LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OK CALlFOWf* SAN presented to the I.IRRAHY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY MR. JOHN C. ROSE donor ffXy rfff^ MARIE ANTOINETTE. MY SCRAP-BOOK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION EDITED BY ELIZABETH WORMELEY LATIMER AUTHOR OK -'FRANCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "RUSSIA AND TURKEY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," " EUROPE IN AFRICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "ITALY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "SPAIN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," ETC. SECOND EDITION CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 1898 COPYRIGHT KY A. C. MC-CLURO AND Co. A.I). 1898 NOTE. OF this book I am simply the compiler, unless, indeed, I may call myself the translator of such parts as have been derived from French sources. I collected the material two years since, when giving parlor lectures on the French Revolution; and much that then passed into my scrap-drawer seemed to me too interesting to be confined to small circles of ladies who gathered round me with their crochet-work or embroidery. I have, therefore, collected my " Scraps " into a book for general reading. Thomas Waters Griffith, whose reminiscences begin this volume, was the uncle of my husband, Randolph B. Latimer. He wrote several books concerning the early history of Baltimore and Maryland, and left behind him a manuscript volume of his personal reminiscences. With that portion of it which contains a narrative of his residence in France during the Reign of Terror and the rule of the Directory I have begun this volume. After his return from France, he was sent by the government at Washington to report on the condition of the Island of Hayti. He was a strong Federalist, and has left a minute account of riots in Baltimore in 1812, when the offices of a Federalist news- paper were attacked by a so-called " patriotic " 'mob. Louis XVIII., in 1816, sent him the Cross of St. Louis, in recognition of the services he had rendered to emigres during the Reign of Terror. He was also made a Free- mason during his residence in France. I have a parch- ment containing a certificate of his initiation into the order, in the second year of the Republic. iv NOTE. I was a subscriber to the Literary Supplement of the Paris " Figaro " for twenty years. During the years 1893, 1894, and 1895, the centennial anniversary of terrible scenes in the Reign of Terror, this paper published valuable articles on the subject as the one hundredth anniversary of each event arose. These monographs, I think, cannot but be found interesting by many of my readers. I have tried to keep in mind in all my writings the motto, Suum cuique y and to claim no more credit than what is fairly my due. In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge my obliga- tions in this book and the obligations of a lifetime to " Littell's Living Age." Living, as I have done, in the country, I could not without its assistance have kept in touch with foreign magazine literature. In 1841, Mr. Robert Walsh, then United States Consul in Paris, and at that time one of America's leading literary men, showed me an early number of the " Living Age," saying, " This pub- lication will prove of immense value to all classes of readers in our country." I have a complete copy of the " Living Age" from 1848 to the present day, nearly two hundred volumes, each containing more than six hundred pages. To me it has been of inestimable value in my work, and to the children in my family an education. The " Scraps " in this volume are not, I think, accessible to the public without research, with the exception of two or three taken from Carlyle's " French Revolution." I inserted them as links between events which I thought needed some connection ; and who can paint in a few brief words a picture like Carlyle? His rugged style lends point and picturesqueness to his narratives, and, as Victor Hugo says, "fait penser" Nevertheless, in these extracts I have taken the great liberty of slightly modifying the language. If Carlyle were living, I am afraid he would be angry with me. I saw him angry once (not with me), and should NOTE. v have been afraid to provoke him again to anger. But my excuse for my presumption is that the introduction of a few pages of pure Carlylese into the midst of a work written in a wholly different style, though by a variety of authors, would have produced in parts of my book a sort of dislo- cation. Perhaps I had no right to substitute "frenzied" for " fremescent," and so on; for, indeed, the word "fren- zied " has not half the force of "fremescent." But the one is our every-day English ; the other, not. E. W. L. BONNYWOOD, HOWARD Co., MARYLAND, August, 1898. CONTENTS. Book I. REMINISCENCES OF AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN RESIDENT IN PARIS FROM 1791 TO 1799. CHAPTER PAGE I. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH: HE GOES TO FRANCE . . 9 II. AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS IN 1792 . . . , 27 III. His IMPRISONMENT IN THE REIGN OF TERROR ... 43 IV. LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY ...... 58 Boofc II. FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. I. