These were enraged by the return of the wealthier to luxuries which had been impossible under the Terror, for only two ounces of bread could be allowed each day to the dwellers in Saint Antoine, after the rich harvests failed which had been reaped from "suspects" and prisoners. The rioters made their way into the Tuileries and disturbed the Convention, whom they blamed for their new poverty. But Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland, put an end to the rising with a few cannon-shots and the terror of his name. Billaud's threat had proved empty. "The lion" had risen and been cowed into submission.

Billaud had been arrested and sentenced to transportation in March 1795. Pichegru was able now to secure his transfer to the fortress of Ham, judging it dangerous for him to remain in Paris. A second rising known as the First Prairial (May 20th, 1795) took place while he awaited banishment. The Jacobins combined with the starving people of Saint Antoine and made a fresh demand for "Bread and the Constitution of '93." With pikes and standards and Papers of Grievances, they marched into the Hall of the Convention, driving the deputies to the upper benches by their violent threats. Feraud who besought them to respect the President, was dragged to the ground and out into the corridor. His head was severed and placed on a pike, held aloft as an awful warning to the other deputies.

Muskets exploded and drums beat furiously, while the women screamed their grievances and the men shouted for decrees that would cheapen bread. In the afternoon only some sixty members of the Convention were left to descend among the invaders and satisfy their wants by passing any measure that seemed necessary. An armed force burst in and expelled the rioters by sudden action. Windows were flung open that escape might be easier. The decrees of the Sixty were declared null, and the Sixty put on trial and sentenced to the guillotine. Those members who were left did not incline to mercy. They ordered Billaud and Collot to be tried for life, but found that they had been already shipped from France to their place of exile.

Billaud, indeed, had reached the height of unpopularity, and public opinion thought banishment too light a sentence. A print was issued showing a man with scales in his hands, the one scale weighing down heavily while the other rose towards the skies. The first represented the crimes committed by the culprit, while the second was a comment on his expiation. Great caution had to be used in conveying the prisoner through the provinces, where his name was hated in consequence of the wholesale massacres he had sanctioned. The captain of the ship on which he sailed expected that an attack might be made by another vessel. He had instructions to throw his charge over-board if there were any trouble!

Billaud lived on, however, through the torment of heat and fever to which his place of banishment exposed him. Sinnamary had been chosen probably because it was thought impossible for him to survive the climate of that fever-stricken desert.

THE RISING OF THE PRAIRIAL.

His wife, Angelica, would have followed him but had neither health nor money. She contracted another marriage for the sake of wealth, her second husband promising to go to the succour of the first.

Billaud would not take advantage of this offer and remained in his desert, persisting in the belief that the National Convention had wrongfully condemned him. At Sinnamary, he had a hut close to the fort which was supposed to guard him. He was not allowed to read, or to work with his hands. He fell ill, despite the hard endurance of his nature. The military hospital found "the lion" a meek patient, though the Sisters of Saint Paul were disposed to fear him since he had attacked their religion. When he was cured he lived for some time on the charity of the colonists. The other prisoners brought to Sinnamary refused to associate with him. He spent his days in teaching parrots, till the occupation of a farm was allowed to him. He refused to take advantage of pardon granted by the Consular government, and still thought himself an injured patriot.

Later, the member of the Committee of Public Safety who had passed a decree to abolish slavery, became himself a slave-dealer. He had, as second wife, a negress of the name of Brigitte. She was many years younger than her exile husband, yet could sympathize with his stories of oppression. She consoled him, and gave him courage. When he died at San Domingo, she found that he had left her all his property, including the large arm chair, "which came from France." The French estates had been forfeited, and the estate in Guiana was not great, but Brigitte lived comfortably for almost sixty years after the death of Billaud-Varenne in 1819.

Collot d'Herbois had suffered the same sentence as Billaud but met an easier fate, if endurance be reckoned by time alone. He was sent to Guiana, where the negroes loathed him because he had tried to destroy the old religion. They left him in the middle of a road, weak from illness and unable to walk, and would not carry him further. His face was turned toward the blazing sun, and he suffered agonies in mind and body. In vain he appealed to God and to the Holy Virgin. No man came to succour him, and he was not even buried properly. The negroes left their work half-done in order to dance at some fete which they deemed more important than his burial.

Fouquier-Tinville had also found himself quite friendless. "I do not know anyone who will undertake my defence," he wrote to his wife, and for the first time realized, perhaps, the enormity of his guilt toward those helpless victims brought before him. He had laboured incessantly at the work of prosecution, and rejoiced in the numbers despatched so swiftly to the guillotine. Other pleasures he had none, for he seemed to have no time for aught but public business. He was very poor when his own trial came, and lamented that he left a wife to poverty. To his children there would be the legacy of a name that had been cursed by thousands. He was tormented by this thought, while he declared that he would die for "having served my country with too much zeal and activity." With fifteen of his jurors or "sheep," as they were termed, the Public Accuser paid the last penalty. The people would have his head held up before them, and greeted it with savage satisfaction.

