Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843

"But, Marston, you will only laugh at me for all my troubles."

"Lafontaine, I shall do no such thing. Those pains and penalties have been the lot of some of the noblest hearts and most powerful minds that the earth has ever seen; and have been most keenly felt by the noblest and the most powerful. The poet only tells the truth more gracefully when he says—

"'The spell of all spells that enamours the heart,     To few is imparted, to millions denied; 'Tis the brain of the victim that poisons the dart,     And fools jest at that by which sages have died.'

"But now, my friend, let us talk of other things. We must not sink into a pair of sentimentalists; these are terrible times. And now, tell me what brought you out of quiet England among our madmen here?"

"I may now tell all the world," was the reply, "for the evil is done beyond remedy. I was sent by our friends in London, to carry the last warning to the royal family of all that has happened this day. My papers contained the most exact details, the names of the leaders, their objects, their points of assembling, and even their points of attack. Those were furnished, as you may conceive, by one of the principal conspirators; a fellow whom I afterwards saw on horseback in front of the Tuileries, and whom, I think, I had the satisfaction of dismounting by a shot from my carbine."

I mentioned the fruitlessness of my own efforts to awake the ministry.

"Ah," said he, with a melancholy smile, "my friend, if you had been admitted into the palace, or into the council-chamber itself, you would have had precisely the same tale to tell. All was infatuation. I was ushered into the highest presence last midnight. My despatches were read. I was complimented on my zeal, and then was told that every thing was provided for. I was even closeted for two hours with the two individuals who, of all France, or of all mankind, had the largest stake in the crisis, and was again told that there was no crisis to be feared. I even offered to take a squadron of dragoons, and arrest the conspirators at the moment with my own hand. I saw the eyes of the noblest of women fill with tears of grief and indignation at the hopelessness of my appeal, and the answer, 'that though Frenchmen might hate the ministers, they always loved their king.' I saw that all was over."

"Still," said I, "I cannot comprehend how the mere mob of Paris could have succeeded against the defenders of the palace."

"If you had seen it as I did, the only wonder is, how the Tuileries held out so long. After passing a night on guard at the Pavilon de Flore, I was summoned at daybreak to attend his majesty. What a staff for a reviewing monarch! The queen endeavouring to support the appearance of calmness; Madame Elizabeth, that human angel, following her, dissolved in tears; the two royal children, weeping and frightened, making their way through the crowd of nobles, guardsmen, domestics who had gathered promiscuously in the chambers and corridors, armed with whatever weapons they could find, and all in confusion. From the windows there was another scene; and the only time when I saw the queen shudder, was when she cast her eye across the Place du Carrousel, and saw it covered with the dense masses of the multitude drawn up in battle-array. A more gloomy sight never met the eye. From time to time the distant discharge of cannon was heard, giving us the idea that some treachery was transacting in the remoter parts of the city, every discharge answered by a roar of—'Down with the King'—'Death to Marie Antoinette'—'The lamp-iron to all traitors.' While, as I glanced on those around me, I saw despair in every countenance; the resolution perhaps to die, but the evident belief that their death must be in vain. You now know all."

I still expressed my strong anxiety to know what had been the events within the palace.

