Taking the Bastile

Elie, protected by his uniform and the part he had taken in the assault, marched at the head, having taken Launay's life under his special care: he was admired for the manner in which he had borne himself. On his swordpoint he carried the letter which Launay had passed out of the prison loophole to be taken by Maillard. After him came the Tax-Commissioners Guards, carrying the keys of the royal fortress; then, Maillard, bearing the Bastile flag; then, a young man who bore on a pike the Bastile's rules and regulations, an odious rescript by virtue of which many a tear had been made to flow.

Lastly came the governor, protected by Hullin and three or four others, but almost covered in with shaking fists, flourished blades and brandished pikeheads.

Beside this column, almost parallel, rolling up St. Antoine Street, leading from the main avenue to the River Seine, was to be distinguished another, no less awful and menacing, dragging Major Losme, whom we saw struggle against his superior for a space but succumb under the determination to resist to the last.

He was a kind, good and brave man who had alleviated many miseries within the jail, but the general public did not know this. On account of his showy uniform many took him to be the governor. The latter, clothed in grey, having torn off the embroidery and the St. Louis scarf, was shielded by some doubt from those who did not recognize him.

This was the spectacle which Gilbert beheld with his gloomy, profound and observant glance, amid the dangers foreseen by his powerful organization.

On leaving the Bastile, Hullin had rallied his own friends the surest and most devoted, the most valiant soldiers of the day; these four or five tried to second his generous design of shielding the governor. Impartial history had preserved the names of three: Arne, Chollat and Lepine.

These four, with Hullin and Maillard in advance, attempted to defend the life for which a hundred thousand were clamoring.

A few French Grenadiers, whose uniform had become popular within three days, clustered round them. They were venerated by the mob.

As long as his generous defenders could do it they beat off the blows aimed at Count Launay; but he could not evade the hooting, the insults and the curses.

At Jouy Street corner, all the grenadiers had been brushed aside. Not the crowd's excitement, but the calculation of murderers may have had something to do with this; Gilbert had seen them plucked away as beads are flipped off a string.

He foresaw by this that the victory would be tarnished by bloodshed; he tried to get off the table but iron hands held him to it. In his impotence he sent Billet and Pitou to the defense of the governor, and obeying his voice they made efforts to reach the threatened one. His protectors stood in strong need of reinforcement. Chollat, who had eaten nothing since the evening before, fell with exhaustion, though he tried to struggle on: had he not been assisted, he would have been trodden under foot. His falling out of line made a breach in the living wall.

A man darted in by this crevasse in the dyke and clubbing his musket, delivered a crushing blow at the governor's bared head.

Lepine saw the mace descending and had time to throw his arms around Launay and receive the blow on his own forehead. Stunned by the shock and blinded by the blood, he staggered back and when he recovered, he was twenty paces apart from the prisoner.

This was the moment when Billet fought his way up, towing Pitou after him, like a steamship-of-war bringing up a sailing man-of-war into action.

He noticed that what marked Launay out was his being without a hat: he snatched off his own and put it on the count's head.

The latter turned and recognized him.

"I thank you," he said, "but whatever you do you cannot save me."

"If I can get you inside the City Hall, I will answer for all," said Hullin.

"Yes, but can you do it?" said the victim.

"God helping us, we'll try it."

They might hope this as they reached the City Hall Square, It was packed with men with their arms bared to the pit, waving swords and spears. The rumor had run along that they were bringing the Bastile Governor and his major, and they were waiting for them like a pack of wolfhounds held back from breaking up the quarry.

As soon as they saw the party they rushed at it. Hullin saw that this was going to be the supreme peril and final struggle. If he could only get the governor up the steps and inside the building, he would save him.

"Help, Elie, and Millard, all men who hold our honor dear!" he shouted.

Elie and Maillard forged onward but the mob closed in behind them and they were isolated. The crowd saw the advantage it had won, and made a furious effort. Like a gigantic boa, it wound its coils round the knot: Billet was taken off his feet and swept away with Pitou, who stuck to him. The same whirlwind made Hullin reel on the steps where he fell. He rose but was forced down anew, and Launay fell with him this time.

