As he started up and clapped his hand to his face in dismay, she smiled at him and said, “ ’Tis no more than a scratch, Monsieur, and will be healed in a day or two, but that final touch was necessary to complete the picture. I vow no one would now know you for the handsome Chevalier who waited upon me this morning.”
When Roger looked in her mirror he would scarcely have known himself, and amusement at the sight he presented overcoming his distress, he thanked her for her efforts with a laugh. Then, as she staunched the first flow of blood from his long scratch with some cotton wool, he said, “Swift as you have been, Madame, in your transformation of me, I must not wait a second longer, so permit me to take my leave.”
Mr. Morris drew a heavy gold watch from his fob and after a glance at it remarked, “It is not yet two o’clock, and if the National Guards will let you through you should have ample time to get into the Palace before it is attacked by the mob. They will hardly yet have got as far as presenting their petition to the Assembly.”
“Thank God for that!” Roger exclaimed. “A little time in which to think may make a world of difference.” Then, as they wished him good fortune, he thanked them again and hurried from the apartment.
When he reached the ground floor of the Palace he took the nearest exit he could find on to the Quai du Louvre. The mob was still surging by, although at a much slower pace, and he had only to step forward to be caught up in it as it flowed westward along the river bank.
Now, for the first time, he had an opportunity to observe the marchers at close quarters, and what he saw filled him with the grimmest forebodings. Here again was the lean and hungry look that he had noticed in Le Havre, but added to it in the faces of many of these Paris slum dwellers was something indescribably vicious.
Men and women, old and young, and even lanky children in their teens, were massed shoulder to shoulder in one slowly moving crush, that stank to high heaven beneath the hot sun. Some of the grimy faces within a few feet of his own were gaunt with the markings of years of vice and misery; others were fleshier, darker, and of a foreign cast, and Roger guessed that the latter must be either fédérés from the south, or some of the professional Italian cut-throats that d’Orléans had imported in ’89 to lead the first riots of the Revolution.
A large part of the men were naked to the waist. Here and there some were hideously crippled or disfigured from accidents, after which they had not received proper medical attention. A great number of them were pockmarked, and the arms of the majority were horribly skinny, which made the knotty biceps they had acquired through years of toil seem abnormally large and ugly. Most of the women looked as wolfish as the men. They ranged from wheezy, toothless old crones, with wispy grey hair, to buxom young viragos whose bold eyes, loose mouths and faces daubed with cheap paint proclaimed their way of living.
Nearly all the marchers of both sexes carried some form of weapon: crowbars, hatchets, knives bound to the end of long poles, billhooks, rusty cutlasses, and ancient firearms bobbed shoulder high or above their heads in an uneven dance as they edged forward. Among this forest of rough and ready arms swayed crudely painted banners bearing such slogans as “Down with the Tyrants”, “The Veto Must Go”, “Death to the Austrian Woman”; while, scattered between them, one solitary note of fashion stood out incongruously against the background of sordid apparel with which the poverty-stricken multitude covered its nakedness: it was struck by the new red Phrygian caps of Liberty worn by one man or woman in every fifty. Otherwise, the clothes of all but a few, including the prettier of the prostitutes, were grey with age and filth, or were wretched improvised garments made out of threadbare blankets, tattered curtains or sacking.
No normal, uninformed person could have looked on such abundant evidence of utter destitution without pity, and without forming the swift conviction that the workers could not possibly be blamed for attacking a ruling caste so apparently lacking in humanity as to allow such abject poverty to exist side by side with its own wealth.
But Roger was not uninformed, and had he at the moment had the leisure to think about such things he would have reserved his pity for a very small proportion of the crowd into which he was now so tightly wedged. He had known the prosperous France of yesteryear and was well aware that it was not the workers but the bourgeois who, out of jealousy of the nobility, had fermented the Revolution. Both the peasants and the townspeople had been as well off as those in most other countries, and far better off than those in Spain, Italy and many parts of Germany. As with every nation, France had had her very poor in both town and country, whose lots should have been eased by wise legislation, and it was the lack of it that had been seized upon by the radical politicians as an excuse to further their own ends. But those genuine victims of oppression represented only a small fraction of the people and a still tinier fraction of the present crowd.
It was composed almost entirely of hooligans, wastrels and habitual criminals—the lawless dregs of humanity that lurk in the slums of every capital, and are ever ready to join a riot in the hope of a chance to despoil honest citizens. And at this stage of the Revolution more than half the people who formed the Paris mobs were not even Parisiens. For years every type of rogue and ne’er-do-well in the provinces had been drawn to the capital by the prospect of loot during disturbances; so it could safely be said that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the demonstrators marching to the Tuileries had no just grievance calling for redress, but were the worst elements of the whole nation, and were as evil in mind as in appearance.
