The Peasant and the Prince Part 7

It seems rather strange that so much liberty should have been allowed, when so lately every precaution was taken to prevent the flight of the family. During the past winter and spring, and the next season, the leaders of the revolution kept a constant watch upon the palace, and knew all that went on there. They knew what persons were admitted at back doors to consult with the queen. They also knew, after the family returned from Saint Cloud, how many horses were in the royal stables, and how many of them stood constantly saddled and bridled. They knew how the royal carriages were kept stuffed with luggage, ready to start at a moment's warning,--the royal arms being nearly rubbed out from the panels. They declared also that they knew that the king's old aunts meant to go away, carrying off, not only plenty of treasure, but little Louis; and that a boy, very like Louis, had been in training for some time, to represent him, when the true Dauphin should have been carried to his uncle, over the frontiers. All this was published in the newspapers, so that, if the old princesses had any such plan prepared, they were obliged to give it up. Thus were the family guarded in Paris, before and after, and yet, in June, they were riding and driving about Saint Cloud, believing that they might go off any day they chose.

Perhaps, however, this might not have proved so easy as they thought.

There might have been spies about them that they did not know of; and, since nothing could be worse than their management of all business matters, from inexperience and want of knowledge of other people's minds and affairs, their enemies might feel pretty secure that the royal prisoners could not fly far without being caught.

There was a plan for escape completely formed, as we know from the lady to whom the queen confided it. No one doubted of the entire success of this scheme; and the lady daily expected and hoped to have to wait in vain for the return of the royal family from their drive.

They went out every afternoon at four o'clock; and often did not return till eight, and sometimes even not till nine. The king went on horseback, attended by grooms and pages on whom he could rely. The ladies, in a carriage, were also followed by grooms and pages. The plan was for all to ride to the same place on a certain afternoon, by different roads,--the king on horseback, the queen and her daughter, and the princess Elizabeth, in a carriage; the Dauphin and Madame de Tourzel in a chaise; and some of the royal suite in other vehicles. On meeting in a wood, twelve miles from Saint Cloud, the three officers of Lafayette's staff were to be gained over, or to be overpowered by the servants; and then all were to push on for the frontier. Meanwhile, the people at home would wait till nine o'clock, quietly enough. Then, on becoming alarmed and looking about, they would find on the king's desk a letter to the a.s.sembly, which they would instantly forward. It could not reach Paris before ten; and then the a.s.sembly would not be sitting.

The president would have to be found; and the a.s.sembly could hardly be got together, or messengers sent after the fugitives, before midnight; when the royal family would have had a start of eight hours.

The lady to whom the queen confided this scheme approved it, but asked no questions, and hoped she should not be told the precise day, as she was to be left behind, and wished to be able to say that she had not known that they intended more than an afternoon drive when they went forth. One June evening, nine o'clock came, and none of them were home.

The attendants walked restlessly about the courts, and wondered. The lady's heart beat so that she was afraid her emotion would be observed.

But presently she heard the carriage-wheels; and all returned as usual.

She told the queen that she had not expected to see her home to-night: and the queen replied that they must wait till the king's aunts had left France, and till they knew whether the plan would suit the wishes of their friends over the frontier.

It was believed by many persons, and certainly by Lafayette, that there were plots, at this time, against the life of the queen. An agent of the police gave notice of an intention to poison her. The queen did not believe it. She believed that her enemies meant to break her spirit by calumny; but she had no fear of poison. Her head physician, however, chose to take precautions. He desired one of her ladies to have always at hand a bottle of fresh, good oil of sweet almonds, which, with milk, is an antidote against corrosive poisons. He was uneasy at the queen's habit of sweetening draughts of water from a sugar-basin which stood open in her apartment. He was afraid of this sugar being poisoned. The lady therefore kept a great quant.i.ty of sugar pounded in her own apartment, and always carried some packets of it in her bag, from which she changed the sugar in the basin, several times a day. The queen found this out, and begged she would not take the trouble to do this, as she had no fear of dying by that method. Poor lady! She said sometimes that, but for her family's sake, she should be glad to die by any means.