Pache was one of those who lived to see peace after the stormy scenes of Revolution. He had borne his part in them with a great appearance of placid benevolence and wisdom. He had lost favour and been imprisoned. Under the rule of mercy succeeding the Terror he was released, and it was near the close of 1795 when the former Minister of War was smuggled out of Paris in a cart filled with straw and disguised as a horse-dealer in rustic clothing. He reached a retired village among the Ardennes Mountains, longing for retirement, and was satisfied to resume once again the uneventful course of life that had been interrupted by his call to Paris.

Pache was joined by his mother, a very old woman with vague ideas of all the changes that had happened. He wandered about the fields in a long grey coat, and began to garden steadily. His opinion as a botanist was respected, and he even wrote on agriculture. He forgot the dark deeds which had been wrought under his ministry, and the strange documents which his pen had signed. Reflections on the fate of Manon, wife of Roland, failed to disturb him, and he smiled when he heard distorted stories of the Revolution, for none knew how well he could have related them.

He passed for a harmless old recluse in the quiet village, where he played with grandchildren and passed rainy days in recalling the times of his long-past youth. He was lonely and deserted, though Bonaparte visited him in his retirement; and before he died in 1821 he wished to go back to the religion of old France. The name of Pache did not please his son, since it had been borne by a "Septembrist." "Baron Jean" would not acknowledge a revolutionary when he was in favour with a King, brother to the sixteenth Louis.

So Pache died, forsaken like the rest of the wielders of that awful power known as the Terror. The superstitious read a symbolic meaning into the red light that stained his coffin before burial. He could not get away from the blood he had once spilt, however far he wandered from the city of dread memories. The sunset recalled the events of the century preceding, and the omen was held in sinister remembrance by generations of good peasant folk.

The Emigrants

More romantic than any fiction were the adventures of the aristocrats who fled France, knowing what might befall them when their order ceased to govern there.

The Shepherd's Crook (La Houlette) was a welcome sight to ladies and gentlemen of fortune travelling in hot haste to join the army of the Princes and fight under the white Royalist flag. They could venture to cast away the tricolour cockade they hated as the symbol of the people's rule when they reached this first house bordering on Austrian territory. "We are safe now," they would declare rather prematurely, for the boundary-post put courage into the trembling. "There is the spread eagle of the Holy Roman Empire." It was painted on the other side of the board which depicted the fleur-de-lys of France. It seemed to offer shelter and protection, though the whole district was under the control of a brigand, Moneuse, whose methods were successful in Paris, where he took part in violent measures. His name conveyed nothing to the fugitives, glad to cross the frontier into Belgium, Holland, Austria, or Switzerland. Many of the noblest joined the army, sent to reinstate King Louis. There were no distinctions of rank preserved in those motley regiments, where so many different renderings of the French language might be heard.

Women were not unknown in the battles fought for the losing cause of Royalty. A brave Norman wife was as bold in arms as any knight of ancient legend. Le Chevalier de Haussey was her name, and she earned it by splendid service. The Norman nobility had to leave small estates which would expose them to the hatred of the peasants. Bois-Manselet was a pleasant retreat, not great enough to offend, one would imagine, but the owner of it was obliged to leave his home for warfare. Francois de Bennes knew that his pleas would be disregarded by his tenants. He had a faithful companion to go to the wars with him. Louise de Haussey, married twelve years before and the mother of two children, had a spirit as virile as that of Charlotte Corday. She was hard-featured, and very tall and strong. In uniform, none could guess her secret. She had the rank of lieutenant, and fought side by side with her so-called brother. There were many hours of peril to be suffered, but she loved fighting. Her weapons were always in fine order, and her duties performed very thoroughly.

After Valmy, the two comrades had to leave France and seek another regiment. The emigrant must fight under any leader who would enrol him against the Revolutionary armies. Holland had the good fortune to engage the Chevalier de Haussey and her comrade. They had no home and no money. The only occupation they could honourably follow was that of arms. Danger and fatigue were the merest trifles to those of high Norman lineage. It was the Chevalier who carried her fellow-soldier to the ambulance, and saw him borne to safety after he fell wounded. She went back to the battle herself without wasting time in lamentations. The legion still seemed her natural refuge after Francois died, and Holland could not employ her further. She went over to England in 1795, and was with the desperate force attacking Quiberon.

France beat back those who fought under other standards. One soldier in the repulse had two children she might have regained, if successful. She was taken prisoner, and condemned to death at the end of months of hardship. She escaped in a woman's clothes by the aid of a kindly succourer, and resided for some time in London. She was so poor that she attempted to write her adventures in imitation of fellow emigrants. There were not many occupations to help to support existence on the narrow income allowed to the exiled. They had been idle and frivolous for the most part, and accomplishments were difficult to turn to account in a commercial country.