The south wing of the Tuileries was virtually a continuation of the south wing of the Louvre, and separated from it only by a great pair of double gates that led into the Place du Carrousel. As the latter was a public square Roger had hoped to reach it, and proceed from there into the Palace while the bulk of the mob went on to hold their demonstration outside the Assembly; but when he came opposite the gates he saw that they were closed. Too late he realised that he should have left the Louvre by one of the entrances to its courtyard, whence he could have walked straight through to the Place du Carrousel. Now he was caught up in the mob and could only go forward with it.
Again, when he reached the western extremity of the Tuileries, he found it impossible to turn off the quay; the gates of its gardens had been closed, and the tree-lined walks beyond them were occupied by hundreds of National Guards. Pleased as he was to see that someone seemed to be taking precautions for the defence of the Palace, he was more than ever annoyed at his own short-sightedness in having joined the mob on the quay. To reach the riding-school that housed the Assembly it would have to make a long detour right round the huge gardens and approach them via the Rue St. Honoré, and he feared that in the meantime other mobs from the eastern Faubourgs might break into the Palace on its northern side.
Impatiently he began to push his way forward, but, although he took advantage of every opening among the marchers, over an hour elapsed before he managed to get within sight of the riding-school, and then, for a while, he found himself completely stuck. The head of the mob in which he was jammed had met the head of the one approaching from the east, and from end to end the Rue St. Honoré was now one mass of people.
The sun beat down on the heads of the crowd and the stench given out was almost overpowering, yet it was this fierce heat that now came to Roger’s assistance. Tough as were the viragos who formed the female element of the mob, here and there one of them fainted. As a hideously pockmarked girl just in front of Roger groaned and sagged, he caught her and hoisted her up over his shoulder. A brawny metalworker near by at once began to bellow for room and use his strength to force a passage for them. Gradually they edged their way forward and after ten minutes of breathless exertion Roger managed to stagger with his burden to the entrance of the Convent des Feuillants, where other women who had fainted were being given attention.
On the west side of the Convent a narrow passage led down to the riding-school, and to its only entrance other than that which
gave on to the Tuileries gardens. It was here, two hours earlier, that the leaders of the mob had demanded admittance to the Assembly, and Roger now learned what had transpired.
Several moderate deputies had boldly declared that, since the bearing of arms was illegal, the dignity of the Assembly required it to refuse to receive the insurgents, and others had sought to evade the issue by calling for an immediate suspension of the session; but Vergniaud and his fellow Girondins had insisted that the “people” should be allowed to enter and place their “sufferings and anxieties” before the Assembly. A brothel-keeper named Huguenin had then read the petition, and at its conclusion the Left had carried a vote that the “champions of liberty” should be allowed to march through the hall bearing their arms.
In the meantime, the foremost part of the mob, chafing at the delay while the deputies argued, and half-stifled in the narrow passage, had broken through its exits. Some of the rabble had forced their way into the Convent gardens and there planted the Tree of Liberty; others had broken into the gardens of the Palace where, now leaderless, they had simply dispersed and thrown themselves on the ground to recover from their exhaustion. But the pressure of the crowd behind was so great and the passage so narrow that not a twentieth of the multitude had yet succeeded in getting further than its entrance in the Rue St. Honoré.
Roger’s arrival at the door of the Convent occurred within a few minutes of the Assembly having given its consent for the demonstrators to march through its chamber, so he had hardly freed himself of his unsavoury burden when a fresh movement of the crowd again impelled him forward; but on reaching the door of the riding-school he managed to struggle out of the crush and, instead of entering the building, stagger with some other half-fainting people through the broken gates into the Tuileries gardens.
For a few moments he leant panting against a tree, while he swiftly took in the scene about him. Two hundred yards away to his left the National Guards were still drawn up before the west front of the Palace. They were making no move to check the groups of demonstrators that were now infiltrating between their companies, but from what he could see there appeared no urgent reason to do so. Other groups in front of him and to his right were spreading out to seek the welcome shade of the trees in all parts of the gardens. Obviously they were terribly fatigued, and too anxious to rest at the moment even to think of congregating below the Palace windows and hurling their usual insults.
Had Roger not learned from Gouverneur Morris the secret reason for which the demonstrators had been organised he might have believed that this dispersal of the mob could be taken as a sign that there was no more to fear; but he knew they had been told only the first part of the conspirators’ programme. They did not yet know that they were to be used for an attack on the Palace. Having planted their tree and presented their petition, they were now quite prepared to rest for a while, then make their way home again. With new hope that he might be able to use this lull to get into the Palace before the leaders of the mob had a chance to reassemble it, Roger set off at a quick pace along the walk beneath the terrace of the Feuillants.
He had not covered sixty yards before he saw that a new movement was in progress. Beyond the riding-school, and up to that moment hidden from him by it, lay a long courtyard parallel to the avenue down which he was walking. The back entrance of the riding-school gave on to this court, and it was now packed with the armed rabble that had just passed through the Assembly. The head of the column had already reached the far end of the court, had turned right and was debouching on to the terrace of the Palace. In an instant Roger saw that, either by accident or design, this approach had outflanked the National Guard. In another few moments the mob would be on the steps of the Palace’s great west entrance. Cursing himself for not having foreseen where the still-organised marchers must emerge, he began to run in that direction.