She was indeed unhappy; but she had not yet learned how much more unhappy had been mult.i.tudes of her people before they hated her as they now did. She grieved to see her daughter growing up grave and silent, and her little boy of five years old surrounded by sorrowful faces, and subject to terrors at an age when he should have been merry, and smiled upon by everybody near him: but she knew nothing of the affliction of thousands of mothers who had seen their children dying of hunger on heaps of straw, in hovels open to the rain; or of the indignation of thousands more who had seen their lively, promising infants growing stupid and cross under the pressure of early toil, and in the absence of all instruction. All this had happened while she was paying 15,000 pounds for a pair of diamond ear-rings, and using her influence in behalf of bad advisers to the king. She might wish to die under her sorrows; she little knew how many had died under their most intolerable sufferings.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE ENTERPRISE.

The longer the revolution went on, exhibiting more and more fully the incapacity of the king, the more were the intoxicated people tempted to exult over him, sometimes fiercely, and sometimes in mockery. It is not conceivable that they would have ventured upon some things that were said and done, if the king had been a man of spirit; for men of spirit command personal respect in their adversity. The great original quarrel with the king, it will be remembered, was on matters of finance,--about the vast debts of the State, and the choice of a minister who would wisely endeavour to reduce these debts, and at the same time to relieve the people from some of the pressure of taxation. Towards the end of this year, 1790, the a.s.sembly had decreed the discharge of the debts of the State; and (whether or not they might prove able to execute what they decreed) the people were highly delighted. It was the custom to serenade the royal family on New Year's morning. On this New Year's day, the band of the National Guard played under the king's windows an opera air which went to the words, "But our creditors are paid, and we are consoled." They would play nothing but this air; and finished it, stopped and resumed, over and over again. They might have been very sure that the king knew what they meant by playing it at all.

Another New Year's day custom was to present gifts to the royal children. On this day, some grenadiers of the Parisian guard came, preceded by military music, to offer a gift to the Dauphin. This gift was a set of dominoes made of the stone and marble of which parts of the Bastille had been built. On the lid of the box were engraved some verses, of which the sense was as follows:--

"These stones of the walls which enclosed so many innocent victims of arbitrary power, have been made into a toy, to be offered to your Highness, as a token of the love of the people, and a lesson as to their strength."

The queen would not allow her son to have this toy. She took it from him, and gave it into the hands of one of her ladies, desiring her to preserve it as a curious sign of the times.

If the royal family received insults from people who could not feel for them, it was equally true that their adherents exasperated the feelings of persons who quite as little deserved insult. Such was the effect of mutual prejudice. General Lafayette, still in hopes of bringing the opposing parties to some understanding, frequently went to the palace of the Tuileries, where now, during the winter, the royal family were once more established. As there was little use in conversing with the king about affairs, these interviews were generally with the queen,--a fact which prevents our wondering much at the common accusation that the queen meddled with the government, and did mischief by it. One day when Lafayette was with the queen, one of her majesty's ladies observed (intending to be heard by the General's officers) that it made her uneasy to think of her majesty's being shut up alone with a rebel and a robber. An older and more prudent lady, Madame Campan, seeing the folly of such a speech at a time when everything might depend on General Lafayette's goodwill, reproved the person who had spoken; but it is curious to see how much more she thought of the imprudence than of the injustice of the speech. She observed that General Lafayette was certainly a rebel: but that an officer who commanded forty thousand men, the capital, and a large extent of country, should be called a chieftain rather than a robber. One would think this was little enough to say in favour of such a man as Lafayette: yet the queen the next day asked Madame Campan, with a mournful gravity, what she could have meant by taking Lafayette's part, and silencing the other ladies because they did not like him. When she heard how it was, the queen was satisfied: but we, far from being satisfied, may learn from this how difficult it must have been to help the royal family and court, while they thought and spoke of the best men in the nation in such a way as this. In truth, there were miserable prejudices and insults on both sides: and at this distance of time, Lafayette, with his love of freedom, and his goodwill towards all the sufferers of both parties, rises to our view from among them all as a sunny hill-top above the fogs of an unwholesome marsh.