Some of the old order were reduced to teaching elegance of deportment and the dances of the Court. Others earned a living by instruction in foreign languages. It was almost impossible for them to give up every little luxury. The Norman Amazon found writing a harder task than the use of sword or pistol. She had only used a pen for writing simple orders for her servants or occasional letters to her friends. She was unlikely to make much money, and at Hamburg had no better fortune. The people of North Germany had little sympathy for the unfortunate Royalists who swarmed there. It was pleasanter in England the Chevalier decided, but news came at last of the family at Bois-Manselet.

Louise's daughter was sought in marriage. The suitor had to gain the consent of parents, provided that they were still living. This missive sought the bride's father and mother, and reached the latter only. She went back to the old estate, prepared to sit by the chimney-corner. The cause of the Royalists had been lost, and soon she was a grandmother.

Yet the Chevalier had not died within the woman's heart. The call of arms came, and was answered by the old campaigner. She decked herself in uniform and set out to defend the King's flag, again in danger. But the hopes of Royalists had been crushed too often, and the will to fight was there without the strength for it. The sword dropped from the hand of the old woman, who had helped to besiege Thionville and borne a stout heart on many battlefields. The Chevalier de Haussey must cease to wear the honor of her rank as lieutenant, though Normandy was proud of a daughter so valiant. Her own family now expected her to sit in the chimney-corner.

There were many pining in foreign lands for the fireside where strangers sat. The widow of Philippe Egalite or Citoyenne Penthievre, sickened long in banishment for the fair country of her youth. She had seen the strangest vicissitudes since the death of Equality on the scaffold. At the house of Dr Belhomme she found another lover. Their courtship was surely without parallel even in that fevered epoch.

Rouzet was an honest professor of law, who had come to Paris as a member of the Convention. He did not understand the real meaning of the Revolution, and was far from approving the opinions of the Mountain. Suspicion fell on him because he refused to vote for the death of the King, and his protest against the arrest of the Girondins caused him to be declared an outlaw. From the barracks which was his first prison the elderly lawyer was removed to the house of Dr Belhomme. There he was attracted by the gentle widow of Philippe. She was over forty, but still charming, and listened to Rouzet with more pleasure, because her first marriage had been unhappy.

Rouzet was released, accepting the privilege with some reluctance, though he found himself able to help the Citoyenne Penthievre. She was likely to suffer for her high birth, and the Council would not grant her freedom. She was ordered to proceed into exile as soon as she left her refuge in the house of Belhomme, the "widow Orleans" being dangerous still to the Directory.

The unfortunate Princess was the least practical of women, and thought so many packages necessary for her comfort that there was hardly room in the old Court "berline" for herself and her attendants. The whole retinue set out for Spain, where the Bourbon monarch offered shelter to Royal relatives in distress. It was a tedious journey, diversified by various accidents to the vehicles, which were tied up with string and mended clumsily. Before the party crossed the frontier some officials made a strange discovery—Rouzet was dragged from beneath the piles of luggage and questioned angrily. He declared that he could not bear to be separated from Citoyenne Penthievre, but despite his entreaties he was arrested and sent to the fort of Bellegarde as a prisoner.

The Directory acted leniently toward this old man with the tender attachment to an aristocrat. They suffered him to rejoin her in Spain at a very undignified residence, which was all the King placed at the disposal of his cousin.

The Princess found it almost impossible to maintain her companions in exile, numbering twenty-one persons, at the tiny villa of Sarria, which her cousin Charles IV had furnished meanly. She was saddened by her reception till a title was conferred on Rouzet. Her lover was henceforth to be known as M. le Comte de Folmon. The Spanish King was willing to give anything that cost so little.

It was not till 1814 that the widow returned to France and took up her abode within the Chateau d'Ivey. She was beloved by the Comte de Folmon to the end, and as a reward for his faithful devotion, insisted that he should be entombed on his death with those of Royal blood.

RELICS OF THE REVOLUTION.

The Princess was the mother of three sons, one of whom had a life as romantic as his mother's before he ascended the throne of France as Louis Philippe. The Court was held in strange places after it vanished from stately Versailles. Princes and princesses had to live very much as ordinary mortals, and were perpetually surprised to find that it was possible. Not all of them had the firm will and heroic mind of Madame Royale the King's daughter, who survived her well-loved family and knew all the dark secrets of the Temple.

The Princess was not released immediately after the fall of Robespierre. She had to sit in complete solitude within the four walls of that little bare room which she kept so beautifully with her own hands. She was refused the necessaries of life very often, and not given the books she desired to have as some slight solace in her loneliness.

A certain wave of sentimental Royalism beat upon her prison walls during 1795, but the young girl was hard to flatter by the multitude of poems and songs which were composed in her honor and even in the honor of her goat and dog! She had known sorrow so supreme that she felt a dislike for all dramatic expressions of feeling. "I do not like scenes," she said to a woman who went down on her knees to thank her for some favour. She recalled very vividly the scenes of the drama in which her own parents had figured. There were happier days in store for the last of Louis' children, yet she could never know youth nor recapture any of youth's pleasures. "Sadness was imprinted on her features and revealed in her attitude."