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE 70 II. A PEASANT'S VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION 107 III. PARIS IN 1787 116 IV. COURT LIFE AT VERSAILLES ON THE EVE OF THE REV- OLUTION 130 Book III. THE COLLAPSE OF FRENCH ROYALTY. I. THE FLIGHT TO VARENXES 144 II. COUNT AXEL FERSEN 164 III. AUGUST THE TENTH AND THE SEPTEMBER MASSACRES 172 IV. THE PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE 184 V. THE KING 198 VI. MARIE ANTOINETTE AND ROBESPIERRE 223 VII. CLOSING SCENES IN THE LIFE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE 272 viii CONTENTS. Book IV. THE REIGN OF TERROR. CHAPTER PAGE I. MARAT . . . . .............. 244 II. DANTON .................. 277 III. THE FEAST OF THE SUPREME BEING ....... 290 IV. THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE .......... 308 V. A CHAPTER OF EPISODES: i. Robespierre as a Poet ........... 324 ii. Robespierre's Private Life with the Family of Duplay 325 iii. The Revolutionary Calendar ........ 335 iv. "Which?" By Fran9ois Coppee ...... 342 v. Dogs in the Revolution .......... 343 Book V. THE CLERGY OF FRANCE DURING THE REVOLUTION. I. EXILES FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE ......... 348 II. A CONVENTIONAL BISHOP ........... 355 III. A PROTESTANT PASTOR ............ 362 VI. LAFAYETTE AND HIS FAMILY. I. LAFAYETTE'S CAREER ............. 373 II. DEATHS OF THE LADIES OF MADAME DE LAFAYETTE'S FAMILY ................. 390 Book VII. LOUIS XVII. I. THE DAUPHIN IN THE TEMPLE ......... 401 II. HISTORIC DOUBTS AS TO THE FATE OF Louis XVII. 408 III. THE LOST PRINCE .............. 421 INDEX 443 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. MARIE ANTOINETTE Frontispiece THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH To face page 10 GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 22 THOMAS PAINE 50 JAMES MONROE 56 CHARLES MAURICE TALLEYRAND 60 CHARLES COTES WORTH PINCKNEY 66 HENRI MASERS DE LATUDE 70 MADAME DE POMPADOUR 90 MADAME NECKER 102 Louis XVI 132 DUCHESSE D'ANGOULEME AND THE DAUPHIN . 146 MARIE ANTOINETTE 154 COUNT AXEL FERSEN 164 MADAME ELISABETH , 174 PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE 184 Louis XVI 198 MARIE ANTOINETTE LEAVING THE TRIBUNAL . 232 MARAT 244 CHARLOTTE CORDAY 262 DANTON 278 ROBESPIERRE 308 HENRI GREGOIRE, BISHOP OF BLOIS 356 JEAN PAUL RABAUT 362 LAFAYETTE , 374 MADAME DE LAFAYETTE 380 Louis XVII 402 DUCHESSE D'ANGOULEME 416 REV. ELEAZER WILLIAMS 422 MY SCRAP-BOOK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. BOOK I. REMINISCENCES OF AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN RESIDENT IN PARIS FROM 1791 TO 1799. I. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH: HE GOES TO FRANCE. II. AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER, 1792. III. His IMPRISONMENT. IV. LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. CHAPTER I. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH : HE GOES TO FRANCE. WATERS GRIFFITH, who was born in J- Baltimore in 1767, and died in the same city in 1834, left behind him several printed books of which he was the author, many papers and letters of historical interest, and a copious account of fifty years of his own life, eight years of which time he passed in France during the stormy days of the French Revolution. As a merchant resident in Havre, and subsequently U. S. Consul at the same port, he had it in his power frequently to favor the escape of emigres ; and Louis XVIII., in recognition of these services, sent him the Cross of St. Louis in 1816. Mr. Griffith says little, however, of such things in his Journal. In 1799, during the disputes between the United States and the Directory, he quitted France, to which country he never returned. He was afterwards sent on a mission to Hayti, of which he has given an interesting IO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. account in his Journal. The manuscript ends in 1821, after which time he led till 1834 an uneventful life as a pub- lic-spirited and useful citizen of Baltimore. That my readers may know what manner of man was this young eye-witness of the French Revolution, from the au- tumn of 1791 to 1799, I here introduce his Revolutionary experience by a few extracts concerning his early life in the first pages of his Journal. It begins thus : The Proprietary of Pennsylvania had taken so much pains to cultivate the place of his first settlement in that province that the population soon increased by immigration. Early in the eighteenth century came out a colony of Welsh Baptists from England, who took up a considerable body of land on the head waters of Christern Creek. They had brought with them their own pastor, the Rev. John Griffith, my great-grandfather, and they at once erected a brick church, and set aside land for its support. The colonists retained their habits of industry and honest simplicity. They were a rural population fifty miles distant from the port of Philadelphia, and they long preserved their native (Welsh) language, in which indeed I have often heard them converse with fluency and pleasure. My father, Benjamin Griffith, when he had acquired a small capital, settled down in Baltimore, and married Rachel, daughter of Thomas Waters, who was also of Welsh extraction. I was the only child of this marriage, my young mother dying in Baltimore shortly after my birth. I was then sent as soon as possible to the care of my grandparents in Ches- ter Co., Pennsylvania, who lived within sight of Valley Forge. In those days imported convict servants were employed in Maryland, and an Irish girl of this description was sent to take charge of me in Pennsylvania. Such servants were often persons of the worst character, who brought crime and dis- order into peaceful families. My nurse was of this descrip- tion, and her conduct towards me, her unfortunate charge, betrayed such criminal designs that my protectors got rid of her as soon as possible. Not long after, she was tried for murder at Chester, convicted, and executed. