Old and New Paris Part 9

M. Nauroy, however, author of "Les Secrets des Bourbons," is convinced that the true Louis XVII. was carried out of the Temple in a bundle of linen, and that by like means the child who ultimately died there was subst.i.tuted for him. M. Nauroy finds in support of his belief abundant evidence, positive and negative, which he derives from a variety of sources, and sometimes discovers in the most unexpected places.

The appearance of a long succession of impostors claiming to be Louis XVII. proves nothing, and will pa.s.s for what it is worth in the native land of Arthur Orton. It is remarkable, however, that Royalists and Republicans, including eminent personages on both sides, have agreed in maintaining that the child who died in the Temple was not Louis XVII.

Louis Blanc favours this view in his "History of the Revolution." Nor does he do so without taking a calm, judicial survey of all the evidence in the case. He may consciously or unconsciously have been influenced by party spirit; and the moral he draws from the whole matter is that there is danger in the principle of "divine right" when, through a variety of accidents, it may be impossible to show on whom this questionable right has devolved.

Those Royalists who deny that Louis XVII. died in the Temple, explain the announcement of his death and the proclamation of Louis XVIII. in the Royalist camp, first, by the inconvenience of bringing forward as King of France a child of tender years; secondly, by the difficulty of producing this child; and, thirdly, by the danger, when Louis XVIII. had once gained acceptance with the party, of dividing it by a revelation of the fact that his nephew, son of Louis XVI., was still alive.

M. Nauroy, as already hinted, sees proofs of his favourite theory where no one else would perceive them. When, for instance, the Duke of Berri, dying from the stroke of an a.s.sa.s.sin, had some final words to whisper to his brother, the Duke of Angouleme--"What," asks M. Nauroy, "could this have been but the truth in regard to Louis XVII.?" When, again, one of the doctors who made the post-mortem examination of the supposed Louis XVII. offered to Louis XVIII. the heart which he had concealed and preserved, and the king declined the present--"Why," asks M. Nauroy, "should he have accepted the heart which he knew was not that of Louis XVII., but that of the child by whom the young prince was replaced in his prison?"

Meanwhile, that some of the great Royalist families believed Louis XVII.

to have been replaced in the Temple by another child and himself carried to La Vendee is beyond doubt; and a letter on the subject, addressed, December 4, 1838, to the _Times_, shows that this view of the matter was held by at least a section (probably a very small one) of the Royalist party.

On January 19th the cobbler Simon ceased to do duty as gaoler. At that time there were, as M. Nauroy sets forth, only four persons in the Temple--the Dauphin, Simon, his wife, and the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Angouleme. Simon died on the scaffold six months afterwards, on the 28th of July. The Princess Elizabeth, confined in a room apart from her brother, never saw him again, and consequently knew nothing of him except by hearsay. From January 19th to July 28th there was no warder at the Temple. The child was watched by Commissaries, who were relieved from day to day, and of whom not one could establish his ident.i.ty. When regular gaolers were appointed, not one of them had ever seen the Dauphin. If, then, after the departure of Simon, another child could have been subst.i.tuted for Louis XVII., there was no one to notice the change when it had once been accomplished. The Dauphin was in perfect health at the time when Simon and his wife left him. But the child in the Temple fell ill immediately afterwards; and on the 6th of May, 1795, Dr. Desault, summoned to attend the "Dauphin," declared his little patient to be some other child. He had visited the Dauphin's brother in 1789, and on that occasion had seen the Dauphin himself at the Tuileries. If, as M. Nauroy a.s.serts, Dr. Desault drew up a report on the subject, that report has disappeared. Indirect evidence, however, as to Dr. Desault's conviction that the child he attended in the Temple could not be the Dauphin, was given fifty years afterwards in a letter written and signed by the widow of P. A. Thouvenin, Dr. Desault's nephew, who claimed to remember what his uncle had frequently said on the subject.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. IN THE PLACE DES VOSGES.]