Madame Royale went from the Temple to the Court of Vienna where she lived for three years, refusing to marry the Archduke Charles of Austria. She rejoined her father's brother, the Count of Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII, and accompanied him faithfully in his exile later. Her husband was the Duke of Anjouleme, who was also her cousin, being the son of the Count of Artois. She tried to uphold the Royal cause against the conquering Napoleon at Bordeaux, and made so gallant a struggle that the general said she was the "only man in her family."

In banishment the Duchess of Anjouleme still loved France, and liked to remember the ill-fated Tuileries. She found her only consolation in religion, and tended most zealously the abbe who had accompanied her father to the scaffold when the old priest succumbed to an attack of contagious fever. She lived very long after the dark days of the Temple, but always in her mind were the scenes of the Revolution which had robbed her of everything except life and the spirit of true heroism.

For God and the King!

The Catholic faith had found its loyal upholders from the earliest days of the Revolutionary outbreak. In the western country the priests were cared for by their people after the decrees forbidding them to exercise their religion according to the old manner. Women took it upon themselves to drive from the churches the priests who had taken the oath imposed by the new Constitution. They would have services as they had been in their mother's and grandmother's days. The obstinate abbe regretted his persistence when he encountered the peasant-women of Brittany and other western provinces.

The champion of the priesthood was a man, at first a smuggler and an outlaw—Jean Chouan, the son of a poor woodcutter. The family of Cottereau had changed their name in the time of Jean's own grandfather, a taciturn, quiet man, nicknamed facetiously the chat-huan  or screech-owl because he seldom raised his voice in family gatherings.

Chat-huans became Chouans and the name of Cottereau passed out of usage. They who owned it were so poor that it was a matter of slight moment where it vanished. Jean Chouan was born in a wood for his father and mother moved about constantly to carry on their trade, and were in the habit of building themselves a temporary hut with boughs of trees in any clearing.

The woodcutter died, and Mother Chouan took up her abode on the little farm of the Pear Trees where it was difficult to support all her children. Jean and Francois were sturdy boys, unlikely to be a burden to their mother. They began to earn their bread in a trade that was highly dangerous to follow. The Government was ready at any time to pounce upon the sellers of salt from Brittany. The infamous gabelle  or salt tax did not hold good in that province, and it was the custom for peasants across the border to favour men who brought salt to their doors at a low price.

Jean laughed at the risks he ran in carrying on an unlawful trading. "There is no danger," was a phrase so constantly on his lips that his familiars were led to term him gars mentoux, or "the lying boy," for all knew that the agents of Government never gave quarter.

"If the King only knew of it," the good widow used to cry when she heard any story of injustice. There were plenty of these stories in the province where the peasants laboured for a bare existence, but she deemed herself most fortunate till Jean was put in prison as a result of his defiance of the law.

It was useless to try to keep Jean Chouan behind bolts and bars. He was soon off into the woods again and answering his comrades eager questions with his favourite, "There is no danger." His frequent escapes seemed almost miraculous.

At length, the forests were forsaken, and the army received a gallant soldier who could fight to the death, if there were need of it. Jean had killed a gendarme in some scuffle, and was afraid of imprisonment from which he could not free himself. He left the army as suddenly as he joined it, haunted by the consequences of his action. He thought himself on the brink of discovery and deserted, creeping back by night to the farm of the Pear Trees, where his mother was lamenting his long absence. He was arrested, but the end of Jean Chouan was not to come till he had done better for his country. The simple peasant mother went to the Court of Versailles to ask for pardon. "The King shall know of it," was her cry now, and she would not be discouraged by the journey of full seventy leagues that lay before her.

Louis XVI was not the king to refuse an audience to a toil-worn woman of the people. He received her very kindly, and promised that this mischievous son should be pardoned. The friends of Jean, like the friends of Mirabeau, thought a kind of voluntary imprisonment would tame him. The outlaw was sent to Rennes, and there a change was made in the reckless smuggler through the influence of religion.

Very different was the Jean Chouan who left this place of confinement from the one who had entered it two years before. He would never shed another man's blood again if he could help it. Henceforward, he devoted himself to the service of the priesthood.

Madame Olivier, the mother of an abbe, decided to entrust her household gods to Jean Chouan, for the times were unsettled and the pillaging of country places not uncommon. It was the quietest task of Jean's life, and he was released from it by the outbreak of the Revolution.

Near Laval a meeting was held to ask for volunteer's who would enrol themselves in defence of Liberty against the King. Now the family of Chouan was loyal to the heart's core, and it was Jean's part to enrol another army and wrest away the flag from enemies of the Church and King.