The next event in the royal family was the departure of the old princesses. They got away in February; and, though stopped in some places on their journey, crossed the frontiers in safety. They might probably have remained secure enough in Paris; and their departure was not on their own account, so much as that of the king. He could not have attempted to fly while his aged aunts remained in the midst of the troubles. When they were disposed of, he felt himself more free to go or stay. The old ladies earnestly entreated the sweet princess Elizabeth to go with them, representing to her how happy she might be at Rome in the exercise of the religion to which she was devoted. But her religion taught her that her duty lay, not where she could say her prayers with the most ease and security, but where she could give the most help and consolation. She refused ease and safety, and declared her intention of remaining with her brother's family to the end-- whatever that end might be.

The queen immediately (that is, in March) began her preparations for departure. Remembering how easily they might have got away from Saint Cloud, last summer, it was determined to start from Saint Cloud this time. On the 15th of April, notice was given to the a.s.sembly that, the king having become subject to colds of late, the royal family would remove into the country in a few days.

The people of Paris discussed this plan very earnestly. Lafayette wished that the king should live at any one of his palaces that he pleased. But so much had been said, all through the winter, about his majesty's leaving Paris, that it had now become a very difficult thing to do. The papers on the royal side had proudly threatened that the king would leave his people, if they were not more worthy of his presence. The revolutionary papers had said that the king should not go, to raise up armies of enemies at a distance. All Paris had been kept awake by stories of saddled horses in the royal stables, of packed carriages, and a host of armed n.o.bles, always hovering about, ready to rescue him and murder the people. It does indeed appear that latterly there had been various mysterious meetings of gentlemen, who were secretly armed: and report, which always exaggerates these things, declared that thirty thousand such armed gentlemen were hidden in the woods, about Saint Cloud, and that they would overpower the people's guard, and carry off the family.

Some may wonder why the nation, if sick of their king, did not let him go, and rejoice to be rid of him. The reason why they detained him so carefully was this: they knew that his brother and friends were raising an army at a distance; and they saw that, if once the royal family escaped from their hands, they should have all Europe down upon them; whereas, if they kept the family as hostages, their enemies would let them alone, in the fear that the first march of a foreign army into France would be revenged upon the lives of the very persons whom it was desired to save.

Considering all these things, the people resolved that the royal family should not go to Saint Cloud.

First, numbers of the servants were sent off, to get everything made ready for the king, who was to follow on the 18th, to dinner. The servants were allowed to go without opposition; so that on the 18th, the apartments at Saint Cloud were ready, the dinner was cooking, and the attendants looking out along the road to Paris, wondering why the carriages did not appear, and fearing the dinner would be spoiled.

n.o.body came to eat it, however, unless it was given to the National Guard, a detachment of whom had gone forward, to be on duty about the palace.

At one o'clock, the great royal coach, drawn by its eight black horses, drove up to the palace-gate in Paris; and immediately the alarm-bell from a neighbouring church-steeple began to sound. The family were almost ready; but mult.i.tudes of people, summoned by the bell, collected presently, and declared that the coach should not move. Lafayette and his officers came up, and did what they could in the way of persuasion: but the crowd said, "Hold your tongues. The king shall not go." They shouted, on seeing one of the royal family, "We do not choose that the king should go." The royal party, however, entered the carriage, and the coachman cracked his whip; but some seized the reins and the horses'

heads; others shut the gates: and a mult.i.tude so pressed round the heavy coach that it rocked from side to side. Such of the royal attendants as attempted to get near for orders were seized, their swords taken from them, and their persons roughly handled. The children must have been grievously terrified; for even, their mother, so calm in danger, pa.s.sionately entreated from the carriage-window that her servants might not be hurt. The National Guards did not know how to act. Lafayette and his officers rode hither and thither, trying to open a way: the driver whipped, the horses scrambled and reared; and the people pressed closer and closer, so that the great coach rocked more and more;--all in vain, it did not get on one inch.