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH, \\ My father married again and had a large family, two daughters 1 and five sons. I take pleasure in reflecting on the respect my ancestors had acquired by their uniform integrity, and their religious and benevolent deportment. My father, Benjamin Griffith, was an outspoken enemy to British taxa- tion, and when our Revolutionary troubles broke out, and troops were raised in Baltimore and Pennsylvania, he at once volunteered his services, while his family was moved from Baltimore to a place of safety. When in 1776 the British army passed within two miles of my grandfather's house, and halted a day or two south of the Valley Forge, I well remember the appearance of the Hessians, who came looking for Colonel Denvers, who had married my aunt. Not only did they plunder our house and barn, but they went so far as to put a halter round my grand- father's neck, alleging that he would not tell them where the rebel colonel was. This, in fact, he did not know, the colonel being at that time at the American headquarters then moving from place to place in advance of the enemy. To Mrs. Den- vers and her infant boy (who they knew was named George Washington) they were civil enough ; and also to myself, although I was not a little alarmed at their strange language and long whiskers. I thought them savages, and very dread- ful. When scouting parties came it was necessary to spread before them quantities of bread, butter, cheese, and such drinks as the house afforded. The foraging parties gave out that all they took should be paid for in Philadelphia, and my grandfather took their receipts, but nothing was ever received. Not long after the British left to occupy Philadelphia, the same ground was occupied by American troops ; and Colonel Denvers' house became the headquarters of General Potts, whose orderly conduct and social manners made him a great favorite among us. After the battle of Germantown, in which my father served with the Baltimore troop, he was sent to bring back to Balti- more the remains of his commander, General Cox, whom he 1 The younger daughter married, in 1813, Randolph Wallace Lati mer of Baltimore. E. W. L. 12 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. had interred upon the battlefield. He took this opportunity, as I was then ten years old, of reclaiming me from my grand- parents, and took me home to be placed under the care of his second wife, who was my mother's cousin. I missed, however, the freedom of country life, and pined for the farm of my grandfather. But thus it happened that I was spared all sight of the sufferings of the Revolutionary army in the terrible winter of 1777-78, when, half-naked and half-famished, our soldiers encamped during the bitter winter months between the Heights looking down on Valley Forge and the Schuylkill. It was the year 1776, and I was sent to school in Balti- more, but I often changed my teachers, who were forced to give up teaching for various causes ; one, Mr. Laurence Bathurst, who was a good man and an excellent instructor, because he was a Roman Catholic. At that time nothing was taught in those schools but English reading, writing, and ciphering, and there was a great scarcity of teachers of any kind. It was a fortunate circumstance, I think, for the estab- lishment of free institutions in the United States that the state of society at that period was rather patriarchal than refined. Children were under great restraint to parents ; their manner of living was plain ; their desires limited ; and the rules of justice, with the fear of God, were implanted in the youthful mind by the general use of the Bible and Testament as reading-books in the schools. When I had attained the age of fourteen I was sent to a superior school in Delaware. The whole yearly expense of my boarding and tuition was about eighty dollars. The fare was very scanty, but we had at least some tea and sugar after the French alliance and the change of the currency from paper money to specie ; whereas before that our diet was confined to bread and milk, or other plain food, to which no doubt I owe a length of days which my infancy by no means prom- ised, and certainly a disposition to be thankful for any kind of sustenance a bountiful Creator may provide for me. At this school I made progress in learning, and was held to have had success in elocution, so that Governor Van Dyke THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH, 13 of Delaware, who was present at one of our school celebra- tions, had the complaisance to advise my being kept at school and placed where I might study law as my profession. But a year or two later, when an offer was made me of going into the office of a relative who was a Baltimore lawyer, my father told me plainly (being moved thereto, I think, by the strict religious opinions of his wife) that in his opinion the profession was not compatible with Christian duty. There can, I think, be no doubt that some professions afford less security against temptation than others, and perhaps that of the law is the worst in this respect. Still, some