Whether or not Louis XVII. escaped to La Vendee to be cherished by the Vendean chiefs even when, in the Royalist army which was invading France from Germany, Louis XVIII. had been proclaimed, he is now in any case no more. The eighteenth Louis was ten years old when the child of the Temple is supposed to have died in prison; and according to the most convinced, not to say credulous, of those writers who maintain that Louis XVII. escaped, to live for years afterwards, he breathed his last in 1872 at Saveney (Loire Inferieure), under the name of Laroche, at the age of eighty-seven. The numerous impostors who with more or less success personated the unhappy prince had died much earlier. But the descendants of Naundorff, his valet, the most famous of all these pretenders, claim still to be of the blood royal, and on the occasion of the Count de Chambord's death they displayed a proud consciousness of their rights by publis.h.i.+ng somewhere in Holland a manifesto a.s.serting gravely the t.i.tle of the chief of the family to the throne of France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PLACE DES VOSGES, FORMERLY PLACE ROYALE.]

Another prisoner in the Temple of whom mention must be made is Sir Sidney Smith, whose friends were making every effort for his liberation, when a Royalist officer in the French army, named Boisgerard (who under the Revolution had quitted military life to become ballet-master at the Opera), effected his escape. With this view he had obtained an impression of the seal of the Directorial Government, which he affixed to an order, forged by his own hand, for the delivery of Sir Sidney Smith into his care. Accompanied by a friend, disguised, like himself, in the uniform of an officer of the revolutionary army, he did not scruple personally to present the fict.i.tious doc.u.ment to the keeper of the Temple, who, opening a small closet, took thence some original doc.u.ment, with the writing and seal of which he carefully compared the forged order. Desiring the adventurers to wait a few minutes, he then withdrew and locked the door after him. Giving themselves up for lost, the confederates determined to resist, sword in hand, any attempt made to secure them. Highly interesting is Boisgerard's own description of the period of horrible suspense he now pa.s.sed through. Under the dread that each successive moment might be attended by a discovery involving the safety of his life, the acuteness of his organs of sense was heightened to painfulness; the least noise thrilled through his brain, and the gloomy apartment in which he sat seemed filled with strange images. Both he and his companion, however, retained self-possession, and after the lapse of a few minutes their anxiety was terminated by the re-appearance of the gaoler, with his captive, who was delivered to Boisgerard. But here a new and unexpected difficulty occurred. Sir Sidney Smith, not knowing Boisgerard, refused for some time to quit the prison; and considerable address was required on the part of his deliverers to overcome his scruples. At last the precincts of the Temple were cleared. The fugitives rode a short distance in a fiacre, then walked, then entered another carriage, and in this way so successfully baffled pursuit that they ultimately got to Havre, where Sir Sidney was put on board an English vessel. Boisgerard, on his return to Paris, was a thousand times in dread of detection and had a succession of narrow escapes until his visit to England, which took place after the peace of Amiens. A pension had been granted to Sir Sidney Smith by the English Government for his meritorious services; and on Boisgerard's arrival here a reward of a similar nature was bestowed on him through the influence of Sir Sidney, who took every opportunity of testifying his grat.i.tude.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCADE IN THE PLACE DES VOSGES.]

If the prison of the unfortunate king and queen who were to suffer for the sins of their predecessors was at the eastern end of the line of boulevards, as marked by the Boulevard du Temple, their place of execution on the Place Louis XV., now known as Place de la Concorde, was at the western extremity, which in due time we shall explore.

Meanwhile from one end of the boulevards to the other, from the tiny Theatre Beaumarchais to the magnificent Opera, there is a long series of playhouses. Close to the Beaumarchais Theatre stands the Cirque d'Hiver, opened in 1852 under the t.i.tle of Cirque Napoleon, which seats 3,800 persons. It occupies the site of the first circus that was ever established in Paris. In 1785 the Astleys, father and son, came to Paris and there opened a circus exactly like the one they had just founded in London. Under their direction this theatre, situated at number twenty-four Rue du Faubourg du Temple, and measuring twenty metres in diameter, was lighted by 2,000 lamps and furnished with two rows of boxes. The price of the seats varied from twelve sous to three francs.