"Long live the King! It is the will of God," were the cries of the Chouan party which gathered round the woodland leader. The Sacred Heart of Jesus was the sign they bore on their breasts, and the luckless priests fleeing from persecution found staunch escorts among this new Chouannerie.

The woods re-echoed to the screech of the owl when a warning was necessary that a "Blue" was coming. The Republican uniform was easy to distinguish from the dress of the peasant soldiers. The latter had long flowing hair, broad hats sometimes adorned with plumes, and skins for coats.

From the port of Granville priests were smuggled in large numbers by the agency of Jean, the faithful. He knew that they would have liked to stay and carry on their holy office, but that brought evil on all giving them shelter. The punishment for persons who harbored a non-juring priest was death.

The Mayor of Granville was thought to be a Royalist by sympathy, though he proclaimed stout Republican principles most glibly. He winked at the traffic between Granville and Jersey till he was suspected and lost power to aid Jean Chouan. There was no passage for that lawless captain when he thought it prudent to leave his beloved country.

In the year 1793 the woods of Misdon saw picturesque figures darting in and out of hiding-places like rabbits into burrows. Sometimes there was a great muster in the clearing known as the Place Royale, where the leader came to give orders and receive reports from his active band of peasants. If there were little danger, a fire might be lit and a group of gay figures would surround it. Men, tired of the inactivity of their hidden life, chose to make for themselves all kinds of occupations. They wove baskets, and made rude garments from the skins of animals they trapped. The gayest played games, and exulted in the freedom of their movements. Below ground a more solemn spirit prevailed, which was satisfied only by holding religious services. The Chapelet was the prayer of the Chouans, unlettered but true believers. They repeated it so often that they came to reckon time by it, learning exactly how long it took to say the words.

Jean Chouan seldom entered the underground place that had been made for him, saying that he would never feel the earth above him of his own free will. He had a kind of hut made from boughs, and used it as his real household. He was terribly grieved to find it pillaged once by soldiers, and did not rest till he had wrested back his saucepan and other dear possessions.

Jean's earnest wish was to put his troops under the command of the Prince of Talmont, the Royalist leader, and to unite with the bold Bretons of Puysaye and the country of La Vendee, waging war against the Republic with a fierce and deadly vigour. He knew his men could fight, for they had proved their worth in many a hazardous battle. The love of the supernatural in their followers lent them aid when arms failed, for there was mystery surrounding the chiefs who led them. Jean himself was often reported dead and then seen in some affray. He had a zealous young man to inspire his simple peasants and discipline them most severely. "In the name of St Paul, forward!" was his cry, for he believed that the Saint had given him powers greater than those possessed by men.

This youth with the long light curls and slender form suffered no disobedience, no oaths against the God for whom all fought in the army of the Chouans. He shot a soldier down because he infringed this rule, and exercised a marvellous control over his untrained following. The hat with the long white plumes floated above the earnest face of the hero in hours of extremity. There was the same reverence for this leader as for M. Jacques, the admired of fine ladies, whom he visited in their chateaux.

M. Jacques did not chose that La Heroziere, his noble name of Angevin lineage, should be known to all, for he feared that he might bring trouble on his family. Jean Chouan knew his history, and the rest were to be satisfied by the assurance that he had ever served the King. La Heroziere knew that he would achieve more for the cause by a certain reticence he practised than by babbling of his family. He was praised by the priests he visited in secret because they knew him to be learned. He was loved by the soldiers because he could lead them to victory by the martial songs he sang. His air was gallant, and he had the manners of the Court. It was easy to enrol many natives of Anjou when he went back to his province.

M. Jacques wished to harden the Angevins to fighting, and led them to attack a church in which the Blues had taken refuge. He fell, sorely grieved to see the wounding of Joli-Coeur, his comrade, who bore him from the scene of danger. It was too late, and the warrior of Anjou died in the flower of youth and courage. He was greatly mourned, for they needed such men to fight the battle of King and Church in France.

Modest Jean Chouan paid tribute to other generals who seemed to have the same power to attract loyal hearts. He had never intended to play the first part, looking simply for a prince to lead the men he gathered. It was in the forest that he prayed for the success of the united armies. His men of Maine must ask God for success before they entered on an enterprise so doubtful. Down on their knees they went, and the words of the Chapelet were said to the twittering accompaniment of the birds around them.

At Brulatte the tricolour floated, a sight to make Jean bold indeed. He pulled it down in favour of the white streamer of the Royalists. "Here is the bouquet to be plucked for our festival to-day," he called gladly. He had business to transact in Brulatte for there was a man there who had denounced him as an outlaw.

Victorious Jean Chouan caused panic to Graffin, his former enemy, who expected that this bold brigand would have no mercy. The trembling citizen pressed clothes on his visitor in sheer gratitude as soon as he learnt the nature of the visit. Jean had merely come to see that there was nothing done in his disfavour. He would not change his tattered clothes for the Republican finery, saying proudly that he must show the men of Vendee that he could not take other people's goods although a brigand.