lawyers have been called honest, and it depends on any man under Divine Providence to guard himself, and make his profession honest and even honorable so far as depends on himself. At the school in Delaware we had occasional private theatricals ; on one occasion I acted Marius in Addison's play of " Cato," and the Mock Doctor in an after-piece. The news of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis was celebrated by burning thirteen tar barrels elevated on poles in our school- yard. I was taken at sixteen from that school, alas ! too young ; but my father had not abandoned the idea of completing my education. An intimacy had sprung up between himself and some French officers during their stay in Baltimore, and this induced him to wish that I should acquire the French lan- guage. He had indeed promised M. Louis, Commissioner- General, who had been quartered in his house in 1781, to send me to France, and put me under his care. I was there- fore placed at a school where I could learn French, and in 1783, peace being restored with the acknowledgment of American independence, a sudden impetus was given to com- merce, building, and general improvement in Baltimore. My father filled several of the municipal offices, and I was placed in a counting-house to learn book-keeping. But my father, wishing to open for me a more extensive field of im- provement, sent me to Philadelphia to be placed in the counting-house of Mr. John Field. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and expressed himself " willing," as 14 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. he said, " to take the youth ; " but he demanded a premium of eight hundred dollars. This my father, with his large fam- ily by his second wife, was unable to pay. All my life I have been somewhat anxious to be smartly dressed, and my appear- ance, as I heard afterwards, was in part the cause of the high premium demanded, for Mr. Field observed that from my looks he was led to consider my father as a wealthy man ; and that, dress as I might, I should have to make fires and sweep out the store for some time. To this I should have offered no objection, but the sum asked for my premium was too great. I was therefore placed in Baltimore with a merchant recently arrived from Liverpool. Besides attending to business in a way which I was led to believe was wholly satisfactory to my employer, I found time to take lessons in French, dancing, and psalmody, also in instrumental music for a short time ; but the latter was par- ticularly discouraged by my employer, who took occasion to say in my presence that a good merchant and a good musi- cian could not be combined in the same person. Therefore my fiddle was laid aside with the approbation of my father although he was particularly fond of music. He was always consulted by me in matters of amusement as well as business, and his will was ever a law to me, not only from the awe in- spired by his occasional rebukes, but from the gratitude ever due to an affectionate and prudent father. He was at that time much influenced by his wife, who had recently joined the Baptist communion. My father greatly revered the character of an open professor of religion, though he never embraced it himself. He cheerfully hired seats in the Epis- copal and Presbyterian churches, until about this time a stated minister was procured for the Baptist Society. I had myself been baptized in my infancy by the rector of St. Paul's Church. I had not, however, at the period of which I write, formed any decided religious sentiments, but was induced from a slight knowledge of classical literature rather to incline to the theology of heathenism. This tendericy to skepticism was probably stimulated by the suspicions of my father, who at this time exhibited much anxiety concerning my religious THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. 15 opinions. I did not, however, relax in my attendance on public worship, nor allow the slightest want of respect to appear in my conduct towards religion and its professors. When I attained my twentieth year and received a clerk's salary, I was eager to pursue my acquaintance with foreign languages, and boarded first with a German, afterwards with a French family. I made one observation which I think I have never seen elsewhere ; namely, that there are in these languages no terms of swearing exactly corresponding to our English cursing. I occasionally looked into Mr. Murphy's Circulating Li- brary, but I did not subscribe. My father's collection of books was limited, chiefly divinity. I read with great inter- est Hume's " History of England " and the " Spectator." To this last I was indebted for the general knowledge of manners with which I commenced life. I also belonged to a debating society of young men as little advanced as myself, and became a member of the first Abolition Society, at this time started in Baltimore, and in its establishment I took much interest. The people of Baltimore, during the first years that suc- ceeded the war, grew faster in wealth than in discretion. In the course of three years a reaction came. The country was exhausted of capital to pay for excessive importations. Each State was seeking relief for itself, and great fears were entertained lest we should be subject to taxation in passing from one State to another. People of property were com- pelled to reduce their expenses, and the working classes were destitute of employment. The Treasury of the