The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
this elasticity, and while seated, he might pick up a handkerchief
dropped at his feet without moving his body.
The third person was ambiguous; it being difficult to divine the sex. If
a man, he was upwards of thirty-four, wearing a stylish costume of the
fishmarket stallkeepers, with lace kerchief and tucker, and gold
earrings and chain. His features, as well as could be made out through
layers of rouge and flake white, together with beauty-patches of
sticking plaster of all fancy shapes, were slightly softened as in
degenerated races. As soon as one caught sight of him one wanted to hear
him speak in the hope that the voice’s sound would give his dubious
appearance a stamp by which he could be classed. But it was nothing to
the purpose: his soprano voice left the curious observer still deeper
plunged into doubt.
The shoes and stockings of the trio were daubed in mud to show that they
had been tramping in the road for some time.
“Lord save us, I seem to know that woman, from having met her before,”
said Gamain.
“Very likely at court,” sneered the pretended workman “their manners
have been there quite a while and they have been visitors, the
fishmarket dames, of late. But,” he went on, pulling his cap down on his
brow and taking up his gun, “they are here on business: consequently, we
had better leave them alone.”
“Do you know them?”
“By sight. Do you?”
“I say that I have met the woman before: tell me who the men are and I
may put my finger on her name.”
“Of the two men, the knock-kneed one is the surgeon, Jean Paul Marat;
while the humpback is Prosper Verrieres.”
“Aha!”
“Does not that put you on the right track?”
“My tongue to the dogs if it does!”
“The fishwoman is----“
“Wait, it is--but, no--impossible----“
“I see that you will not name _him_--the fish_woman_ is the Duke of
Aiguillon.”
At this utterance of the title, the disguised nobleman started and
turned, as well as his companions. They made a movement to rise as men
do when in presence of a leader: but the pretended gunsmith laid a
finger on his lips and passed them by.
Gamain followed him, believing he was in a dream.
At the doorway he was jostled by a running man, who seemed to be pursued
by a mob, shouting:
“Stop him--that is the Queen’s hairdresser! stop the hairdresser!”
Among the howling and racing men were two who carried each a human head
on a pikestaff. They were those of two Lifeguards, killed at Versailles
in defending the Queen from the mob.
“Halloa, it is Leonard,” said the strange workman, to the fugitive.
“Silence, do not name me,” yelled the barber, dashing into the saloon.
“What do they chase him for?” inquired Gamain.
“The Lord knows,” was the response: “maybe they want him to curl the
hair of the poor soldiers. In Revolutionary times, fellows have such
quaint fancies!”
He mixed in with the throng, leaving Gamain, from whom he had probably
extracted all he wanted, to make his way alone to his workshop at
Versailles.
CHAPTER III.
THE UNDYING MAN.
It was the more easy for the pretended gunsmith to blend with the crowd
as it was numerous.
It was the advance guard of the procession around the King, Queen and
the Prince Royal, leaving the court suburb at half past one.
In the royal coach were the Queen, her son, her daughter, called Madam
Royale though a child, Count Provence, the King’s brother. Lady
Elizabeth his sister, and the Queen’s favorite lady of the household,
Andrea Taverney Countess of Charny.
In a hundred carriages came the National Assemblymen who had declared
they would henceforth be inseparable from the monarch.
This mob was about a quarter of an hour ahead of the royal party, and
rallied round the two royal guardsmen’s heads as their colors. All
stopped at the Sevres wine saloon. The collection was of tattered and
half-drunken wretches, the scum that comes to the surface whether the
inundation is water or lava.
Suddenly, great stir in the concourse, for they had seen the National
Guards’ bayonets and General Lafayette’s white horse, immediately
preceding the royal coach.
Lafayette was fond of popular gatherings: he really reigned among the
Paris people whose idol he was. But he did not like the lowest orders.
Paris, like Rome, had a grade under the mere mob.
In particular, he did not approve of Lynch Law, and he had done his
utmost to try to save those aristocrats whom the crowd had executed. It
was to hide their trophies and preserve the bloody tokens of victory
that the multitude kept on ahead. But on being encouraged by the trio of
captains waiting at the Sevres saloon, they decided to keep the heads up
and wait for the King, so that he should not be parted from his faithful
guards.
The mob was increased by the country folks flocking to the road from all
quarters to see the cortege go by. A few cheered, adding their uproar to
the howls, hoots and groans of the marching column, but the majority,
stood dull and quiet on both sides of the road.
Did this mean that they were for the Royal Family? No: or at least
unless they belonged to the court party, everybody, even the upper
middle class, suffered more or less from the dreadful famine spreading
over the kingdom. If they did not insult the King and Queen, they
remained hushed, and the silence of an assemblage is often worse than an
insult.
On the other hand the myriads roared with all their lung power: “Hurrah
for Lafayette!” who took off his hat now and then or waved the sword in
his right hand: and “Long live Mirabeau!” who thrust his head out of the
carriage window, where he was one of six, to get a whiff of the air
necessary for his broad chest.
Hence, amid the silence for himself, the unfortunate Louis XVI. heard
applauded that Popularity which he had lost and that Genius which he had
never possessed.