CHAPTER IV
THE VORTEX OF THE CYCLONE
Many of the groups scattered about the gardens also caught sight of the new move and started to run towards the terrace. Still the National Guard stood at ease with grounded muskets. Although the size of the crowd was increasing every moment, and it now entirely surrounded the militia, the latter was sufficiently numerous to have cleared the gardens by determined action. As Roger raced past a company he saw that most of the men were regarding the demonstrators with open hostility, but no order was given to them. Pétion, the treacherous Mayor, had evidently gone to earth, and the King’s mania that no one should ever be harmed on his account being so well known, no lesser official appeared willing to take the responsibility of thwarting the People.
By dodging between the trees at breakneck pace Roger reached the terrace in the van of those now streaming towards it from all directions. The head of the column emerging from the riding-school courtyard had got as far as the main west door of the Palace and halted there, while those behind it overflowed into the swelling crowd. The big doors of the Palace were shut and through the ground-floor windows on either side of them groups of soldiers could be seen. They were the Swiss Guard—the only personal troops of which the Assembly had failed to deprive the King, as the Swiss Government had refused to sanction any alteration in their terms of service—but whether their master would permit them to resist the mob remained doubtful.
Evidently the mob leaders did not think so, as they were yelling at the foremost sans-culottes that there was nothing to be afraid of, and urging them to force the doors. Roger caught a glimpse of a small, flamboyantly dressed woman as she ran up the steps and hammered on the doors with her clenched fists; then, as she turned to harangue the crowd, he recognised her.
It was Théroigne de Méricourt. She was dressed in a short scarlet riding habit, jackboots and a three-cornered hat with huge red, white and blue ostrich feathers. Her thin dark face, haggard in repose from years of dissipation, was now lit with a strange demoniacal beauty, and her eyes seemed to flash blue fire as she screamed at her followers that the Palace and all that was in it belonged to the nation—to them, the People—and it was high time they had a look at their own possessions.
On a sudden inspiration Roger hoisted himself upon the parapet and yelled at the top of his voice, “That’s right! That’s right! But why risk a bullet? Let’s go round to the quay entrance. That is not guarded!”
The mob, as ever cowardly by nature and prone to be swayed by any new idea, took up the cry and began to run towards the river. Jumping down from his perch, Roger ran with them and was among the first fifty to reach the great double gates between the Tuileries and the Louvre. As they had been shut when he passed them two hours earlier, he had counted on their making an additional barrier to be broken down before the mob could get into the building. Now, to his consternation, he saw that some traitor’s hand had opened them. Another moment, and in the wild rush he was carried through into the Place du Carrousel.
Yet, even as he was borne forward, new hope suddenly came to him that his having diverted the crowd might still prove far from ineffective. In the Place a hundred mounted gendarmes were drawn up, and opposite them another pair of gates, in front of which stood a double row of National Guards, presented a formidable barrier. They gave on to the Cour Royale and would have to be forced before the mob could reach the east doors of the Palace.
The gendarmes made no attempt to drive back the insurgents, but the National Guards closed up their ranks and showed that they meant to resist any attack on the gate. At the sight of their firm demeanour the front ranks of the mob halted, wavered and pressed back. Seeing a second chance to play upon their cowardice and hoping at the same time to appeal to their cupidity, Roger shouted:
“Don’t be fools and get killed for nothing! The King doesn’t keep his gold in the Tuileries! His treasure-chests are stored in the vaults of the Louvre!”
A score of his nearest companions quickly turned about. In another moment he would have drawn the mob after him across the square to the old Palace. But this time his ruse was doomed to failur
e.
Santerre, the big brewer who had made himself King of the worst slum district in Paris, now took a hand. After leading his contingent from the Faubourg St. Antoine to the Assembly he had since kept in the background, hoping that matters would go as the conspirators had planned without it being necessary for him to compromise himself; but it was already four o’clock, and the real business of the day had not even started. The wrangle in the Assembly had delayed matters and long hours of marching, singing, pushing and shouting under the broiling sun had taken all the ferocity out of the mob. They still had energy enough to bestir themselves at the idea of easy plunder, but clearly were no longer in a mood to fight unless driven to it. As the group facing the gate of the Cour Royale turned away from it to follow Roger, Santerre came running forward and bellowed:
“Halt! Time enough to get the gold afterwards! We have a duty to perform! Have you forgotten, comrades, that we are here to make fat Louis rescind the veto?”
“Citizen Santerre is right!” yelled one of his lieutenants. “We are the People! Everything belongs to us! We’ll take it soon enough, but first we must force the King to do our will.”
Shouts of agreement greeted this new incitement to force a way into the Tuileries and, the prospect of treasure momentarily forgotten, they began to call on the National Guards to let them through.
The Man who Killed the King Page 8