Union was empty, and could not be replenished by funds from the States, for the States had relied on duties collected in their ports ; these daily diminished, and public creditors were either put off or paid in some States by a further issue of paper, an expedient that afforded only temporary relief. But there was little of this paper in circulation. Baltimore had been without a bank until nearly this period, and all large pay- ments were made in bags of heavy coin. Under these circumstances my employer diminished as 1 6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. much as possible his expenses ; and, unfavorable as the times were, I embarked in business on my own account. My capital consisted only of my savings ; but my character for integrity and industry stood me in good stead, and on the whole I succeeded far better than could have been ex- pected. I also, about this time (1790), began to send com- munications to the newspapers. My opinions were those of a Federalist ; and it is with some pride I can add that the same political principles have been my guide and standard throughout life. I had occasionally visited my respected grandfather, who was living in Philadelphia ; also New York and Alexandria, with a desire to find one of these places suitable for my future business ; but I finally concluded on going to France and establishing myself in one of the French seaports, where I could receive consignments from America. This determination was greatly strengthened by the admi- ration with which at that time (1790) I viewed the first steps taken in France towards the establishment of a free govern- ment, a sentiment in which, it may be said, every man in America partook at that period, including my aged grand- father. Although Mr. Adams had forcibly pointed out the dangers that might arise from uncurbed democracy, and our own General Government had been modelled on his principles, the true position of things in France was not even suspected in America ; indeed, every act of the Constitutional Assembly was enthusiastically admired. There was no republication in America of the speeches of the more conservative members, which might have corrected our ignorant enthusiasm ; while the splendid declamations of Mirabeau, which were all re- printed, made us think that Frenchmen were fitted for a gov- ernment more liberal than our own. Personal attachment to Louis XVI. was, however, very general in the United States, for the services he had so lately rendered us ; and many no doubt thought it likely that a British Constitution, with a limited monarchy, would be the blessing France would derive from the Revolution. The vio- THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. \"J lent acts of revenge which were committed against families residing in chateaux in the country were not fully known to us ; and by this time they had partially ceased, the great body of the nobles having emigrated. The converting of the im- mense tracts of land held by the clergy and the monks to the relief of poor cures and their parishioners, long oppressed by taxation, was approved by our own people, many of whom looked on these things as a repetition of what had been done in England in the days of the Reformation by our ancestors. My grandfather spoke often of the three wars in which England had been engaged with France during his lifetime, one of which, if not two, had brought strife to his own door ; and though he devoutly prayed that peace should pervade the whole earth, he foresaw, as he often told us, that before his death he should see another war. During my frequent visits to Philadelphia I had seen among my relatives a young lady who was my cousin by the mother's side, and who was about two years younger than myself. She appeared to me more charming than any other, and she seemed inclined to favor my partiality. She main- tained a regular correspondence with me, until at last I con- ceived that I had only to ask to obtain her hand. I felt I could not be happy without her. This it was that induced me to dispose of my business in Baltimore in order to fix myself in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia I persevered in my attentions to my cousin until I discovered that she was actually engaged (and had been so for some time) to another gentleman. This, though perhaps a fortunate thing for a young man in my circumstances, wounded my self-love and in every way did me an injury. Possibly my vanity may have led me to put flattering constructions on a woman's mere politeness, though I still think it was not excusable in my fair cousin to continue such a correspondence after an engagement without an avowal of it ; nor do I think she was justified in soliciting my influence with her parents in favor of my rival. This did not reconcile me to my disappointment. All further inter- 1 8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. course ceased from that moment ; l and as absence and new faces were most likely to obliterate the recollection of her attractions from my mind, I decided, as I have said, to seek my fortunes in France, taking leave of my relatives, and especially of my dear and aged grandfather, who parted from me with much solemnity, warning me to be careful, sober, and just in my transactions ; to put my trust in God ; and to remember that if (as he said) the rolling stone should gather no moss, there was always a home for me under his roof in Philadelphia. As for me, the tears rushed down my