Jean accepted a horse to ride into Laval, where he would meet his allies. Those who had many times declared that the band of Chouans were wiped out long ago by the Republic stared at his imposing entrance! The crowd pressed round, hardly able to believe the figure human that rode brandishing a sabre, waving the Royal flag and shouting, "No! No! Jean Chouan is not dead!" The welcome news encouraged them to cry "Long live the King! Long live Jean Chouan!"

The Prince reviewing his troops could not fail to notice the torn garb of their chief. He threw over him the Royal mantle he had worn himself, saying it had been right to refuse to cover a soldier of the King with a uniform stripped from a soldier of the treacherous Republic. The only wealth Jean Chouan gained he accepted very humbly. The band of peasants were clamouring now to have no other leader. It was necessary for the Prince to form them into a separate body, fighting under the same banner as men of Brittany and La Vendee.

In the glorious victories of that army and the terrible disasters following, the Chouans bore themselves as became soldiers of the Church. Francois Chouan was among them, fighting with one arm because he had been gravely wounded in the other, and his gallant mother followed him to battle that she might tend her son when he was released from warfare. The Prince began to count on the men of Maine whenever he had need of special valour. He had them with him at Dol, that most disastrous battle.

The siege of Mans could not be attempted without the band of faithful Chouans but even they could not win against overwhelming numbers, and the Prince sent them away to the forests, promising that he would seek shelter with them later. The devoted mother of the Cottereau lost her life within the town, where confusion reigned more appalling than a field of battle. Jean thought she had escaped, and Francois fought desperately to recover her when he found that she was missing. Comrades tore him away from Mans, and led him swiftly to the forest. He died there and was long mourned as a fine organizer and man of rarest wisdom.

Jean, meantime, returned to Mans, intending to save the general of whose extremity he heard from fugitives. He learned that he could not offer useful service, and went back to the forest again where he found his brother dying.

With a gallant effort, the Chouan raised a new Royalist army stronger than a doubter would have believed possible. Men flocked to him of their own free will and obeyed without having orders. None of the officers needed to urge advance. Their call was ever, "To me, my brave men. Do not leave me. Follow!" Few of these gallants survived their reckless charges at the head of the troops so oddly disciplined. In their grey vests and big hats with the white cockade, they were willing to fall in battle. The symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was on their breast, and the Chapelet on lips that commanded loyalty by silence. Priests were with them, unwilling to leave to others the defence of the faith they held sacred. It was no mean fate to lose life in such a company. All honor was given to comrades lost, though their names were never known, perhaps, outside the western country.

"Names of war" were adopted freely by the different Chouan officers. Some were men of rank and would not cause suffering to their relatives. Others were of the humblest class, and had always known some nickname. The one who could always raise the faltering warrior by words of warm enthusiasm was Silver-Leg (Jambe d'Argent), a labourer's son, and once a beggar through misfortune.

THE CHOUANS.

The Prince of Talmont fell into the hands of his enemies and Jean Chouan could not rescue him. A brave attempt was set on foot, but an important letter went astray and the mistake was fatal. The sight of the Prince's head, placed on a pike at Laval, caused his friend's heart to break. It was all over with the King's cause now. This death meant the death of Royalism.

The Republicans over-ran the west country, determined to crush the remnants of Chouannerie. Rene and Pierre Cottereau were put in prison, although they had never taken up arms. Rene was released to find his farm desolate and there and then swore to avenge himself on the Blues, who had not spared him. Pierre was too gentle and pious to fight. He prayed continually that his brother's cause would win.

The order came that the wood of Misdon must be cleared of these lurking foes of the Republic. There were many gathered beneath the trees, but they had not a chance of success without the ammunition that might be sent from Laval. Jean determined to obtain it at all costs, and set off when the rest were sleeping. He took only one companion, Goupil, for his errand was most dangerous.

They found Laval silent and stole softly through the darkened streets without their shoes, for they feared that men would waken. The powder was obtained by a bold assault on the guard house, and made up in two packages. With these on their backs, the two Royalists trudged back to the woods triumphant. Their reward came at daybreak when their comrades woke to exclaim as at a miracle. Powder to be used for cartridges had been the subject of their dreams, and they found it in the morning! Jean would tell nothing of his night's adventures, being always a discreet man and disliking tales of prowess. Goupil told the events at Laval and set them all marvelling, while the chief gave terse directions for the disposal of the forces.

Very masterly was the plan of the Chouans, which ended in the complete rout and bewilderment of 6000 Republican soldiers. Superstition helped the cause of the Royalists and the reputation of their leader. Pierre Cottereau called to his friends to thank God for victory few had thought to win.

Misdon was deserted in favour of Concise where the woodcutter, Cottereau, had reared such a hardy son. Beyond the forest the glad news spread, giving hope to prisoners who heard it through a child's lips. Many Royalists broke their bonds and fled to the new army. In the prisons, plans were made to help the upholders of the white flag, ladies embroidering white ribbons and the Sacred Heart as an emblem for the victors.