"Marston, I cannot think of them. I cannot speak of them. I see nothing but a vision of blood, shame, folly, wretchedness. There never was a cause more fatally abandoned. Every thing that could be done to ruin a monarchy was done. I was standing beside the royal group, when a deputation from the National Assembly made its appearance. At its head was a meagre villain, whom one might have taken for the public executioner. He came up, cringing and bowing, to the unfortunate king; but with a look which visibly said—We have you in our power. I could have plunged my sword in the triumphant villain's heart. I had even instinctively half drawn it, when I felt the gentle pressure of a hand on mine. It was the queen's. 'Remember the king's presence. We must owe nothing to violence,' were her words. And at this instant she looked so heart-broken, yet so noble, that I could have worshipped her. The deputation pressed the necessity of 'taking shelter,' as they phrased it, 'in the bosom of the faithful Assembly.' The words, 'assembly of traitors,' burst from my lips. A shout of approbation arose on all sides. But I was more rewarded by a sorrowing smile from the queen. She was indignant at the proposal. 'No; never shall I leave this spot but by the king's command!' she exclaimed. 'I would rather be chained to the walls.' As the guard pressed round her at the words, she suddenly stopped, took a pistol from one of the Garde du Corps, and forcing it on the king—'Now,' said the heroine—'now is the time to show yourself a king of France!' An universal cry of enthusiasm arose, and hundreds of swords were brandished in the air. The deputation, evidently expecting to be massacred, made an effort to reach the door, and the monarchy was on the point of being saved; when the leader of the party glanced back at the royal circle. There stood unfortunate Louis, hesitating, with the pistol in his hand. On such moments all depends. The villain crept up to the king, and whispered in his ear—'Would you have all your family put to death? In the Assembly all are safe.'—'Well, then, we shall go,' was the simple answer. He might have added—'To the scaffold.' The queen pressed her hands on her eyes, and wept bitterly. All were silent. In a few minutes more our sad procession was crossing the garden to the door of the Assembly, amid a roar, which could not have been fiercer or more triumphant had we been going to execution."

It was already twilight; the fine summer's day, as if it had been dimmed by the desperate scenes of which it was witness, set in sudden clouds; and the distant shoutings of the populace seemed to be answered by the voice of a storm. Lafontaine's wound began to bleed afresh by the agitation of his story, and to find medical assistance, was my first object. Having seen him conveyed to my bed, and leaving him in charge of my valet, I hastened towards the residence of the physician to the embassy. In doing this, I had to cross the Rue St Honoré. But there my course was stopped. I shrink from alluding to those horrid scenes and times. The scene which there met my eyes has scarcely left them since.

The populace were returning from the conquest and plunder of the palace to the Palais Royale, the headquarters of all convulsion; and they had arranged their ranks into something like a triumphal procession on the stage. The dead bodies of the brave Swiss were carried on boards or biers, preceded by banners of all kinds; the plundered ornaments of the Tuileries were borne on the heads of men; the horses from the royal stables, caparisoned for the occasion, drew hearses, in which the bodies of the mob who had fallen were deposited. Brief as the time for decoration had been, wreaths of artificial flowers, taken from the shops of the marchandes de modes, and theatrical shawls and mantles from the stores of the fripiers, covered the biers; and the whole, surrounded and followed by a forest of pikes and bayonets, plumes and flags, had no other light than the lurid and shifting blaze of thousands of torches tossing in the wild and howling wind.

The train seemed endless; shocked and sickened, I had made repeated efforts to cross the column, but was repeatedly driven back. If all the dead criminality of Paris had risen to join all the living, it could scarcely have increased my astonishment at the countless thousands which continued to pour on before me; nor scarcely, if the procession had started from the grave, could it have looked more strange, squalid, haggard, and woebegone. In the rear came the cannon, which had achieved this melancholy victory. And they, again, were sometimes converted into the carriage of the dead, sometimes of the plunder, and, in every instance, were surmounted by women, female furies, drinking, shouting, and uttering cries of unspeakable savageness and blasphemy against priests, nobles, and kings; and, mingled with all this, were choruses of bacchanal songs, accompanied with shouts of laughter. It was now near midnight; and my anxiety for the condition of my unfortunate friend at last urged me to make a desperate attempt to force my way through the mass of pikes and daggers. After being swept far along with the stream, I reached the street in which the physician lived. He set out with me immediately, and, by his superior knowledge of the route, we were enabled to make our way unimpeded through streets, that looked like dens of robbers, to my hotel.

But there a new and still more alarming disappointment awaited me. I found the porter and all the attendants of the establishment gathered on the stairs in terror. Lafontaine was gone! Whether, frenzied by the insults and yells of the populace, who continued to pass in troops from time to time, or anxious for my safety, he had started from his bed, put on his sword, and rushed into the street; without the possibility of being restrained, and without uttering a word of explanation.