cheeks as from the eyes of a child six years old. Georgetown, in the District then laid out for the seat of our General Government, being the best place in which to purchase good yellow tobacco, I went there, and embarked seventeen hogsheads in the hope of making something by them, and I sailed with them in the ship " George," Captain Wildes, belonging to Mr. Theodore Lyman of Boston, at the latter end of August, 1791. Before the ship had been long at sea the necessity of a superintending Providence impressed itself upon my mind, and I forever ceased to consider it a matter of indifference whether there were twenty gods, or the One God. Our passage was boisterous and tedious. Anxious to learn the situation of affairs in Europe that I might judge of my future prospects, I persuaded the captain to land me at Dover, whence I went on by a night coach to London. In London, besides attending to my business, I did the usual sight-seeing, catching a glimpse amongst other things of King George III. as he skipped into his carriage, and was amazed by the rapidity of his movements. In London an American gentleman associated in the shipping business at Havre, with Mr. Francis Taney, pro- posed to me to assist them for a while. I was glad to accept this offer, but I knew I could not be very useful to them, nor prosecute my intention of establishing myself in- France, 1 The miniature of this lady now hangs over my mantel-piece. It was taken from his pocket-book after his death, fifty years after the cruel disappointment he has here recorded. E. W. L. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. ip until I had acquired a more familiar knowledge of the lan- guage of the country than I had been able to obtain by reading and translating " Te'temaque." Although it was the close of 1791, and the Revolution was well on its way in Paris and its surrounding provinces, Normandy was not very much disturbed. Havre was still garrisoned by several Swiss regiments, the officers of which were very accomplished, and maintained excellent discipline ; but the National Guard, lately established, performed some duties, and as every one was obliged to serve in this new militia, if called upon, I did not find myself exempt, and had to engage a substitute from time to time. After staying some weeks in Havre, I decided to go to Bolbec, about twenty miles distant from it on the Paris road, where a respectable school was kept by a priest, still unmolested, in an old abbey. Most of the scholars were the young sons of West Indian planters. I found the landscape in Normandy rural and pleasing. The highways were excellent. The country was studded with farmhouses surrounded by apple orchards. I saw, too, young children leading cows to pasture by the wayside. But I was surprised to learn that no butter was made to sell. Bolbec had a cotton factory, for Normandy is manufac- turing as well as agricultural. I found there a young gentle- man from Boston of the Russell family, who, like myself, was boarding in this quiet village for the sake of learning French. We were received into the house of a surveyor who occupied part of the old abbey, and we paid at the rate of $260 a year for board and instruction, the young ladies of the family undertaking the latter, though we also hired the services of a master. I made such progress that at the end of two months I was able to return to Havre ; and from that time I was able to speak and write French almost as if it were my native language. ' Many of .the characteristics of the Normans are no doubt derived from the blood of their Norse ancestors. Amongst the French they are distinguished by their sagacity and love* 20 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. of cider, to which the climate, being colder than most other parts of France, may incline them. I found them a plain, industrious, frugal people, clad as their ancestors, it was said, had been from time immemorial, in drab cloth, broad- brimmed hats, and wooden shoes. The females owe to the climate the fairest complexions in France. They all wear pyramidal caps, of muslin or lace, with lappets hanging down the back. Their weddings are almost as solemn as their funerals. They go to church in pairs, youths and girls ; but on their return the friends of the bridal couple keep open house with feasting and dancing for many days. The poultry, fruit, and meats of Normandy are excellent ; fish and oysters also are procured from the British Channel. Normandy left to itself would never have become revolution- ary. Its people were conscious of no intolerable oppression. So far the events in Paris had been to the quiet inhabitants of Bolbec little more than mere news. It will be recollected that in the summer of 1791 Louis XVI. had been stopped near the frontier at Varennes in an attempt to fly from France, and that he was brought back to Paris. There the uncertainty felt as to his real views was the cause of sus- picion. Doubts marred the enjoyment that the nation had begun to take in the Constitution and the new state of things. News of the flight to Varennes, which took place June 21, had not reached America at the close of August, when I began my voyage, so that I was quite ignorant of what had so materially changed the face of affairs. I began to find it difficult to form any opinion concerning the Revolution in progress. On this subject I found my two most intimate French acquaintances the surveyor and the abbe at variance, but with this difference : the surveyor was boister- ous and outspoken enough, while the abbe" was afraid to say much, even to Russell and myself, because we were not subjects of a monarchy. With my friends at Havre I con- tinued to hope for the success of the liberal principles intended to be established by the new Constitution, without reference to a republican form of government, such as had THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. 