Chapter IX: Et Dona Ferentes

“Peuple Français, peuple intrépide . . .
Entends les cris, vois l’insolence
Des muscadins, amis des rois ;
Ils menacent de leur vengeance
Tous les défenseurs de tes droits.
. . . . . .
Ils se disent des patriotes,
Ces vils esclaves des tyrans ;
De leur égaux fougueux despotes,
Du trône ils sont les partisans.
Le mensonge vit sur leur bouche,
Ils fondent sur lui leurs succès,
Et leur haine impie et farouche
Brûle de perdre les Français.”
—_Le Vrai Reveil du Peuple_ (1795).

When M. de la Guerinière, in the year 1743, took over the royal riding school of the Tuileries, and, making additions thereto, turned it into a private academy of horsemanship, he could have had small idea of what should, nearly fifty years later, replace his equestrian arrangements. Where the young Louis XV. had pranced and caracoled the National Assembly now deliberated the affairs of a France becoming daily more unlike that of the Bien-Aimé. It is only just to say that the tenants of the building had not found their new quarters altogether convenient. A parallelogram of great length, bordered by six rows of seats rising one above the other, seats from which some of the occupants could neither catch the eye of the president nor be seen by him, the Manège oppressed its inmates by its defective ventilation and its demands on the voice. The presidential tribune, a simple table covered with a green cloth, stood half way up the hall on a daïs, immediately facing that of the speakers, an arrangement which cut the space into two geographical divisions, and perhaps contributed, as one of its orators remarked, to the moral divisions of the Legislative Assembly also. These latter divisions were at any rate clear enough—the Right, the constitutional Royalists; the Left, the Gironde and their present allies, the Jacobins, further reinforced by the extreme Left; and the Centre, which generally voted with the Right.

At nine o’clock on the morning of July 3rd the Manège was already full. The galleries for the people, which adorned all four walls, and of which some, supported by pillars, projected over the very heads of the orators, were crowded with spectators. Down in the central space between the seats, round the two china stoves in the semblance of the Bastille, deputies in negligent attire, booted and spurred, strolled about, talking, laughing, spitting, calling to each other. It was in vain that the President rang his bell several times for silence, and that the four black-clad ushers with their gilded swords attempted to enforce his appeals. At last a more effective check supervened, in the approach of a deputation. It was the customary hour for such attendances and the persons in the central space hastily clambered to their seats to get a better view of it.

Conducted by an usher, a man and a woman threaded their way from the west entrance past the noisy groups towards the green daïs. From their dusty and travel-stained appearance they had evidently journeyed far by road, and by the long garment which he wore—it could hardly be called a cassock—the man was a priest, but a “constitutional.” To his loose mouth and swarthy skin he added a bearing of decided truculence. Beside him there walked two children of about four and six years, and the woman who followed him bore in her arms a wailing infant of a few months old. In spite of her rags and evident misery, the face of the girl, for she was little more, would have won her attention anywhere. It had once been beautiful, but now, across the beauty which still remained, there was written disillusionment absolute and complete. The short hair which curled freely on her forehead had once been covered with the white veil of the novice.

The group came to a stand-still opposite the daïs, and the constitutional began to address the President in loud, confident tones.

“My name is François Lethon,” he said, “and I am the curé of Tregourez, in Finistère. This,” pointing to the motionless figure of the woman, “is my wife.”

Applause from the nearest deputies greeted this remark, some seeing fit to signify their approval of a married clergy by spitting on the ground. The curé bowed, cleared his throat as if for a harangue, and began again.

“I am the servant of the nation, she is the servant of the nation, and this infant is our gift to the nation.” With a deprecatory wave of the hand he turned towards the two children, who immediately tried to escape from his eye and to hide behind the woman’s skirt. “They were my protests some time since against an unnatural law, which it has now seemed good to you gentlemen, the fathers of liberty, to remove. _Their_ mother is dead.”