Astley junior is said to have possessed a remarkably fine figure; and, in the words of a contemporary writer, "his beauty was sculptural."

Bachaumont, in his memoirs of the time, speaks of the numerous pa.s.sions inspired by the young equestrian in too susceptible feminine hearts.

The tricks of the circus, now so familiar, that in England, at least, no one cares to see them, were at that time new, and the sight of a man att.i.tudinising on the back of a horse at full gallop excited the greatest wonder.

Astley's Circus in Paris possessed, as so many operatic theatres have done, a sort of international character. Engagements were made for it by diplomatists abroad. It can be shown, indeed, that diplomatists have long and almost from time immemorial been in the habit of doing agency work for artists and managers of good position. Operatic celebrities have been particularly favoured in this respect. A great Minister of State, Cardinal Mazarin, introduced, or aided powerfully in introducing, opera into France. The engagement of Cambert as director of music at the Court of Charles II. was effected by diplomatic means. Gluck, more than a century later, was induced to visit Paris through the representations of a secretary of the French Emba.s.sy at Vienna--that M. du Rollet who arranged for Gluck, on the basis of Racine's _Iphigenie_, the libretto of _Iphigenie en Aulide_; and Piccini, at the instigation of Madame du Barry, was secured at Paris as opposition composer through the instrumentality of Baron de Breteuil, French Amba.s.sador at Rome, working in co-operation with the Marquis Carraccioli, Neapolitan Amba.s.sador at Paris.

The great Montesquieu, moreover, when he was in England, had not thought it unbecoming to interest himself in the welfare of the French artists who occasionally arrived in England with recommendations addressed to him. Nor did the ill.u.s.trious Locke occupy himself so exclusively with the "human understanding" as to have no time to bestow on the material interests of foreign _danseuses_. Locke was not indeed one of those practically Epicurean philosophers of whom M. a.r.s.ene Houssaye discourses so agreeably in his "Philosophes et Comediennes." He had no general taste either for the public performances or for the private society of _ballerines_; but a certain Mlle. Subligny having come to him with a letter of introduction from the Abbe Dubois, he is known to have made himself useful, and therefore, no doubt, agreeable, to her during her stay in England.

Locke, it is true, was a metaphysician, and had nothing whatever to do with diplomacy. But his friend Montesquieu was a personage of political importance, and in his anxiety to a.s.sist French artists in London he even went so far as to bring to their performances as many of the English n.o.bility as were willing to attend. About the same time, at the suggestion of the Regent of Orleans, a Minister of State, M. de Maurepas, made overtures to Handel concerning a series of representations which it was proposed that his celebrated company should give at the Academie Royale of Paris. M. de Maurepas wished, like Mr.

Washburne at a later day, to secure for Paris the best available talent; and he looked to Handel's opera-house for singers, as Mr. Washburne looked to the circuses of the United States for "bare-back riders."

On this subject Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre" shows that immediately after the peace of 1815 all the offers of engagements to artists of the Paris opera were made through the medium of the English Emba.s.sy to the Court of France, or by special missions with which diplomatists of distinction were glad to be entrusted. The committee of n.o.blemen who aided Ebers in his management treated, through the English Amba.s.sador at Paris, with the Director of the Academy, or with the Minister of Fine Arts; though, as a matter of fact, they failed to secure by these elaborate means the services of artists who, in the present day, would be engaged through an exchange of telegrams.

The outbreak of the Revolution was the signal for the Astleys and their company to recross the Channel, and the Astley Circus remained unoccupied until 1791. Then a company calling themselves "The Comedians without a t.i.tle" (_Les Comediens sans t.i.tre_) opened it as a theatre on Thursday, March 20th, and closed it on the 23rd. Finally Franconi took it over, and achieved a triumphal success, his management being destined to last many years. In 1801 he moved his enterprise to the Garden of the Capucines, which had become a public promenade in the heart of Paris, subsequently transferring it to the theatre in the Rue du Mont-Thabor.