21 been established in our own country. And these appeared to be the sentiments of the merchants and people with whom 1 associated. At Havre and at Bolbec I accompanied my friends to church, for, in whatever language God was worshipped, the place was sacred to me ; and I thought I gained in piety by my presence there, though I was ignorant of what I heard, the service being in Latin everywhere. The commerce of Havre was chiefly with the West Indies, including formerly much of the trade in unfortunate Africans. Its population was about 30,000. It had two churches and a small theatre. In the spring of 1792 I left Havre for Paris, intending to establish myself in the south of France, the place to be determined by what I might see in the capital. War had by this time been declared between France, Germany, Austria, and Prussia. Louis XVI. had boldly rejected laws which would have deprived him of the means of performing acts of charity, but now felt himself compelled to sanction war against his own brothers. In Paris I went to lodge in a hotel, rather retired, in the Rue Gue"negard. I waited at once on Mr. Gouverneur Morris, the American minister, and met there, among others, Com- modore John Paul Jones, Joel Barlow the poet, James C. Mountflorence, and several more Americans. I also met the Count d'Estaing, Saint John de Crevecceur, Esq., formerly consul of France in New York, and his son Otto, M. Ray de Chaumont and his lady, formerly Miss Cox of Philadelphia, and Madame de Lafayette, with some of her family, but the marquis was already at the head of an army on the borders of the Rhine. Commodore Paul Jones died in Paris soon after my arrival there ; and I, with the American gentlemen I have named, and a small deputation from the National Assembly, attended his funeral. His interment took place in one of the common cemeteries of the town. There was no priest, nor any funeral service, but a few soldiers fired a volley of muskets in honor of the naval hero over his grave. 22 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. My stay in Paris was prolonged by my great interest in the stirring events of the time, until my finances became low, when, remembering how much my country owed to France for her aid in resisting England, I began to consider a plan for joining the army under General Lafayette. I looked with admiration on the services the general had rendered to the cause of liberty, both in my own country and in France. I was moreover influenced by Major Mountflorence, who had served in the North Carolina Line. I therefore agreed with that gentleman that we should consult with Mr. Morris, our minister, and, if agreeable to him, go to camp with recommendations that he might furnish us to General Lafay- ette, and obtain suitable employment in the French army, under his command, if possible. But Mr. Morris, though he had not been much longer in France than either of us, filled a post, and occupied a station, which enabled him to appre- ciate the state of public affairs, and see further into futurity than ourselves ; besides which, genius and judgment he was known to possess. When we made our plan known to him, he politely tendered us the letters for Lafayette, but advised us most earnestly to decline them for a few weeks, declaring propheti- cally that the Constitution would be crushed, and the marquis be overthrown with the king at the same time. This counsel alarmed Major Mountflorence as well as myself. We agreed to postponement, and never again thought of joining an army towards which the marquis had been accused of treachery, and from which at last he was forced to fly, having risked his life in Paris to resent insults to the king on the 2oth of June preceding. The blood of the Count d'Estaing, Count Dillon, Count Beauharnais, Baron Custine, and others whose names are recorded in the annals of our struggle for liberty, was subse- quently basely shed. They were all men to whom the American people owe eternal gratitude. In France Louis XVI. had by this time (July, 1792) excited feelings not only of distrust but enmity ; but Americans thought tenderly of Louis XVI., precipitated from his throne, that throne from which GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. 