He stayed down; up to the last he did not murmur or beg for mercy, but he cried in a hoarse voice:

"Do not at least keep me lingering, tigers that you are. Slay me outright."

Never had he issued an order executed more promptly than this prayer: in one instant, armed hands flourished round his stooped head. Fists and plunging blades were seen: and then a head severed from the trunk rose disgustingly on the tip of a pike; it had preserved its cold and scornful smile.

This was the first head lopped off by the Revolution.

Gilbert had foreseen the atrocity: he had tried again to dart to the rescue but a hundred hands held him down. He turned his head and sighed.

This head was lifted with its eyes glaring, up to the window where Flesselles stood, surrounded and supported by the electors – as if to bid him a last farewell. It would be hard to say which was the paler, his face or the corpses.

All at once a deafening uproar burst from where the headless body lay. In searching it, in the vest pocket, was found the note addressed to him by the Provost of the Traders, the one he had shown to Losme. It will be remembered as in these terms:

"Hold out firmly; I will amuse the Parisians with cockades and promises. Before day is done, Bezenval will send you reinforcements.

Flesselles."

A horrible yell of blasphemy rose from the pavement to the window where the writer stood. Without divining the cause, he understood the threat and threw himself back. But he had been seen and was known to be within; the rush for him was so universal that even the bearers of Dr. Gilbert left him to join the hunters.

Gilbert sought to enter with them to protect Flesselles. He had not run up three steps before he felt himself pulled back by the coatskirts. He turned to shake off the hand but saw they were of Billet and Pitou.

From the higher standpoint he overlooked the square.

"What is going on over there?" he inquired, pointing towards a spot of commotion.

"Come, doctor, come," said the two countrymen together.

"The butchers," said the doctor.

At that instant Major Losme fell, struck down by a hatchet; in their hatred the people confounded the persecutor of the prisoners with the merciful warden.

"Let us begone," said the physician, "for I begin to be ashamed that such murderers let me out."

"Do not say that, doctor," reproved Billet, "those who stormed the Bastile are not the cutthroats yonder."

As they descended the steps which he had mounted to try to help Flesselles, the throng which had flowed through the doorway, was hurled forth. In the midst of the battling gathering one man was struggling.

"Take him to the Palais Royal," vociferated the thousands.

"Yes, my friends, yes, my good friends, to the Palais Royal," gasped this wretch.

But the human inundation rolled towards the river as though it intended to drown him.

"Another they mean to murder," shouted Gilbert; "let us try to save him at any rate."

But he had hardly got the words out of his mouth before a pistol-shot resounded; Flesselles disappeared in the smoke.

Gilbert covered his eyes, cursing the multitude, great but unable to remain pure, and sullying the victory by a triple murder.

When he took his hands from his eyes, he beheld three heads on pike points: Flesselles', Launay's and Losme's. One rose on the City Hall steps, another in the mouth of Tixeranderie Street and the last in Pelletier Street, so that the trio formed a triangle. He remembered the sign in the Order of the Invisibles.

"Oh, Balsamo," he muttered, "is this the emblem of Liberty?"

And sighing, he fled up Vannerie Street, dragging Billet and Pitou with him.

CHAPTER XV.

THE YOUNG VISIONARY

Meeting with a public conveyance, the doctor got into it with Billet and Pitou, and they went to Louis-the-Great College, where Sebastian was still in the sick ward.

The principal received the doctor with deep regard as he knew him to be the foremost pupil of the physicians and chemists, Cabanis and Condorcet.

He imparted his fears, as well to the doctor as to the parent of his pupil, that the boy was too much given to moody fits.

"You are right," said Gilbert, "gravity in a boy is a token of lunacy or weakness."

While Pitou was being refreshed in the principal's residence and Billet shared a bottle with the gentleman himself, the physician conferred with his son.

"I ask you about your health," said the father to the pallid, nervous youth, "and you answer that you are well. Now I ask you if your reserve towards your schoolfellows arises from pride and I hope you will answer, no."

"Be encouraged, father," said Sebastian, "It is neither pride nor ill health, but sorrow. I have a dream which frightens me and yet it is not a terror. When a little boy, I had such visions."

"Ah?"

"Two or three times I was lost in the woods, following this phantom."