In 1819 he returned with his company to the circus of the Faubourg du Temple, reconstructed by the architect Dubois, but doomed, on the night of March 15th, 1826, to be burnt to the ground. The destruction of the circus by fire excited much sympathy. Public subscriptions were opened, and public representations given for the benefit of the sufferers, the result being so satisfactory that the theatre was at once reconstructed, this time on the Boulevard du Temple, with a magnificent facade, and Franconi once more threw open his doors, about a year after the fire, on the 31st of March, 1827. The stage, which in the old building was an accessory, became in the new one of the first importance. It was now possible to perform military manoeuvres on a large scale. At the restored circus was represented during the last years of the reign of Charles X. the _Siege of Saragossa_; and under Louis Philippe a number of military pieces founded on incidents in the history of the Republic and the Empire.

Every Government in France since the first Napoleon has had victories of its own, important or unimportant, to celebrate. The martial triumphs of Louis XIV. seem, by common consent, to have been forgotten, either because French history dates for the immense majority of the population from the time of the Revolution, or because the battles won under the old Monarchy are now too remote to stir the national pride. The reign of Napoleon I., however, was a series of brilliant victories. Under the Restoration a campaign was undertaken in Spain, the incidents of which so lent themselves to dramatic treatment that playwrights reproduced them on the stage and in the arena of the circus. The reign of Louis Philippe, too, had its military glories; first in Belgium, in connection with the War of Independence undertaken in 1830 by the Belgians, with the a.s.sistance of France and England, against the Dutch.

It was in Africa, however, and in the neighbourhood of Algiers, that Louis Philippe's army played for many years so active a part. The war against the Dey of Algiers was begun by Charles X., whose consul had been insulted by that potentate; Louis Philippe continued it, chiefly, it was thought, in order to keep open for discontented spirits a field of activity at a safe distance from France. Many restless adventurers sought distinction and found it in the Algerian campaigns; and Algeria was the princ.i.p.al training-ground for those generals who were afterwards to aid Prince Louis Napoleon in executing his _coup d'etat_. It was under Louis Philippe that those picturesque troops, the Cha.s.seurs d'Orleans and Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique, were created, not to mention the Zouaves and the Spahis.

According to the criticisms of German officers, the laxity of discipline in the Algerian campaigns had a considerable effect in producing, or at least hastening, the long series of military defeats to which France was subjected in the war of 1870. The news of victories gained in Africa was, all the same, constantly reaching France; and each successive triumph was made the subject of a new dramatic spectacle at the circus or hippodrome. Abd-el-Kader became a familiar theatrical figure, and his famous interview with General Bugeaud was represented in more than one equestrian piece.

Abd-el-Kader had by the most violent means been prevailed upon to make peace; and an interview was arranged at which the Arab chief and Bugeaud, the French commander, were to ratify it by a personal interchange of promises. Abd-el-Kader did not, however, keep his appointment, and seems, indeed, to have studiously missed it. The French general, in a fit of impatience, left his room, and went forward with a small escort, military and civil, towards the quarters of the unpunctual Arab chief, in order to stir him up. On reaching the advanced posts, the French general called a chieftain of one of the tribes, who pointed out to him the hill-side where the emir lay encamped. "It is unbecoming of your chief," said Bugeaud to this Arab, "to bring me so far, and then make me wait so long;" whereupon he continued resolutely to advance.

The emir's escort now appeared. The Arab chieftains, most of them young and handsome, were magnificently mounted, and made a gallant display of their finery. Presently from their ranks a horseman advanced dressed in a coa.r.s.e burnoose, with a camel-hair cord, and without any outward sign of distinction, except that his black horse, which he sat most elegantly, was surrounded by Arabs holding the bridle and the stirrups.

This was Abd-el-Kader. The French general held out his hand; the other grasped it twice, then threw himself quickly from his horse, and sat down. General Bugeaud took his place beside him, and the conversation began. The emir was of small stature; his face serious and pale, with delicate features slightly marked by time, and a keen sparkling eye.