By the King’s right side carriage-window walked a man in a black suit
whose dress pointed him out as one of the Philosophers, as they were
termed, or Revolutionists who worked intellectually for the amelioration
of the monarchy. This was the royal honorary physician, Dr. Honore
Gilbert. The crowd cheered him at times, for he was a hero of their own.
Born a Frenchman, of humble degree, a boy on the estate of the
ultra-royalist Baron Taverney, he had educated himself in democratic
learning. Falling in love with his master’s lovely daughter, Andrea,
since Countess of Charny, he had followed her to court. At Paris he
became favorite pupil of Rousseau, the revolutionist, and this farther
confirmed him in his subversive principles.
But having taken advantage of Andrea while she was powerless under the
influence of a mesmeric sleep, he fled the country. He had deposited in
sure hands the living evidence of his crime, a boy named Emile (In honor
of Rousseau, who wrote a book so called) Sebastian Gilbert, and fled the
country. But at the Azores Islands he came in contact with the young
lady’s brother Philip, who shot him down and believed he left him dead.
But, restored to life by his friend, the Baron Balsamo, otherwise
Cagliostro the Magician he accompanied him to America.
The two formed part of the legion of Frenchmen who helped the revolted
Thirteen Colonies to throw off the British yoke.
Returning to his country he was arrested at Havre and thown into the
Bastile. When that hated prison was stormed by the Parisians led by the
Farmer Billet, he was rescued. He had gone to court to learn who had
caused this arrest, and to his amazement discovered that its author was
the woman whom he had unutterably wronged. Yes, the baron’s daughter had
married the Queen’s favorite, thought by some to be her paramour, Count
George Charny, very rich, very brave and altogether fit to create her a
power in the realm.
Gilbert had a sincere pity for royalty under a cloud. He was known to
the King as the author of certain articles on the way to steer the Ship
of State, and his offer to serve him was gladly accepted.
The mob cheered at the remarkable shaking up of the sands in Time’s box
by which the revolutionary advocate, fresh from the Bastile dungeons,
should walk at the side of the King’s coach to shield his life from the
assassin. No mere touch of rhetoric, for on the royal visit to Paris
lately a bullet had cut a button off the doctor’s coat and slain a woman
in the throng: this graceful gentlemen in black was then a better
safeguard than the soldiers whose heads were now garnishing the pikes
there in advance.
Queen Marie Antoinette looked with wonder at this doctor, whose stoicism
she could not understand, while to it the American manner of forced
quiet added more sternness. Without love or devotion for his sovereigns,
he carried out what he considered duty towards them, as ready to die for
them as those who had the qualities of the loyalist he lacked.
On both sides of the royal coach tramped men and women, in mud six
inches deep, while amid the ribbons and rags, the Fishmarket women and
porters of the Paris Markets swarmed round waves more compact than the
rest of the human sea. These clumps were cannon or ammunition wagons, on
which sat women singing at the top of their voices. An old song which
had been applied to King Louis XV.'s mistress Jeanne Dubarry, and was
now altered to suit Marie Antoinette and the situation of affairs, was
their choice. They roared:
“The Baker’s wife has got the cash, which costs her very little.”
They also kept reiterating: “We shall not want for bread any more, as we
have got the Baker, the Baker’s Wife and the Baker’s Little Boy along.”
The Queen seemed to listen to it all without understanding. Between her
knees she held her son, who looked at the multitude as frightened
princes stare when appalled.
The King watched with a dull and heavy eye. He had little sleep in the
night; he had not made a good breakfast though usually a hearty eater;
he had no time to have his hair dressed and his beard had grown long.
His linen was limp and roughened, too--all things to his disadvantage.
Alas, Louis was not the man for emergencies, and this was a period of
emergencies. He bent his head when they came: save once when he held his
chin up--it was when he walked upon the scaffold.
Lady Elizabeth was the angel of sweetness and resignation placed by
heaven beside those doomed creatures to console the King during the
Queen’s absence; and the Queen after the King’s death.
Count Provence, here as everywhere, had the squinting glance of a false
man; he knew that he ran no present danger; he was the popular member of
the family--no one knew why--perhaps because he remained in France when his
brother Artois fled.
Could the King have read his heart, he might not have felt any gratitude
to him for what he pledged in the way of devotion.
Countess Andrea seemed of marble. She had recognized the man she most
hated in the King’s new confidential adviser, and one whom the Queen
seemed bound to win to her side. Like a statue, the stir round her
seemed not to affect her, and she looked in attire as trim as if fresh
from a band-box. One thought was alive within her, fierce and
luminous--love for some unknown--perchance her husband, or hate for
Gilbert--at whom she darted lightnings involuntarily whenever their
glances crossed. But she felt that she might not defy his with impunity,
for he was a pupil of Balsamo Cagliostro, the arch-mesmerist, and might
sway her with the same art.
A hundred paces on the other side of the little drinking saloon, the
royal train stopped. All along the line the clamor doubled.
The Queen bent out of the window and as the movement looked like a bow
to the crowd, there was a long murmur. She called Dr. Gilbert.
He went up to the window: as he had kept his hat off all the way, he