All this, amidst tremendous noise and confusion, went on for an hour and three-quarters. Then Lafayette rode up to say he would clear the way with cannon, if the king would order it. The king was not a person to give any order at all; and least of all, such an order as that. So the royal family alighted, and returned into the palace, while the coach went back to the coach-house, and the eight black horses to their stalls.

The king and queen were not sorry for what had happened. This act of violence must prove so plainly to all the world that they were prisoners, that all the world would now think them justified in getting off, in any way they could. They might now devote themselves to the one great object of escape.

Poor little Louis must have been very sorry. He had seen the hay-making at Saint Cloud, last summer: and now he must have been pleased at the thought of the sweet fields and gardens of the country, and the woods just bursting into leaf. There were many woods about Saint Cloud. He knew nothing of armed n.o.bles lurking there to save him and his family.

What he thought of was the violets and daffodils, and fresh gra.s.s and sprouting shrubs,--the young lambs in the field, and the warbling larks in the air. And now, when actually in the carriage to go (his garden tools probably gone before), he had to get out again, and stay in hot, dusty, glaring Paris; and, what was far worse, in danger of seeing every day the sneering, angry faces which had been crowded round the carriage for nearly two hours; and of hearing, wherever he walked, the cruel laugh or fierce abuse with which his parents were greeted when they attempted to do anything which the people did not like. No doubt, the little boy's heart was heavy when he was lifted from the coach, and went back into the palace.

How much happier he might have been if he had been one of the children he had seen hay-making at Saint Cloud, the year before! Or even as the child of a Paris tradesman he might have been happier than now, though the children of the tradesmen of capital cities seldom have a run in the fields, or gather violets in the fresh woods of April. But, as a shop-keeper's child, he might at least have seen his father cheerful in his employment, and his mother bright and gay. He might have pa.s.sed his days without hearing pa.s.sionate voices, and seeing angry faces; without dreaming of being afraid. It was now nothing to him that he was born a prince, and constantly told that he was to be a king. He saw nothing in his father's condition that made him think it a good thing to be a king; and he would have given all the grandeur in which he lived, all the ladies and footmen that waited upon him, all his pretty clothes, all his many playthings, all the luxuries of the palace, to be free from the terrors of the revolution, and to see his parents look as happy as other children see theirs every day.

He did not know it, but preparations were from this time going on diligently for an escape,--for a real flight, by night.

We must not suppose that in this, any more than other affairs, the king showed decision, or the queen knowledge and judgment. They could not show what they had not: and it was now too late for the king to become prompt and active, and for the queen to learn to view people and things as the rest of the world did, brought up, as she had been, in ignorance and self-will. She often complained (and we cannot wonder) at having to live and act among people who showed no presence of mind and good sense: but, really, the king, and everybody concerned, might well have complained of the ruin which her folly and self-will brought upon the present scheme,--the last chance they had for liberty. Not that she only was to blame. There were mistakes,--there was mismanagement without end; showing how little those who are brought up in courts, having everything done for them exactly to their wish, are fit for business, when brought to the proof.

The case was just this. Here were the king and queen, with a sister and two children, wanting to get away from Paris. They had plenty of money and jewels; plenty of horses and carriages; plenty of devoted servants and friends:--friends at hand, ready to help; friends at a distance, ready to receive them; and every court in Europe inclined to welcome and favour them. The one thing to be done was to elude the people of Paris, and of the large towns through which they must pa.s.s.

In such a case as this, it seems clear that, in the first place, everything at home should go on as usual, up to the very last moment; that there should be no sign of preparation whatever, to excite the suspicion of any tradespeople or servants who were not in the secret.

In the next place, it is clear that the king should have separated from his family on the road. His best chance was to go with one other gentleman, and to travel as private gentlemen are in the habit of doing.

While he went by one road to one country, the queen and princess should have gone by another road, under the escort of one or two of the many gentlemen who were devotedly attached to their cause. The children might, with their governess, have gone, under the charge of another gentleman, to Brussels, to the arms of their aunt (their mother's sister), who held her court there.