The summer-time made it easier to hide in cornfields or beneath the foliage of trees in forests. Men from La Vendee joined the ranks, exciting much compassion by the recital of their injuries. The West had plucked up heart again, hearing how indomitable was Silver-Leg. He was beginning to be known all through the country, and in some sort took the place of Jean, who had never intended to be leader.

The family of Cottereau were doomed to atone for the trouble they had given the new-born Republic. Even the two young sisters were not permitted to live quietly on their farm of Pear Trees. Jean tried to attack the soldiers who were taking them to Laval, but was baffled in his plan by cunning strategy. He had the anguish of knowing that they both perished on the scaffold, loyal-hearted Perrine, the elder, supporting her sister to the last and crying aloud "Long live the King! Long live Jean Chouan!"

Rene became violent after the vengeance wrecked upon such helpless girlhood. He caused trouble to Jean, who would never kill wantonly nor watch another tortured. Pierre was taken at his prayers and made a martyr by the Blues, who bound his hands and marched him up and down the streets in mockery. "General-in-Chief of Brigands," they wrote as an inscription for their prisoner. He had never borne arms, and had never been an outlaw. Quite tranquilly he answered insults with prayers and ascended the scaffold at Laval.

Jean gradually left Silver-Leg to marshal forces while he worked in other ways for the cause he loved, although it rent from him all his kinsfolk. He tried to obtain food and clothes for the fugitives of the woodlands. On one of these attempts he was surprised by the Blues, and wounded while assisting the widow of Francois to escape. The poor woman was saved, but at the cost of the life of her deliverer.

Jean dragged himself to the wood of Misdon and died there, surrounded by the comrades who had found him. Born in the open air, he drew his last breath beneath the trees that thirty-seven years ago had waved above his cradle. For God and the King he had given his whole existence, and to God and the King he begged that his comrades would be faithful.

The Royalists raised the white flag again long after the King, for whom Jean Chouan had fought, had met his woeful destiny. They rallied round the Count of Provence and made him Louis the Eighteenth. They supported the claims of Artois, known for a brief period as Charles the Tenth of France.

But the white flag was the symbol of a losing cause, and Napoleon dragged it down to raise his own Imperial standard.

The First Consul

The fierce conflict of the Revolution deprived many men in France of all that they held dear, while to others it offered promise of attainment more glorious than could ever have been realized under the government of an absolute king.

A young lieutenant of artillery had begun to despair of winning promotion in the army of Louis XVI. when the first steps were taken to destroy the tottering monarchy. This Napoleon Bonaparte was Italian rather than French by descent, and all his sympathies were with the inhabitants of Corsica in their revolt against the government of France which followed the purchase of that rocky islet from the Republic of Genoa.

Corsicans had maintained a long struggle for their independence previous to this arrangement in 1768. For thirteen years they had enjoyed some measure of freedom under the dictatorship of Paoli, a true patriot. It was unlikely that they would submit to foreign domination. Continual plotting took place in Ajaccio, the birthplace of Napoleon in 1769.

Through his youth the soldier had dreamed of a great military coup which should free his compatriots and set him in a high position. For he was obscure and inordinately ambitious, conscious of unusual talents and thwarted by the poverty of his parents, who could do nothing to advance his interests. The Revolution of 1789 seemed to reconcile Corsica to France, since the National Assembly were inclined to grant more liberty to their dependents lest the Genoese Republic should try to regain its rights. Paoli returned from exile and met Napoleon, who had hopes of becoming commander of a paid native guard which it was proposed to establish on his island. Probably the Corsican officer aimed at restoring Paoli's sovereignty and succeeding to it himself at some future date. His attempts to get command of an armed force were ultimately successful, but he forfeited his French commission by staying in Ajaccio when he should have gone to Paris for a review of the whole French army on January 1st, 1792.

Napoleon was too sanguine of success to feel that he had lost everything and persisted in fomenting insurrection against France. After the failure of an attempt to get possession of Ajaccio, however, he was obliged to flee from Corsica and return to Paris, where he was in a position of some peril. If the Revolutionary leaders had not been anxious to find trained officers to lead their army against the powers of Europe, he would have been shot as a rebel and deserter instead of receiving a new commission and the rank of captain! A marked change took place in Napoleon's attitude toward Paoli and the patriot party of Corsica. He decided to adopt the French cause as giving him more hope of military glory and withdrew from his birthplace with his whole family, pursued by the hatred of the Corsicans, who held him a betrayer.

In June 1793 the Bonaparte family were at Toulon and, in August, that town delivered itself into the hands of the English. Napoleon's first military exploit was to lead the French artillery in their gallant attempt to retake it. He was made general of brigade after distinguishing himself in action, and joined the army of Italy as general of artillery and inspector-general. His career as a soldier had begun.