Exhausted as I was by fatigue, and still more by the sights and scenes through which I had just passed, this intelligence was a severe blow. The fate of a young enthusiast, and a foreigner, whom I had known but so lately, and of whom I knew so little, might not have justified much personal sacrifice. But the thought of the heart that would be broken by his falling into the hands of the barbarians, who were now masters of every thing, smote keenly upon me. Mariamne would die; and though I was by no means a lover of Mariamne, yet, where I had seen so much that was loveable, I might have a regard next in degree. There may, and does often, exist the tenderness of love without the flame. I could have looked on this pretty and animated creature as the wife of Lafontaine, or of any other object of her choice, without the slightest pang; but I could not have looked upon her pining away in hopelessness, wasting in silent sorrow, or with her gay and gentle existence clouded by a loss which nothing could repair, without thinking every effort of mine to avert evil from her, due on every principle of common feeling.

While I pondered, a note was brought to me, written by Lafontaine before he had sallied from his chamber, and evidently written under the wildest emotion. It told me, in a few scarcely legible words, that he felt life a burden to him, and thanked Heaven for the opportunity now offered of dying for his king and the glory of France. That the monarchy had perished beyond redemption. But that, though the royal family were surrounded by the poniards of assassins, it was his determination to follow and find them, rescue them, or die at their feet. This strange production closed with—"You shall hear of me within twenty four hours, living or dead. If I fall, remember me to my affianced wife; and vindicate my character to the world."

This was so like insanity, that it perplexed me more and more; but, on second thoughts, it appeared to offer some clue to his pursuit.—He had gone to die in presence of the royal family. If they were to be found by him at all, they must be found in the Assembly. I immediately went to the garden of the Tuileries, where they met until their new legislative palace should be erected. The multitude had now partially retired, for it was midnight; and the entrance was comparatively clear. A strong force of the National Guard still kept the drunken rabble at a distance; and the five franc piece, with which I tempted the incorruptibility of a peculiarly ferocious-looking patriot, admitted me without delay.

What a scene there presented itself to my eyes! The "Salle" was large and showy; and when I had attended it in former debates, it exhibited the taste and skill which the French, more than any other people on earth, exhibit in temporary things. Nothing could exceed the elegance with which the Parisian decorators had fitted up this silk and tinsel abode, which was to be superseded, within a few months, by the solid majesty of marble. But, on this memorable and melancholy night, the ornaments bore, to me, the look of those sad frivolities with which France is fond of ornamenting her tombs. The chandeliers burned dim; the busts and statues looked ghostlike; the chief part of the members had thrown themselves drowsily on the benches; and the debate had languished into the murmurs of a speech, to which no one listened. If the loaded table, with its pile of petitions and ordonnances, in the midst of the hall, could have been imagined into a bier; the whole had the aspect of a chapelle ardente; there, indeed, lay in state the monarchy of France. My unlucky friend, of course, was not there; but I saw, in a narrow box, on the right of the president, a group, from which, when once seen, I found it impossible to withdraw my gaze—the first and most exalted victims of the Revolution, the king and his family. All but one were apparently overcome with fatigue; for they had sat there fifteen hours. But that one sat with a steady eye and an erect front, as if superior to all suffering. I had seen Marie Antoinette, the most splendid figure, in all the splendours of her court. I had seen her unshaken before vast popular assemblages, in which any rash or ruffian hand might have taken her life at the instant; but she now gave me an impression of a still higher order. Sitting in calm resignation and unstained dignity, her stately form and countenance, pale and pure as marble, looked like some noble statue on a tomb; or rather, sitting in that chamber of death, like some pure spirit, awaiting the summons to ascend from the relics of human guilt, infirmity, and passion before her.