Gilbert looked at the speaker in alarm.

"It was thus, father dear: I would be playing with the other children of the village when I saw nothing; but when I left them, I heard the rustle of a silk dress as if some one wearing it were going away from me; I would thrust out my hands to seize it but grasp nothing but air. But as the sound diminished, the vision appeared, more and more distinct. This cloudy vapor would gradually assume a human shape. It was a woman's, who glided rather than walked, and grew the more clear as it was buried in the woody depths.

"A strange, weird, irresistible spell drew me on in the woman's steps. I pursued her with extended arms, mute like she was. Often I tried to call her but my lips would not emit a sound; I pursued without ever overtaking, until the prodigy announcing her coming was reproduced for her departure. She became misty and faded away. Spent with weariness, I would drop on the sward, where she had disappeared. Pitou would find me there, sometimes not till the following day."

Gilbert looked at the youth with increasing disquiet. His fingers were fixed on his pulse. Sebastian seemed to understand his father's feelings.

"Do not be uneasy about it," said he; "I know that it is a phantasm."

"What did this woman look like?"

"Majestic as a queen."

"Have you seen her lately?"

"I have seen her here – that is, in the garden reserved for the teachers. I saw her glide from our grounds into that garden. And one day when Master Berardier, pleased with my composition, asked me to state a favor, I got leave to stroll in this garden. She appeared to me."

"Strange hallucination," thought Gilbert; "yet not so remarkable in the child of a mesmeric medium. Who do you think this woman is?"

"My mother."

Gilbert turned pale and clasped his hand to his heart as though to staunch a re-opening wound. "But this is all a dream and I am almost as crazed as you."

"It may be all a dream," said the youth with pensive eye, "but the reality of the dream exists. I have seen the lady alive, in a magnificent equipage drawn by four horses, in Satory Woods near Versailles, on the last holiday when we were taken out there. I nearly swooned on seeing her, I do not know why. For she could not be my mother, who is dead, and she is the same as the vision."

He remarked the giddiness of his father who ran his hand over his brow, and he was frightened by his white face.

"I see I am wrong to tell you such nonsense," he said.

"Oh, no, speak all you can on the subject and we shall try to cure you," responded the doctor.

"Why? I am born to musing: it takes up half my time. I love this ghost though it avoids me and seems sometimes to repulse me. Do not expel it: I should else be all alone when you are on your travels or return to America."

"I hope we shall not part," he said to his boy whom he embraced: "for I want to take you on my journeys."

"Was my mother fair?" inquired the youth.

"Very," was answered in the doctor's stifled voice.

"And did she love you as much as I do?" continued the child.

"Sebastian, never speak her name to me!" cried the physician, kissing him a last time and bounding out of the garden.

Instead of following him, the boy dropped on a bench, disconsolate.

In the yard Gilbert found Billet and Pitou, refreshed by the feast of the principal, to whom the doctor recommended special care of his son, and the three men got into the hack again.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PHYSICIAN FOR THE STATE

On the way back to Paris, Gilbert stopped at St. Ouen to see Necker's daughter. He had a suspicion that the financier had not gone to Brussels as everybody was led to think. Indeed, it was at Madam de Stael's country house that he was concealed, awaiting events. He made no difficulty in supplying his friend with a letter of introduction to the King.

Armed with this, the doctor, leaving Billet and Pitou in a pretty hotel of Paris where the farmer usually stayed, hurried to Versailles.

It was half past ten but Versailles could not sleep now. It was agitated about how the King would take the insult of the Bastile being captured. It was not a slap in the face like Mirabeau's refusal to obey the order of the King to vacate the Assembly-rooms, but a death-blow.

The palace and surrounding sites were packed with troops, but Gilbert managed to reach the Bulls-eye Chamber where Necker's letter passed him into the royal presence.

The doctor examined in silence the pilot given to France in stormy weather, whom he had not seen for many long years.

For the physiognomist who had studied under Lavater, the magnetiser who had read the future with Balsamo, the philosopher who had meditated with Rousseau, the traveler who had reviewed many peoples, all in this short, stout man signified degeneracy, impotence and ruin.

When Louis had read the introduction he dismissed all attendants with a wave of the hand not devoid of majesty.