Napoleon's brilliant ability soon attracted the notice of his superiors in rank, who saw that he would prove successful in filling any office that might be assigned to him. Barras, who had commanded the Army of the Interior, resigned in favour of the officer he thought most fitted to occupy that difficult position, which carried with it political as well as military duties. Barras is also said to have urged upon his protégé the advantages to be gained by his marriage with Josephine Beauharnais, the beautiful young widow of a noble whose head had fallen under the guillotine. The step seemed to be fortunate indeed, for Napoleon was appointed to the command of the army of Italy in the year of his matrimonial alliance, 1796.

In spite of the extraordinary talents of Napoleon, the war waged by the French Republic could not be continuously successful while a Directory of civilians was the body responsible for the strategy of its numerous generals. It blundered disastrously now and then, and wasted both lives and opportunities. A new member entered the Directory to propose a new constitutional experiment. This man was Sieyes, who had won renown for his declaration of the political importance of the Third Estate.

Sieyes saw that a general with supreme power was needed to organize the vast armies raised by the new laws compelling military service. He was too zealous of his own predominance to choose a man likely to assume civil control and brought about the appointment of Joubert, a fine soldier without great ambitions.

Joubert died in battle and Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris, eager to assume fresh responsibilities. He found two parties there—the Jacobins, clamouring always for the vigorous prosecution of the war—the old system of Terror which they believed necessary for maintaining their hostile attitude to their enemies in Europe; the anti-Jacobins, headed by Sieyes, who thought that the time had come to give France a strong, dominant government.

Bonaparte accepted the command of all the troops in Paris, understanding that he was to crush any resistance of the Jacobins to a proposal to reform the Constitution made at a meeting of the Councils in the palace of St Cloud. He was denounced in the Assembly and rescued from a position of some danger by Lucien, his brother, who made a somewhat theatrical promise to stab any member of his family if he tried to attack the liberty of the French nation. It was chiefly through the urgency of Lucien that Napoleon was appointed with Sieyes and Roger-Ducos the new executive, who were to act under the old Roman title of Consuls.

Sieyes found himself supreme legislator of France, and in this capacity showed an amazing neglect of the claims of democracy. He practically abolished representative institutions and the three new assemblies—the Senate, the Tribunate, and the Corps Legislatif—were not chosen by popular election. The man who had been so eloquent in his summons to the Third Estate to come forward and demand their rights now seemed firm in his determination to suppress the popular freedom which had been the main object of the years of Revolution!

Napoleon agreed to the scheme of government which placed supreme authority in the hands of the Senate, but he practically created a monarchy again by giving immense power to a single man to be known as First Consul, and depriving the Senate and Assemblies thereby of some of their most important functions. The provisional consulate lasted for a few weeks and was followed by the appointment of Cambaceres and Lebrun with Napoleon as First Consul. This office carried with it a salary of half a million francs and the right of deciding on war and peace, in addition to the real power in the legislature, for the control of the other consuls was slight over a man of such consummate abilities as Napoleon. He could appoint at his will his own officers, his council of state, and most of the judges of the Republic. He was to hold office for ten years that his powers might be limited and the fear of a monarchy restored might not give rise to insurrection.

In 1802 the First Consul decided to give peace to the world, and set the affairs of France in order. He had excellent opportunities of winning fame as a legislator since all existing institutions had been swept away and he was at liberty to adopt reforms which would once have been opposed by believers in tradition. He drew up a Code of Laws, associated always with his name and acknowledged even by his enemies to restore the work of justice. He re-established the Church and University of France, deciding that it was to the interests of the nation to have the older forms of religion and learning. He also wanted to detach the Church party from the Bourbons for his own sake, and to conciliate the Pope as a step towards his ultimate ambition. For Napoleon was dissatisfied when the Senate proposed that his term of office should be extended for ten years. He desired to have some hereditary title now and was ruthless in the means he took to obtain it.

There were two parties naturally hostile to Napoleon's designs—the moderate Republicans and the ancient Royalists. These seemed ready to sink their differences in an attempt to overthrow the audacious military statesman. Moreau, the personal rival of the First Consul, who had hoped to succeed him in that office, began to communicate with Pichegru, the leader of royalism. This was an opportunity for Napoleon to detach the army from his rival since the soldiers of the Republic distrusted any leaning towards monarchy. A deed of violence removed the Due d'Enghien, a pretender to the throne, and acted as a menace to the Royalist cause, for the Bourbon heirs were not remarkable for courage. A new reign of Terror seemed likely to be established if Napoleon did not win the honor that he coveted. He feared to lose his ascendancy over the soldiers he had won by his strong personality, and chose the old military title of emperor to please them, when the French nation decided to put themselves once more beneath a despot. The title was to be hereditary in a limited degree, for Napoleon was to have the right to nominate his successor. In May, 1804, the Republic had passed and for ten years the will of one man was absolute over the French nation.