His hands, which were beautifully formed, played with a chaplet that hung round his neck. He spoke gently, but there was on his lips and in the expression of countenance a certain affectation of disdain. The conversation turned, of course, upon the peace which had just been concluded, and Abd-el-Kader spoke of the cessation of hostilities with elaborate and feigned indifference. When the French general, after pointing out to him that the treaty could not be put into force until it was ratified, observed that the truce, meanwhile, was favourable to the Arabs, since it would save their crops from destruction so long as it lasted, the chief replied: "You may destroy the crops this moment, and I will give you a written authority to do so, if you like. The Arabs are not in want of corn."

The conversation at an end, General Bugeaud stood up, and the emir remained seated; whereupon the former, stung to the quick, seized the emir's hand and jerked it, saying "Come, get up." The French were delighted at this characteristic act of an imperious and intrepid nature, and the Arabs could not conceal their astonishment. As for the emir, seized with an involuntary confusion, he turned round without uttering a word, sprang on his horse and rode back to his own people; his return being a signal for enthusiastic cries of "G.o.d preserve the Sultan!" which echoed from hill to hill. A violent thunder-burst added to the effect of this strange scene, and the Arabs vanished among the mountain gorges.

Until 1860 the Boulevard du Temple was noted for a number of little theatres, where marionettes might be seen dancing on the tight-rope, or where pantomimes in the Italian style were performed. Then there was the cabinet of wax figures, together with other little shows, difficult to cla.s.s: all destined in that year to disappear. The reconstruction of this portion of Paris caused the removal of many theatres, which were built again at other points. The site of the former circus was now occupied by the Imperial Theatre of the Chatelet. The circus reappeared, for winter performances, in the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire, for the summer season in the Champs elysees. In connection with the winter circus the Popular Concerts started by the late Pasdeloup must not be forgotten. Here the finest symphonic music of the French and other composers, chiefly modern, was performed in admirable style. Here the French public were familiarised with the works of Berlioz, and, in spite of a certain opposition at the outset, with selections from some of the operas of Wagner. Pasdeloup, who after thirty years' unremitting work died in poverty, used to find worthy imitators and successors in M.

Colonne and M. Lamoureux, both renowned among the musical conductors of the period.

Number forty-two of the Boulevard du Temple marks the house, formerly number fifty, whence the notorious Fieschi, on the 28th of July, 1835, exploded his infernal machine which was intended to kill Louis Philippe and his sons, and which, in fact, struck down by their side one of the veterans of the Empire, Marshal Mortier, Duc de Trevise, and several other superior officers.

Not even in Russia have so many sovereigns been a.s.sailed by their subjects as in France. Since, indeed, the murder of Henri III. by Jacques Clement, it has been the rule, rather than the exception, with royal personages in France to be struck by the a.s.sa.s.sin or the executioner; or, if spared in body, to be brought all the same to some tragic end. Henri IV. fell by the hand of Ravaillac. No such fate awaited Louis XIII., Henri IV.'s immediate successor; but Louis XV. was stabbed by Damiens, Louis XVI. was guillotined, Louis XVII., imprisoned in the Temple, died one scarcely knows how or where. The Duke of Enghien was shot by order of Napoleon. Louis XVIII. had to fly from Paris at the approach of Napoleon returning from Elba; the Duke of Berri was a.s.sa.s.sinated by Louvel; Charles X. lost his crown by the Revolution which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and Louis Philippe, who was ultimately to disappear in a hackney cab before the popular rising which led to the establishment of the Second Republic, and soon afterwards of the Second Empire, was meanwhile made the object of some half-dozen murderous attacks, the most formidable being the one planned and executed by Fieschi, otherwise Gerard. What, it may be asked, had a quiet, peaceful, and eminently respectable monarch like Louis Philippe done to provoke repeated attempts upon his life? The explanation is simple. Charles X. had been driven away in 1830 by the Republicans, not that another king might be appointed in his stead, but that the Republic might be established. Louis Philippe was, from their point of view, an interloper who must, at all hazards, be removed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WINTER CIRCUS IN THE BOULEVARD DES FILLES DE CALVAIRE.]