In the third place, they should have taken the smallest quant.i.ty of luggage they could travel with without exciting suspicion, carrying on their persons money and jewels, with which to buy what they wanted when they were safe. They should have travelled in light carriages, and have made sure, by employing drivers and couriers who knew the respective roads, of encountering no difficulty about meeting the relays of horses, and of exciting no particular observation at the post-houses. These are the arrangements which ordinary people, accustomed to business, would have made. We shall see how the queen chose that the affair should be managed.

During the month of March (before the attempt to go to Saint Cloud), the queen began her preparations for her escape to another kingdom. Madame Campan (in whom she had perfect trust, and with good reason) was in attendance upon her during that month. The queen employed her in buying and getting made an immense quant.i.ty of clothes. Madame Campan remonstrated with her upon this, saying that the queen of France would always be able to obtain linen and gowns wherever she went: but the queen was obstinate. Though it was necessary for Madame Campan to go out almost disguised to procure these things,--though she was obliged, for the sake of avoiding suspicion, to order six petticoats at one shop, and six at another, and to buy one gown in one street, and two in another,--and though this great load of things would be sure to attract notice, however they might be sent off, nothing could satisfy the queen but having with her a complete and splendid wardrobe for herself and the children; and this, after she and the king had a hundred times wondered how it came to be told in the newspapers that so many horses were kept saddled in their stables, and that such and such persons had paid them visits by the back-door. After having suffered for months from spies, the queen would not agree to the simple plan of doing nothing which spies might not see, and tell all Paris, if they chose. As it was, it was well-known when Madame Campan went out, where she went, and what about, from the very day her shopping began.

Madame Campan endeavoured to use more disguise by getting her own little boy measured for the clothes which were intended for the Dauphin; and by asking her sister to have the Princess Royal's wardrobe made ready as if for her daughter. But these poor expedients were seen through, as might have been expected. How much easier and safer it would have been to have no ordering and making at all.

These clothes were not all to go by the same coach which conveyed the family. Most of them were sent in a trunk to one of the queen's women, who was now at Arras, from whence she was to proceed to Brussels with these clothes, to meet her mistress. Of course, the sending off of this trunk was observed.

All this was not so foolish as what followed. The queen had a very large, expensive, and remarkable toilet-case, called a necessaire, which contained everything wanted for the toilet, from her rarest essences and perfumes down to soap and combs. It was of fine workmans.h.i.+p, and had much expensive material and ornament about it. In short, it was fit for a splendid royal palace, and no other place. The queen consulted Madame Campan about how she should get this necessaire away. Madame Campan entreated her not to think of taking it, saying that if it was moved from its place, on any pretence, it would be enough to excite the suspicions of all the spies about the court. The poor queen, however, seemed to think that she could no more do without her necessaire than go without shoes to her feet. The necessaire, she declared, she must have; and she hit upon a device which she thought very clever for deceiving any spies, but which deceived n.o.body, though Madame Campan herself hoped it might afford a chance of doing so. The queen agreed with the amba.s.sador from Vienna (who was in her confidence), that he should come to her, while her hair was dressing, and, in the presence of all her attendants, request her to order a necessaire precisely like her own, for her sister at Brussels, who wished to have exactly such an one. The amba.s.sador did as he was desired; and the queen turned to Madame Campan, and requested her to have a necessaire made by the pattern of the one before her. If the plan had succeeded, here was an expense of 500 pounds incurred, at the time when money was most particularly wanted, and great hazard run; and all because the queen could not be satisfied with such a dressing-case as other ladies use. Any of her friends could have supplied her with such an one as she was setting off.

The necessaire was ordered in the middle of April. A month after, the queen inquired whether it would soon be done. The cabinet-maker said it could not be finished in less than six weeks more. The queen declared to Madame Campan that she could not wait for it; and that, as the order had been given in the presence of all her attendants, n.o.body would suspect anything if her own necessaire was emptied and cleaned, and sent off to Brussels; and she gave positive orders that this should be done.