Fresh applause followed these words, several of the deputies pressing round to shake hands with the constitutional, and to gaze curiously at the girl, who throughout kept her eyes fixed upon the child in her arms, and, but for the rising color in her pale cheeks, seemed unconscious of the babble of voices round her, and of the sentiments, not always too delicately expressed, which must have reached her ears.

After some moments of clamour, which was increased rather than lessened by fresh ringing of the bell, and by the cries of the ushers, the President succeeded in intimating that the curé should proceed with his story.

“Two years ago,” resumed the priest, “at the time when the civil oath was required from the clergy, and the religious houses were ordered to be dissolved, I was chaplain of a convent at Coutances, in Normandy. For some while I had cast my eyes upon one of the novices who had pleased me much, but the rules of the Order were strict, and opportunities for intercourse were rare. But on the dissolution of that particular house I immediately addressed myself to Sister Louise, offering her the honourable form of a civil marriage, and pointing out that a worse fate might easily befall her. It only took a year to convince her. I married her, and, on the whole,” he said, with a patronising nod, “we have found her fairly submissive, and likely in time to become a good _citoyenne_. I come now to the point of my discourse. Last month I was appointed to the living of Tregourez. When the news of our arrival reached the village, a crowd of men and women, instigated by their former curé, who had taken refuge in the _ci-devant_ château of the _ci-devant_ seigneur, came out to meet us, howling round the diligence and brandishing weapons. They did not, however, attempt any violence upon our persons, but that night the windows were broken, and all our personal property taken from us except a few clothes. The next day we made our escape, and have walked to Paris. Citizens, you see our plight; you see how we have suffered on behalf of liberty and freedom. Now that you have heard my story, I appeal to a beneficent legislature to grant me compensation, and I demand that the nation shall avenge my wrongs!”

A burst of applause drowned the curé’s last words. When it had subsided the President was heard to say that the nation was not insensible to the sufferings of such a champion of its liberties, but that, as it was already late, he must pass on the petitioner to the Committee of Liquidation. The curé made as if he would embark upon a voluble expression of gratitude, but at a motion from the President he was captured by an usher, and forced to cut short his harangue, and the party moved across the oval to the door at the farther end. Some of the deputies stopped them to offer their congratulations to the happy father, while others cast admiring glances at the unfortunate girl-mother, who came last in the sad little procession.

Up in one of the galleries, wedged in between a shopkeeper and a fishwife, the Marquis de Château-Foix had surveyed this scene with the profoundest disgust. It was a relief when, turning to the serious business of the day, the President announced as the subject for discussion “the situation of France,” and the groups of deputies again broke up, scrambling hurriedly to their seats. In comparative silence a member of the Gironde, Jean Debry, mounted the steps of the tribune. It seemed to Gilbert that most of the deputies of the Left looked worn and anxious, and that they accorded the orator but a divided attention, trying at the same time to keep a watch upon the tribunes of the people in order to see the effect of his words. Once, when the King was mentioned with disparagement, there arose a cry from a gallery, “Vive Monsieur Véto!” It was promptly suppressed, but it came again, and was echoed several times; but, on the whole, the tradesmen, artisans, and loafers who jostled each other in the galleries did not seem particularly interested. Indeed, by their frequent interruptions, they encouraged the speaker to make a speedy end, and Jean Debry was not long in granting their desire. His words were purely introductory, and he seemed glad to descend from the tribune.

When his place became vacant a buzz of interest immediately broke out. It had gone round the galleries that the next speaker was to be Vergniaud, the greatest orator of the Legislative. Just above the tribune especially much excitement prevailed, the rabble of the street jostling with the respectable bourgeois to catch a glimpse of the man who was seen to be making his way to it. It was Vergniaud; the massive head and shoulders of the Girondin were unmistakable. A silence more expressive of approval than any applause fell upon the galleries. Château-Foix looked curiously at the celebrated orator, and decided, like everybody else, that he was not handsome. His slanting forehead was too high, his nose and chin too pronounced, his lips too full, his brows too prominent. In repose it was a face to attract attention almost by its ugliness. As the Girondin opened his lips to speak his words were drowned in a sudden burst of applause from the galleries, and the Left looked at one another, relief written on their faces.