Fieschi's experiment with his infernal machine created a sensation all over Europe; and the papers for some time afterwards were full of particulars, more or less authentic, of the diabolical attempt upon King Louis Philippe's life. The Revolutionists, whose action against Charles X. had led to the establishment, not of a Republic, but of a Monarchy--hateful to them in whatever form--had evidently sworn that he should die. It was ascertained by M. Thiers, the First Minister, that on the occasion of a journey which the King intended to make from Neuilly to Paris certain conspirators had arranged to throw a lighted projectile into the royal carriage; and His Majesty, therefore, was requested to let the royal carriage proceed on its way, at the appointed time, without him, and occupied simply by his aides-de-camp, no previous announcement being made as to the absence of the King. Louis Philippe having protested against this suggestion as unfair to the aides-de-camp: "Sire," replied M. Thiers, "it is their duty to expose themselves for the safety of your person, and they surely will not complain when they find the Minister of the Interior by their side in the threatened carriage." The King, however, rejected this proposition, declaring that he had resolved on the journey, and, hazardous as it might be, would undertake it. His resolution having been combated in vain by M. Thiers, the preparations for departure were ordered. Just as the King was about to get into the carriage, the Queen and the princesses suddenly presented themselves in an agony of terror and of tears. "It is impossible," says M. Louis Blanc, "to say whether a skilful indiscretion on the part of the Minister had initiated them into the secret of what had taken place, or whether they had received no other intimation than that supplied by the instincts of the heart." However this may have been, the Queen, finding that Louis Philippe would not abandon his intention, insisted on accompanying him, and it was quite impossible to prevent her from doing so. M. Thiers then begged the honour of a seat in the threatened carriage, and the journey was risked. The attack apprehended was not, however, on this occasion to be made; and it was as long afterwards as the 28th of July, 1835, on the occasion when Louis Philippe drove through Paris in memory of the "Three Days" of July, 1830, that Fieschi put his murderous project into execution. "On the 28th of July," says M. Louis Blanc, "the sun rose upon the city, already perplexed with fears and doubts. The drum which summoned the National Guards early in the morning beat for some time in vain: a heavy apathy, in which there mingled a sort of morbid distrust, weighed upon everyone. At ten o'clock, however, the legions of the Garde Nationale stretched in an immense line along the boulevards, facing 40,000 of the regular troops, horse and foot. The Boulevard du Temple having been pointed out by rumour as the scene of the contemplated crime, the police had orders to parade it with particular watchfulness, and to keep a close eye upon the windows." On the previous evening M. Thiers had a number of houses in this quarter searched. But the remonstrances of the inhabitants became so violent, that his original intention of examining every building on the boulevard had to be abandoned.

The clock of the chateau was striking ten when the King issued from the Tuileries on horseback. He was accompanied by his sons, the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Joinville; by Marshals Mortier and Lobau; by his ministers; and by a numerous body of generals and other superior officers and high functionaries. Along the whole line which he traversed there prevailed a dead silence, broken only at intervals by the _ex officio_ acclamations of the soldiers. At a few minutes past twelve the royal _cortege_ arrived in front of the Eighth Legion, which was stationed along the Boulevard du Temple. Here, near the end of the Jardin Turc, as the King was leaning forward to receive a pet.i.tion from the hands of a National Guardsman, a sound was heard like the fire of a well-sustained platoon. In an instant the ground was strewn with the dead and dying. Marshal Mortier and General Lacha.s.se de Verigny, wounded in the head, fell bathed in their blood. A young captain of Artillery, M. de Villate, slid from his horse, his arms extended at full length, as though they had been nailed to a cross; he had been shot in the head, and expired ere he touched the ground. Among the other victims were the colonel of gendarmerie, Raffe; M. Rieussec, lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth Legion; the National Guardsmen Prudhomme, Benetter, Ricard, and Leger; an old man upwards of seventy years of age, M. Lebrouste; a poor fringe-maker named Langeray; and a girl of scarcely fourteen, Sophie Remy. The king was not wounded, but in the confusion his horse reared and he sustained a violent shock in the left arm. The Duke of Orleans had a slight contusion on the thigh. A ball grazed the croup of the Duke of Joinville's horse.