But the slumbers of the Assembly were soon to be broken. A tumult, and the tramping of many feet, was heard at the door. It was followed by the thunder of clubs and hammers breaking it in; the bars gave way; the huissiers and other attendants rushed through the body of the hall, and took refuge behind the chair of the president in affright; the sleepers started from their seats; and, with a roar which spoke the true supremacy of the new power in France, the mob poured in. They announced themselves a deputation from the Municipality, and instantly took possession of the benches. Men, women, and even children, composed this barbarian invasion; like all that I had seen, half intoxicated; but evidently trained by higher hands for more determined evil. A chosen set of orators, in Roman robes, probably plundered from some suburb theatre, moved forward to the table, and took their seats round it in as much solemnity as conscript fathers. The chief speaker then advanced from the door, preceded by the head of one of the murdered Swiss on a pike, a hideous spectacle, and, drawing from his belt a dagger, commenced a furious harangue against every thing that bore the shape of authority in the kingdom. The Assembly did not escape in the general outpouring of its bitterness. They were charged with want of zeal, with want of honesty, and, most formidable of all, want of patriotism. I saw many a member cower at the word; for it was the countersign of Jacobinism; and the man, on whom that charge was personally fastened, was sure to fall by pistol or dagger. But the rage of the harangue was levelled at the royal family. "There sits the tyrant!" he exclaimed, pointing with his poniard to the meekest of monarchs and of men. "The vengeance of the people calls for victims. How long shall it be insulted? If justice is blind, tear the bandage from her eyes. How long shall the sword of the people rust in its sheath! Liberty sitting on her altar demands new sacrifices to feed the flame. The blood of tyrants is the only incense worthy to be offered by a regenerated people!"

At every pause of those fierce interjections, the crowd burst into yells of applause, drew knives and daggers from their bosoms, flourished them in the air, and echoed the words. The Assembly were evidently held in terror of their lives. The president made some faint attempts to restore order. A few of the members made faint attempts at speeches. But the mob were masters; and a night of such horrors passed, as I had never dreamed of before. At daybreak the orator demanded that a decree should be instantly passed, suspending the king, the ministry, and even the Assembly, in the midst of which he stood. Of all the extravagances ever conceived—of all the insolences of power—of all the licenses of popular licentiousness, this was the most daring, unrivalled, and unimagined; and yet this was carried, with scarcely a voice raised against it. The trembling president, with the dagger at his throat, put the motion for extinguishing the throne, the cabinet, and calling a new Assembly! From that hour the monarchy was no more.

During this tremendous discussion, I had not ventured to raise my eyes towards the royal family; but, as all were now about to retire, I dared a single glance. The king was slowly leaving the box, leading the dauphin by the hand; the Princess Elizabeth was carrying the sleeping dauphiness in her arms; the queen stayed behind, alone, for a moment, sitting, as she had done for hours, with her eyes fixed on vacancy, and her countenance calm, but corpselike. At length she seemed to recollect that she was alone, and suddenly started up. Then nature had its way; she tottered, and fainted. From that night forth, that glorious creature never saw the light of day but through the bars of a prison. From the Feuillans, the royal family were consigned to the cells of the Temple, from which Louis and Marie Antoinette never emerged but to the grave!

This night taught me a lesson, which neither time nor circumstance has ever made me forget. It cured me of all my republican fantasies at once, and for ever. I believe myself above the affectation of romantic sensibility. But it would not be less affectation to deny the feelings to which that awful scene of human guilt and human suffering gave birth. If the memory of the popular atrocities made me almost abhor human nature, the memory of that innocent and illustrious woman restored my admiration of the noble qualities that may still be found in human nature. "If I forget thee even in my mirth," the language of the Israelite to his beloved city, was mine, in scarcely a less solemn or sacred spirit, in those hours of early experience. Let the hearts and eyes of others refuse to acknowledge such feelings. I am not ashamed to say, that I have shed many a tear over the fate of the King and Queen of France. In the finest fictions of genius, in the most high-wrought sorrows of the stage, I have never been so deeply touched, I have never felt myself penetrated with such true and irresistible emotion, as in reading, many a year after, the simplest record of the unhappy Bourbons. What must it be, to have witnessed the last agonies of their hearts and throne!

