The Countess De Charny - Volume II (42 page)

The abbé could not see these persons, but he overheard some of their remarks.

Once, for instance, he heard an intruder say: —

“All that was very well when you were a king, but you’re not a king any longer.”

Nevertheless, Louis XVI. turned from the door with the same tranquil countenance.

” You see how these men treat me, father,” he remarked, “but one must learn to endure all things.”

Soon there came another rap, and the king again went to the door. This time he remarked on his return : ” Those fellows see daggers and poison everywhere. How little they know me ! Suicide would be an evidence of weakness on my part. They would think I did not know how to die!”

About nine o’clock the noise seemed to increase. A loud slamming of doors began, and Santerre entered the antechamber accompanied by seven or eight municipal officers and ten gendarmes who ranged themselves in two lines.

Without waiting for them to rap at the door, the king came out of his cabinet and said : ” You have come for me, I suppose.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

” I ask but for one moment more.”

And he stepped back into the cabinet, closing the door behind him.

“The end has come, my father,” he exclaimed, throwing himself once more at the priest’s feet. “Give me your final blessing, and ask God to sustain me until the last.”

After the benediction was given, the king arose, and

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opening the door advanced towards the officials who were standing in the middle of the room. They all kept their hats on their heads.

” My hat,” said the king to Clery, who tearfully hastened to obey his master’s behest.

“Is there any member of the Commune among you?” asked the king. “You are one, I believe,” he added, addressing a man named Jacques Eoux, a priest who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Constitution.

” What do you want with me?” asked the former priest.

The king drew his will from his pocket, and said: “I beg you to deliver this paper to the queen, — to my wife.”

” We did not come here to do your commissions, but to take you to the scaffold,” replied Jacques Roux, roughly.

The king received this insult as meekly as Christ would have done, and turning with the same gentleness of manner to another official named Gobeau, he said : ” Will you, too, refuse my request, monsieur?”

And as Gobeau seemed to hesitate, the king added: —

“It is only my will. You can read it if you like. There are some things in it to which I would like to call the attention of the Commune.”

Gobeau took the paper.

Then, seeing that Clery was not only holding the hat he had asked for, but his overcoat as well, — because he feared like the valet of Charles I. that his master would shiver with the cold, and that people would think it was from fear, — the king said: “No, Clery, give me only my hat.”

Clery obeyed ; and the king took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded to press his faithful servant’s hand for the last time.

Then, in the tone of command he had so rarely assumed, “Let us start, gentlemen,” he said.

On the staircase they met Mathay, the concierge of the tower, whom the king had found seated in front of his fire a short time before, and whom he had rather roughly ordered to move aside.

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” I was too hasty when I spoke to you day before yesterday, Mathay,” said the king. ” Do not lay it up against me.”

Mathay turned his back without replying.

The king crossed the inner courtyard on foot, turning two or three times as he did so, as if to bid farewell to the only love of his life, his wife, to his dear sister, and his sole joy, his children.

A hack stood at the gate of the courtyard.

Two gendarmes were holding the door open; as the prisoner approached, one of them stepped into the carriage and took his place on the front seat. The king followed him, and motioned the abbé to sit beside him on the back seat. Then the other gendarme got in and closed the door.

It was quarter past nine when the procession started.

A word or two now, in relation to the queen and Madame Elizabeth.

The evening before, after the interview which had been so sweet and yet so painful, the queen threw herself on her bed without undressing; and all that long winter’s night Madame Elizabeth heard her moaning with cold and despair.

At quarter past six her door opened, and the entire family eagerly awaited the expected summons to the king’s apartment.

The hours dragged slowly by. The queen and the princess, standing all the while, heard all those ominous sounds which did not impair the king’s composure, though they made his valet and his confessor shudder with horror. They heard the loud opening and shutting of doors. They heard the yells of the populace which greeted the king’s exit from the prison; and, finally, they heard the booming of cannon and the clatter of horses’ hoofs.

Then the queen sank into a chair groaning : —

“Oh, my God! he has gone without bidding us farewell!”

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Madame Elizabeth and Madame Royale knelt, sobbiug, by her side.

One by one their hopes had fled; at first they had hoped for exile or continued imprisonment, but this hope had vanished. Next they had hoped for a reprieve, but that hope, too, had fled. Lastly they had hoped for some attempt at rescue even on the way to the scaffold, but they felt now that this hope was destined to prove as futile as all the others.

“My God! my God! my God!” cried the queen. And in this last frenzied appeal to her Creator, the poor woman exhausted the last remnant of strength she possessed.

Meanwhile the hack had reached the boulevards. The streets were nearly deserted, and half the shops closed. There was no one to be seen in the doorways or at the windows. A proclamation from the Commune had forbidden any citizen, not forming a part of the escort, to traverse the streets leading from the boulevards, or show themselves at the windows along the route.

A cloudy, misty sky overhung the forest of pikes, in the midst of which an occasional bayonet glittered. Directly in front of the carriage there was a squad of cavalry, and in front of that, a drum corps.

The king attempted to converse with his confessor, but was i;nable to do so on account of the noise; so the abbé loaned him his breviary, and the king read that attentively.

On nearing the Porte Saint-Denis, he raised his head fancying he detected a very different sound, and he was right. A dozen young men came rushing down the Rue Beauregard, sabre in hand, shouting, “Help! help, all who would save the king! “

Three thousand conspirators were to respond to this appeal made by Baron de Batz.

He courageously gave the signal, but only a handful of men kept their promise; and the baron and liis eiglit or ten followers seeing that no good could ])e accom])lis]iod, took advantage of the commotion created by their out-

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break, and made their escape through the labyrinth of streets around the Porte Saint-Denis.