"Is it true," said he, "that you are the author of the Memoirs on Administration and Politics, which much struck me? you are young for such a work?"

"I am thirty-two, but study and misfortune age a man; treat me as an old one."

"Why are you so slow to present yourself to me?"

"Because I had no need to speak to your Majesty what I could freely and easily write."

"But you ought to have been informed that I was kindly towards you," observed the monarch, suspiciously.

"Your Majesty alludes to my audacity in requesting him, in token of having read my work with gratification, to show a light in his own study window? I saw that, and was gladdened, but your Majesty offered a reward, and I want none."

"Any way you come like a true soldier when the action is on. But I am not used to meet those who do not haste when recompense is offered."

"I deserve none. Born a Frenchman, loving my land, jealous of its prosperity, confounding my individuality with that of its thirty millions of men, I work for them in toiling for myself. A selfish man deserves no recompense."

"Excuse me, you had another reason. You thought the state of events serious and held back – "

"For a more serious one? Your Majesty guesses correctly."

"I like frankness," said the King, reddening, for he was nervous. "So, you predicted ruin for the sovereign and you wanted to be out of the reach of the flying splinters."

"No, Sire, since I hasten towards the danger."

"You come fresh from Necker and you naturally speak like him. Where is he?"

"Ready at hand to obey your orders."

"All for the best, for I shall require him," returned Louis with a sigh. "In politics, nobody should sulk. A plan may be good and fail from accidents."

"Sire, your Majesty reasons admirably," said Gilbert, coming to his aid; "but the main thing now is to see into the future clearly; as a physician, I speak bluntly at crises."

"Do you attach much importance to the riot of yesterday?"

"It is not riot, but revolution."

"And would you have me treat with rebels and murderers? Their taking the Bastile by force was an act of rebellion; their slaying of Launay, Losme and Flesselles, murder."

"They should be held apart; those who stormed the Bastile were heroes; those who murdered those gentlemen, butchers."

"You are right, sir," said the King, his lips blanching after a transient blush and perspiration appearing on his brow. "You are indeed a physician, or rather a surgeon for you cut into the tender flesh. But let us return to the subject. You are Dr. Gilbert, who wrote those articles?"

"Sire, I consider it is a great happiness that my name is retained in your memory. It must not have sounded new when spoken a week ago in your hearing. I mean that when I was arrested and put in the Bastile. I always understood that no arrest is made of any importance without the King being advised."

"You in the Bastile?" cried the astonished King.

"Here is the order to lock me up. Put in prison six days ago by the royal order, I was released by the grace of the people at three o'clock this day. Did not your Majesty hear the cannon? they broke the doors down to let me out."

"Ah, I should be glad if I might say the cannon was not fired on royalty at the same time as the Bastile." Thus the King muttered.

"Oh, Sire, do not take a prison as the emblem of the monarchy. Say on the contrary that you are glad the Bastile is taken; for, I trust, no such injustice as I was the victim of will be henceforth committed in the name of the ruler who is kept ignorant of it."

"But there must be some cause for your arrest."

"None that I am aware of, Sire; I was arrested as soon as I landed and imprisoned – that is all there is in it."

"Really, sir," said the monarch mildly, "is there not selfishness in your dilating on your troubles when I want my own dealt with?"

"I only need a word: did your Majesty have anything to do with my arrest?"

"I was unaware of your return to this kingdom."

"I am happy for this reply. I may loudly say that your Majesty is defamed when evil is attributed to you, and cite myself as example."

"You put balm on the wound, Doctor," said the other, smiling.

"Oh, Sire, I will liberally anoint it; and I will cure it, I promise. But you must strongly wish the healing done. But, before pledging yourself too deeply, I should like you to notice the note on the prison record."

The King frowned to read: "At the Queen's request."

"Have you incurred the Queen's disfavor?" he inquired.

"Sire, I am sure that her Majesty knows me less than yourself."

"But you must have committed some misdeed, for people are not put in the Bastile for nothing."

"Humph, several in this situation, have come out."