On returning to my chamber, shuddering and wretched, I found a despatch on my table. It was from Downing Street; an order, that within twelve hours after its receipt, I should set out from Paris, and make my way, with the utmost secrecy, to the headquarters of the Austrian and Prussian army; where further orders would be waiting for me.

This command threw me into new perplexity. It had been my purpose to find my unfortunate friend, if he was not already in the bosom of the Seine, or a victim to some of the popular violences. But my orders were peremptory. I, however, did all that was in my power. I spent the day in looking for him through all the hotels and hospitals; and, after a hopeless search, gave my man of mystery, Mendoza, a commission—paid for at a rate that made him open his hollow eyes wide with incredulity on the coin—to discover and protect him, wherever he was to be found.

But I had now another difficulty which threatened to nip my diplomatic honours in the bud. The news had just arrived, that the allied armies had passed the frontier, and were sweeping all before them with fire and sword. A populace is always mad with courage, or mad with cowardice; and the Parisians, who, but yesterday, were ready to have made a march round the globe, now thought the wells and cellars of the city not too deep, or too dark to hold them. They would have formed a camp in the catacombs, if they could. All was sudden terror. The barriers were shut. Guards were posted tenfold at all the gates. Men were ranged on the heights round the city, to make signals of the first approach of the Prussian hussars; and the inhabitants spent half the day on every house top that commanded a view of the country, waiting for the first glimpse of their devourers. To escape from this city of terror now became next to impossible. All my applications were powerless. The government were themselves regarded as under lock and key; the populace, as if determined that all should share a common massacre, were clustered at the barriers, pike in hand, to put all "emigrants" to death; the ambassador was, as ambassadors generally are in cases of real difficulty, a cipher; and yet I must leave Paris within twelve hours, or be cashiered.

It at length occurred to me to avail myself of my Jewish spy, and I found him listening to a midnight harangue in the midst of a Jacobin crowd, in the Palais Royal. He considered the matter for a while; and I walked about, leaving him to his free invention, while I contrasted the brilliant blaze of the gaming and dancing-rooms above me with the assassin-like darkness of the galleries below. At length he turned to me. "There is but one way. Have you any objection to be arrested?"

"The greatest imaginable," was my answer.

"Just as you please," he replied; "but I have here an order for the seizure of one of the emigrant agents, a Chevalier Lafontaine, lately arrived in Paris. He has been seen in the palace, but we have missed him for the last twelve hours. The order is for Vincennes. Will you take his place?"

I naturally looked all surprise, and peremptorily refused.

"Do as you will," said my intractable adviser; "but there is no other way to pass the gates. I shall take you to Vincennes as a state prisoner; I have influence there. In short, if you trust me, you shall be safe, and on your road by daybreak. If you do not, here your life is uncertain; you are known, watched, and the first order that I receive to-morrow, may be one for your apprehension."

All this was likely enough; there was but a moment to deliberate, and I got into the first cabriolet, and drove with him to the barrier. The streets still exhibited scattered bands, who questioned us from time to time, but the words, "By order of the Municipality," which were enough to terrify the stoutest hearts, and the display of his badge, carried us through. We passed the guard at the gate, after a slight examination of the order, and galloped to Vincennes.

At the sight of the frowning fortress my blood chilled, and I refused to go further. "In that case," said my conductor, "I am compromised, and you are ruined; the first patrol will seize you, while I shall be shot. I pledge myself, that here you shall not remain; but I must be acquitted to the head of the police. You shall be M. le Chevalier Lafontaine for the night; and, if such a man exists, you will probably be the means of saving his life. To-morrow I shall bring proofs of my mistake, and then you will be outside the walls of Paris, and free to go where you please."

The name of Lafontaine decided me. Even the risk seemed less serious than before, and we drove over the drawbridge. The interior of the fortress formed a striking contrast to the scenes which I had just left behind me. All was still stern, and noiseless.