It was this incident that diverted the king’s attention, from liis prayers ; but it was of so little importance that the carriage did not even stop. When it did pause at the end of two hours and ten minutes, it had reached its destination.

When the king noticed that the carriage had ceased to move, he leaned towards the abbé and said: “Here we are, I think, monsieur;” but the priest made no reply.

One of the three Samson brothers, the public executioners of the city, opened the carriage door.

Placing his hand on the priest’s knee, the king said in a tone of authority : ” Gentlemen, T commend this gentleman here to your care. See that no harm befalls him after my death.”

Meanwhile the other headsmen had approached.

” Yes, yes; we will take care of him. Leave him to us,” replied one of them.

Louis alighted. The assistants surrounded him and attempted to remove his coat, but he waved them aside, and began to make the necessary preparations unaided.

Por an instant, the king stood entirely alone in the circle, while he threw his hat on the ground, untied his cravat and removed his coat; but these preparations completed, the executioners again approached him, one of them with a rope in his hand.

“What do you want? ” demanded the king.

“To bind you,” was the reply.

” I will never consent to that. You may as well abandon that idea. Do your work, but you shall never bind me, never! “

The executioners insisted, and a hand-to-hand struggle seemed likely to deprive the victim of the admiration which six months of calmness, courage, and resignation had earned for him in the eyes of the world; but one of the three Samsons moved with pity, though obliged to

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perform this odious task, said to the king respectfully: ” With this handkerchief, sire — “

The king glanced at his confessor.

” Sire, consent to make this sacrifice. It will only be another point of resemblance between your Majesty and the Divine Being who will surely reward you,” said the abbé, though it was evident that it cost him a terrible effort to speak.

The king lifted his eyes heavenward with an expression of intense sorrow.

” Nothing but His example could induce me to submit to such an affront,” he murmured.

Then, turning to the headsmen, he extended his hands.

“Do what you will,” he added. “I will drink the cup of humiliation to the very dregs.”

The steps of the scaffold were steep and slippery. He mounted them leaning on the arm of the priest, who feared the king might show some weakness in his last moments; but as soon as he reached the topmost step Louis freed himself from the abbe’s grasp, and walked briskly across the platform. His face was flushed and never had he looked so animated and full of energy.

The drums were beating loudly, but he silenced them with a look.

Then, in a strong voice, he cried: —

*‘I die innocent of the crimes imputed to my charge. I forgive the authors of my death, and I pray God the blood you are about to shed may never be visited upon France ! “

“Beat the drums!” cried a voice which was long supposed to be that of Santerre, but whicli was really the voice of Monsieur de Beaufranchet, Count d’Oyat, the son of Louis XV. and the courtesan Morphise, and, consequently, the illegitimate uncle of the condemned man.

The drummers, obeyed. The king stamped his foot

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angrih’. “Silence!” he cried imperiously. “I have something more to say.”

But the drums beat on.

” Do your duty ! ” yelled the pikemen who surrounded the scalïold.

The executioners seized the king; who was walking slowly towards the knife, glancing up at the bevelled edge which he himself had suggested two or three years before. Then he looked back at the priest, who was kneeling in prayer near the edge of the scaffold.

A confused and hurried movement between the two posts of the guillotine followed, for a single instant the head of the condemned appeared in the opening, then came a flash, and a dull thud, after which nothing but a stream of blood was to be seen.

One of the executioners picked up the head and showed it to the people. The pikemen shouted with joy at the sight, and rushing forward dipped their pikes or the point of their sabres or their handkerchiefs — such of them as had any — in the monarch’s blood, shouting: “Long live the Kepublic!” the while.

But for the first time this glorious cry, which had so often thrilled the hearts of the people with joy, died away without an echo. The Republic was branded now with one of those fatal stains which can never be effaced. As a great statesman subsequently remarked : ” The Republic had been guilty of something worse than a crime, — a blunder.”

A feeling of stupefaction seemed to pervade the city. With some, this feeling amounted to positive despair.

A bookseller went mad; a hairdresser cut his throat; an old ofiicer died of grief, and a woman threw herself into the Seine.

At the opening of the next session of the Convention a letter was received by the presiding officer. It was from a man who asked that the body of Louis XVI. might be sent to him so he could bury it beside that of his father.

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Head and trunk remained separated. Let us see what became of them. We know of no recital more terrible than the official report of the burial made that very day which we here append.

REPORT ON THE INTERMENT OP LOUIS CAPET.

On January 21st, 1793, in the second year of the French Republic, we, the undersigned, Commissioners for the department of Paris, empowered by the General Council by virtue of certain decrees of the Provisional Executive Council of the Repubhc, went at nine o’clock in the forenoon to the house of Citizen Ricave, curé of Saint Madeleine. Finding him at home, we inquired if he had arranged for the execution of the orders issued the evening before by the Executive Council for the burial of Louis Capet. He replied that the instructions he had received had been faithfully carried out, and that everything was in readiness.

Thence, accompanied by Citizens Renard and Damoreau, both vicars of Saint Madeleine Parish, and deputised by the Citizen Curé to attend the burial of Louis Capet, we repaired to the cemetery connected with the aforesaid parish, situated on the Rue Anjou Saint-Honoré. Soon after our arrival, there was deposited in the cemetery in our presence, by a detachment of gendarmes, the body of Louis Capet which we found entire in all its members, the head only being separated from the trunk. We took notice that the hair on the back of the head was cut, and that the corpse was without a cravat, coat, or shoes, but it was clad in a shirt, pointed vest, gray cloth breeches, and a pair of gray silk hose.

Thus clothed, it was placed in a coffin which was immediately lowered into a grave and covered.

Everything was consequently done in a manner confonning with the orders issued by the Provisional Executive Council of the French Republic, as we, together with Citizens Ricave, Renard, and Damoreau, curé and vicars of Saint Madeleine hereby certify.