Thus the odious attempt failed in its object; the royal family was saved. No language can express the utter horror which this frightful and cowardly attack created in the minds of the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes.

An aide-de-camp immediately galloped off to rea.s.sure the Queen, and the King continued his progress amidst manifestations of the deepest sympathy and the most enthusiastic loyalty.

As a striking exemplification of the _sang-froid_ of Louis Philippe it has been gravely related, on the alleged authority of Marshal Maison, that immediately after the fatal occurrence, and while all around were overwhelmed with dismay and grief, the King's mind rapidly glanced over all the possible advantages which might be drawn from the event, and that he exclaimed, "Ah, now we are sure to get the appanages!" But this anecdote, in itself improbable, must be received with more than the usual grain of salt.

Meantime, at the moment of the explosion, clouds of smoke were seen to issue from a window on the third floor of the house number fifty. A man got out of this window, and seizing a double rope which was fastened inside, slid down it on to the roof of a lower building. He was but half-dressed, and his face streamed with blood. A flower-pot which was caught in the movement of the rope after he quitted hold of it fell to the pavement, and the noise attracted the attention of an agent of police who had been posted in the courtyard of the house. "There is the a.s.sa.s.sin escaping on the roof!" he exclaimed; and one of the National Guards at once called upon the fugitive to surrender, threatening to fire if he refused. But the man, wiping away with his hand the veil of blood which obscured his sight, dashed on and made his way through an open window into an adjoining house. A track of blood indicated his route, as though his own crime pursued him. He reached the courtyard too late to escape un.o.bserved, and was at once taken into custody.

In the room whence he had fled were found the smoking remains of his death-dealing machine. It was raised upon a sort of scaffolding on four square legs connected together by strong oak cross-pieces. Twenty-five musket barrels were fastened by the breech upon the cross-piece at the back, which was higher than the front traverse by about eight inches. The ends of the barrels rested in notches cut in the lower traverse. The touch-holes were exactly in a line, so as to take fire simultaneously by means of a long train of gunpowder. The guns had been placed so as to receive the procession slantingly, embracing a large range, and rising from the legs of the horses to the heads of the riders. The charge in each barrel was a quadruple one. Fortunately, the calculations of the a.s.sa.s.sin were frustrated. Two of the barrels did not go off, four of them burst; and to these chances the King doubtless owed his life.

Fieschi was found, on inquiry, to have lodged in the house for several months. He stated himself to be a machinist. The porter had never been inside Fieschi's room since he had occupied it. There had been but one man to see Fieschi, whom he represented as his uncle, and three women, who, he said, were his mistresses. On the morning of the 28th he had been noticed to go in and out, up and down, in a visible state of agitation, and once, though habitually abstemious, he went into a neighbouring cafe to drink a gla.s.s of brandy. At the military post where he was taken upon his arrest, a National Guard having asked him who he was, "What's that to you?" he replied, "I shall answer such questions when they are put by the proper people." Some gunpowder having been found upon his person, he was asked what it was for. "For glory!" he exclaimed.

The trial of Fieschi and his accomplices took place on the 30th of January, 1836, before the Court of Peers a.s.sembled in the palace of the Luxembourg. In the body of the court, in front of the clerk's table, were displayed, among other proofs against the prisoners, a machine supporting a number of guns in an inclined position, an extinguished firebrand, a dagger, a shot belt with a quant.i.ty of bullets in it, an iron gauntlet, and a bloodstained rope.

Fieschi, the chief conspirator, is described by Louis Blanc as "endowed with an energy and shrewdness which merely served to promote the aims of an inveterate and grovelling turpitude. Vain to a degree which almost approached insanity, this man had stained his life with every infamy.