Vergniaud’s speech was, as usual, prepared and closely reasoned. He began by asking the meaning of what seemed to be a counter-revolution. The movements of the Army had been changed at the critical moment, the Ministry had been dismissed, the National Assembly itself had been torn by division. Then he spoke of internal troubles, and assigned two causes—the nobility and the priesthood. The first, he said, could be kept in order by a close police surveillance, but the second were under the King’s protection. It was not possible to believe, without accusing the King of being the enemy of his people, that he wished to encourage the intrigues of sacerdotalism, therefore they must conclude that he thought himself sufficiently strong to impose peace. At the same time, if failure were the result, it would be the fault of no one but the King.

The speaker held the whole Assembly by his words. At his first insinuations against the King there had been a slight murmur of disapproval from the extreme Right, and from one of the galleries, but it had been promptly suppressed, and as Vergniaud continued he became bolder in his questioning of the King’s motive. At last it seemed as if he would dare to pass from insinuation to direct attack.

“It is in the name of the King,” he said, “that the French princes have tried to raise all the courts of Europe against France; it is to vindicate the dignity of the King that the treaty of Pillnitz was signed and the monstrous alliance made between the courts of Vienna and Berlin; it is to defend the King that the former companies of the body-guard have hurried to Germany to serve beneath the standards of rebellion; it is to come to the help of the King that the _émigrés_ ask for and obtain employment in the Austrian armies, and prepare to tear the bosom of their native land; it is to join these gallant defenders of the royal prerogative that other gallants of the most scrupulous honour are abandoning their posts in presence of the enemy and are labouring to corrupt their soldiers; it is in the name of the King that liberty is being attacked. In short, it is the name of the King alone which is the pretext and the cause of all the evils which are being heaped upon our heads, and of all which we have to dread.”

The speaker paused, amid a thunder of applause. As it died unwillingly away he resumed.

“Yes, my friends, all these crimes are being committed in the name of the King. But remark”—he struck his hand lightly on the rail before him—“remark that you may ask me whether the King be in every case directly responsible for them. Your hearts, attuned to the love of justice, may demand of me whether the King indeed dismisses with his blessing these young nobles who fight for Austria. If he sought his own advantage, you say, would he not rather retain them by his side as janissaries? Possibly. But what if I told you that he _has_ retained sufficient for this purpose; that this man, whom the generosity of the French people cannot move, has his band of assassins, few in number, perhaps, but desperate and ready; that all you have heard of the Austrian Committee, all you saw in February of last year of the _chevaliers du poignard_, is no bugbear, but truth itself!”

Confused cries arose as the Girondin paused again, leaning over the balustrade of the tribune, but they were of short duration, for the whole Assembly was panting for his next words. Vergniaud drew himself up, thrusting a hand into his breast, and his voice rang out clear and solemn.

“People of France, I make no random accusations. All that is being done against you on the frontiers is as nothing to the mine which is being laid here in Paris, not many yards from where I stand. We know whose hand shall apply the match, when the time is come, and shatter into a thousand fragments not only us, but our dreams, our hopes, our plans of better things for France. We know it—alas, that I should have to say it!—and yet the knowledge does not help us. We need something more ere we can stamp out this viperous brood. We want proofs—their plans or their names. . . . Fellow-citizens, here are both!”

He drew out his left hand and held aloft a little roll of papers.

Amid the cries and the applause, the stamping of feet, the struggling and pushing to gain a glimpse of the orator, Gilbert was able to slip unnoticed from his seat and make a way into the narrow staircase that led into the Passage des Feuillants.

M. des Graves was right—terribly right! The blow had fallen, and the words he had just heard spelt death with no uncertain letters. What had Louis been able to do to save himself?