Madame Campan ordered the wardrobe-woman, whose proper business it was, to have this order executed, as the archd.u.c.h.ess could not wait so long as it would take to finish the new necessaire; and she particularly desired that no perfume should be left hanging about any of the drawers which might be disagreeable to the archd.u.c.h.ess.

One evening in May, the queen called Madame Campan to help her to wrap up in cotton, and pack, her jewels, which she sent, by the hands of a person she could trust, to Brussels. They sat in a little room by themselves, with the door locked, till seven o'clock, when the queen had to go to cards. She told Madame Campan that there was no occasion to put by the diamonds; they would be quite safe, as there was a sentinel under the window, and she herself should keep the key in her pocket.

She appointed Madame Campan to be there early the next morning, to finish the packing; till which time the jewels lay on the sofa, some in cotton, and some without.

The same wardrobe-woman, Madame R---, who was ordered to empty the necessaire, was clever about her business, and had been engaged in it for many years, and all the year round; so that the queen, without having much to do with her, had become accustomed to see her, liked her way of discharging her business, and did not dream of distrusting her.

Madame Campan did, however. She knew that this lady, having grown rich in her office, gave parties, consisting chiefly of persons of politics opposed to the court,--several members of the a.s.sembly of those politics being often there,--and one of Lafayette's staff, Monsieur Gouvion, being a lover of Madame R---'s. This lady was indeed not to be trusted.

On the 21st of this month of May, she went and made a declaration before the mayor, that she had no doubt the royal family were planning an escape. She told the whole story of the necessaire, saying that everybody knew the queen was too fond of her own necessaire to think of parting with it, when another might be had for a little waiting; and that the queen had often been heard to say how useful this article would be to her in travelling. Madame R---went on to declare that the queen had been engaged in packing her diamonds in the evening of such a day,-- those diamonds having been seen by her lying about, half wrapped in cotton, on the sofa of such a room; and that Madame Campan had helped the queen, and, of course, knew all about it. It was plain that this woman had a key of the little room, and that she must have been in it, either in the evening while the queen was at cards, or very early the next morning.

The queen confided to Madame Campan a letter-case full of very valuable papers, which was immediately put into the hands of some faithful persons in the city. This proceeding also did not escape the quick eyes of Madame R---. She declared before the mayor that she saw a letter-case upon a chair, which had never been seen there before: that she observed the queen say something about it in a low voice to Madame Campan, after which it disappeared. The mayor took these depositions, as in duty bound: but he let them lie, not wis.h.i.+ng to injure the royal family. So the queen went on, more hopeful every day, and not in the least suspecting that her scheme was seen through from beginning to end.

The other persons who were taking part in the plan were, a brave officer of the name of Bouille, and a Swedish Count Fersen, helped by the Duke de Choiseul, who was a colonel in the French army.

Bouille was near the frontier, collecting together such French soldiers as were loyal, and several Germans, under pretence of watching the Austrians. It was secretly settled for him to meet the royal family near the frontiers, and escort them beyond the reach of their enemies.

They really had not to go very far. Montmedy, where Bouille was making a fortified camp, was less than two hundred miles from Paris; and he meant to meet the royal family, with a guard of hussars, at some distance nearer Paris.

We have seen how the queen neglected the first precautions, and how much risk she ran about clothes and luggage. So it was with the other precautions we mentioned. She did, at one time, intend to send the children to Brussels, under the care of a gentleman who might be trusted; but she changed her mind, and resolved that the whole family, with attendants, should go together.

Again, instead of travelling in light carriages, and in the most ordinary style, so as to excite as little observation as possible, they must all go in the same carriage,--that is, the king, the queen, and two children, the Princess Elizabeth, and Madame de Tourzel,--six in one carriage, while the other attendant ladies were to follow in another.

These were great difficulties; and it was over these difficulties that Count Fersen did all he could to help them. He declared, openly, that a Russian lady, a friend of his, the Baroness de Korff, was about to travel homewards, with her valet, waiting-woman, and two children, and that she wanted a carriage for that purpose. The Count pretended to be very particular about this carriage,--a large coach, called a berlin.