A Corsican by birth, he had fought bravely in the service of Napoleon.

After the peace, however, he had launched upon a career of vice and crime. He had invented the so-called infernal machine (which was simply a battery of guns so arranged that they could be discharged from a window), not from any political or personal hatred of Louis Philippe, but simply as the hireling of a band of Republican and Revolutionary conspirators."

Fieschi and his accomplices were duly guillotined. Other attempts had been made and were still to be made on the life of Louis Philippe. The ferocious exploit, however, of Fieschi remains the most notorious one of this reign. At last the Citizen King lost his nerve; and in February, 1848, disappeared in face of a danger not more formidable, if firmly met at the outset, than the one which he had despised thirteen years previously, in 1835.

Fieschi was simply guillotined; and he was the first regicide or would-be regicide in France who escaped torture. The horrible cruelties inflicted on the a.s.sa.s.sins of French kings may make many persons less sensitive than they otherwise would be to the misfortunes reserved for the successors of these princes. The only possible excuse for the diabolical punishments devised for regicides under the old French Monarchy is that such barbarity was of the age. The torture of Damiens was imitated in every detail from the torture of Ravaillac, which had for precedent the torture of Gerard, the a.s.sa.s.sin of the Prince of Orange. An ingenious French writer attempted to decide whether Ravaillac's torments were greater than those of Gerard. It is certain in any case that the latter suffered with much greater constancy. Ravaillac shrieked out in a terrible manner, whereas Balthasar Gerard never uttered a groan.

In this connection it is curious that, from the middle of the eighteenth century until the time of the French Revolution, the name of Damiens, or Damian, at present venerated throughout the civilised world, was in France, its country of origin, one of such opprobrium that n.o.body ventured to bear it. No Frenchman, indeed, would have dared to do so; for after the attempt upon the life of Louis XV. the name of Damiens, or D'Amiens, his would-be murderer, with all names of similar sound or spelling were, by a special edict, absolutely proscribed. To go by the name of D'Amiens, Damiens, or Damian, was to proclaim oneself affiliated nearly or remotely to the unspeakable being--the regicide, the parricide--who had lifted his hand against the Lord's anointed. Time has its revenges. The name a.s.sociated a century and a half ago with villainy and crime is now suggestive only of heroism and virtue. Everyone knows by what glorious acts of self-sacrifice Damien, enthusiast and martyr, has brought honour to a once unutterable name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUIS PHILIPPE.]

The French Revolution, which was separated from the torture of Damiens by only thirty-eight years, is a.s.sociated with a number of sanguinary deeds. But it at least put an end to torture. No such horrors as had been perpetrated under the French Monarchy were ever to take place under the French Republic. Even in the case of ordinary criminals not specially condemned to torture, death, under the old Monarchy, was inflicted in the cruellest fas.h.i.+on. "After a prisoner has seen death under so many forms," says a writer of the time of Louis XVI., "when his soul is in a manner withered, his spirit exhausted, and life is grown a burthen, the sentence that ends his sufferings should be welcome to him--and it would be so were not our laws more calculated to torture the body than simply to punish the criminal. A man who pays the forfeit of his life to the injured laws of his country has, in the eyes of reason, more than sufficiently atoned for his crime; but here industrious cruelty has devised the most barbarous means of avenging the wrongs done to society; and the breaking the bones of a wretch on a cross, twisting his mangled body round the circ.u.mference of a wheel, are inventions worthy of the fertile brains of a Phalaris, and show to the utmost that such inhuman laws were more levelled against the man than the crime for which he is doomed to suffer."

Opposite the house on the Boulevard du Temple a.s.sociated with the outrage of Fieschi stood formerly the Cafe Turc, which offered to the generation of its day a shady retreat and varied amus.e.m.e.nts. Here the celebrated Jullien, better known in London than even in Paris, gave in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign orchestral pieces of his own composition adorned with fireworks and emphasized by the booming of cannon. Little by little the Cafe Turc was to disappear; and now repeated alterations have reduced it to a beer-house, or _bra.s.serie_.