"If you run over your life – "

"I will do so, out aloud: but do not be uneasy, it will not take long. Since sixteen I have toiled without repose. The pupil of Rousseau, the companion of Joseph Balsamo, the friend of Lafayette and Washington, since I quitted France, I have not a fault to reproach myself with, not a wrongful deed. Since heaven gave me the charge of bodies, I have shed my blood for mankind and staunched its flow in others. Thousands live to bless my labors."

"In America you worked with the innovators and propagate their principles by your writings."

"Yes, Sire, I forgot this claim on the gratitude of monarchs and peoples."

This silenced the King.

"Sire, you know my life now; I have offended and injured nobody, queen or beggar; and I humbly ask your Majesty why I was imprisoned."

"I will speak to the Queen about it. Do you believe that the warrant to arrest and imprison came directly from her Majesty?"

"I do not believe this; I rather presume that her Majesty countersigned it. But when a queen approves, she commands."

"Countess of Charny," read the King on the record sheet; "is it she who wanted you imprisoned? why, what have you done to poor Charny?"

"Before this morning I never heard of any lady of that title."

"Charny," muttered the King, musing, "virtue, goodness, chastity in person!"

"You see, they have put me in prison in the name of the Christian Graces," remarked Gilbert, laughing.

"Oh, I will have this cleared up," said the King, and ringing the bell he bade the servant bring the Countess of Charny into his presence.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY

Gilbert had retired into a window recess, while the King paced the Bulls-eye Hall, called on account of a round window in the wall, thinking now of public matters, then of his visitor's persistence though nothing but news from Paris ought to have enchained him.

Suddenly the door opened and the lady entered, dressed in the extreme of the showy and fantastic fashion of Marie Antoinette and her court.

She was lovely, this Countess Charny, with a peerless figure and her hand was aristocratic to the utmost with which she played with a small cane.

"She, Andrea Taverney!" muttered Gilbert, involuntarily shrinking behind the curtains.

"My lady, I ask your presence for a little information," began the monarch, seeing nothing of Gilbert's emotion.

"I am ready to satisfy your Majesty." The voice attracted the doctor who came a little forward.

"A week ago, or so, a blank letter under the royal seal was delivered to Minister Necker," went on the King, "for the arrest – "

Gilbert had his eye on the lady, who was pale, feverish and fretful as if bent under the weight of a secret.

"This warrant was applied for by your ladyship and countersigned by the Queen. I say this to refresh your memory. Why do you not say something, countess?"

"It is true, your Majesty," she faltered, in a feverish abstraction, "I wrote for the letter, filled up the blanks, and the Queen backed it."

"Will you please tell me what crime the person committed for whom the measure was taken?" demanded Louis.

"Sire, I may not do that, but I shall say the crime was great."

"Then you should do so to the object," continued the King; "what you refuse the King Louis XVI., you cannot Doctor Gilbert."

He stepped aside to discover the doctor, who opened the curtains and appeared as pale as the staggering lady. She tossed her head backwards as if going to swoon, and only kept her footing by aid of a table. She leaned on it in dull despair, like one whom a snake bite was filling with poison.

"My lady, let me put the question to you which the King addressed," said Gilbert.

Andrea's lips moved but no sound struggled forth.

"What did I do to you, lady, that your order threw me into a hideous dungeon?"

The voice made her leap as if it tore the very soul in her.

Suddenly lowering her cold gaze on him, she replied:

"Sir, I do not know you."

But while she was speaking the mesmerist stared at her with so much fixedness and his glance was so charged with invincible boldness that her own lost lustre under his.

"Countess, you see what this abuse of the royal signature leads to," gently reproved the monarch; "you confess you do not know this gentleman, who is a renowned physician, a learned man, whom you can blame in no way, – "

Andrea darted a withering glance at Gilbert, who bore it calmly and proudly.

"I am saying that it is wicked to visit on the innocent the faults of another. I know you have not a bad heart," he hastened to add, for he was trembling lest he offended his wife's favorite, "and that you would not pursue anybody in your hatred unless he merited it: but you will understand that such mistakes must not be made in the future. Doctor," he went on, turning to the other hearer, "these things are the fault of our period rather than of persons. We are born in corruption and we shall die in it. But we are going to try to make matters better, in which work I expect you to join us, dear doctor."