23 he had secured the independence of our country, after hav- ing impoverished his treasury and risked his future in our cause. I was a spectator in 1792 of the celebration of the taking of the Bastille on the i4th of July, 1789, three years before. The celebration took place both on the site of the demolished fortress and at the Champ de Mars. At the latter place the patriotic king was very coldly received, and the name of Lafayette was hailed with terms of reproach. The Emperor of Austria excited no fear in Paris, but recollections of the treaty made by several sovereigns at Pillnitz, and the myste- rious conduct forced upon the king, while he was held almost as a prisoner after the return from Varennes, produced no little anxiety for the future, to get rid of which the populace was ready to join in whatever movements the leaders of the Revolution might suggest. It was not at this time, nor indeed during the former period of the Revolution, in the power of King Louis to have upheld the monarchy, nor to have prevented the coming horrors, even had he been the most military character of the age, and as little disposed to protect the rights of others as were the Revolutionary governments which came after him. The people were not disposed to unite with the privileged classes, but they might have been compelled to do so if the nobility and clergy had voluntarily abandoned their feudal privileges, which were oppressive on the middle class as well as the inferior orders, and had united themselves in an upper House, a House of Peers. They would then have gained over or neutralized the middle class, and have prevented the populace from working its will, thus producing a salutary reform without violence or bloodshed. Certainly this would have been the case had they taken the initiative before the destruction of the Bastille, nay, possibly, even before the removal of the king to Paris by the populace on Oct. 6, 1 789. But after the masses had become interested, as they thought, in the extinction of everything above them, and had ascer- tained the effective power of their numbers, no mortal wisdom could have stopped the wheels of the Revolution. Them- 24 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. selves only, and a very few of them, gorged with the blood of the moderate party in May, 1794, alone could have brought about a counter-revolution. Yet even then soldiers organ- ized to put down massacres always trembled for their lives in the event of their own success. The factions of Orleans, of Pe'tion Mayor of Paris, of Brissot, who was of the Philosophical School, of Collot d'Herbois the comedian, and of Danton and Robespierre (who wanted nothing less than control of the government), prepared for an attack which they had planned on the palace, by calling to Paris in the summer of 1792 detach- ments of ignorant provincials, who were told, and made to believe, that they would receive in the capital complete military equipments, and be marched to the frontier. Such of them as had arrived in Paris by July 14, 1792, received the name of Fe'de"re"s. They attended the celebration of the day, with the whole body of the National Guards of Paris and a few regular troops. The king and his ministers were to renew their declarations of fidelity to the Constitution on the Champ de Mars on that occasion. I witnessed this act, if it could be said to be "witnessed" by one among a hundred thousand spectators standing upon earth banks at least two hundred yards from the platform erected in the centre of the amphitheatre for the different members of the government and high officers of the city, civil and military. The king was but coldly received ; and General Lafayette had already become so obnoxious to the populace that his name was freely contrasted with that of the Mayor Pe'tion. To me it was exceedingly mortifying to find that such a man as Pe'tion had supplanted Lafayette in the confidence of the majority of the populace, not only on his own account, but because it was an evidence of a disposition to disparage early and devoted patriotism, and exhibited a disposition incompatible with those principles on which the Constitution was founded, or the existence of any permanent government derived from the people could be based. Nevertheless the general made one last effort to save the government, by coming from camp to testify his horror of THOMAS WATERS GRIFFITH. 2$ the insults offered to the king, and to advise such measures as might avert another 2oth of June. But his influence as a patriot, which could have dispersed a mob in 1789, proved now unavailing, and it was scarcely known he was in Paris till he was gone. 1 Some days after this I went to a public dinner given by Santerre, an officer who was afterwards Commandant of the National Guard, to the Fe'de're's, on the Place de la Bastille, of which State Prison there still existed some remains. The men all thought that they were to be marched to the frontier as soon as a sufficient number of volunteers could be collected, and in fact they were soon joined by two or three regiments from Marseilles under an officer called Westermann. These men brought with them the celebrated Marseilles Hymn, first heard in Paris when sung by them. They had committed many acts of violence upon their route, and brought with them far other views than those an- nounced by the air. They came prepared for revolution. I was standing on the steps of the Church of St. Eus- tache when they filed past with their arms and baggage. Suddenly I was told in a very peremptory manner to take off my cockade, which was made of ribbon, as were other cockades worn by many citizens. I could not imagine how it could offend them, since to be without a cockade was a sign of sympathy with royalty, which no one would have ventured to exhibit. I was at last kindly told by other spectators near me that I must get a worsted one, like a soldier, silk being considered too aristocratic by these advanced radicals. Some of the National Guard in the part of the city inhab- ited by the more wealthy and more loyal citizens encountered the Marseillais in the Champs Elysees, and not being so ready to submit to dictation as I had been, a fight ensued, in which some lives were lost. After this, in order to protect the Royal Family in the Tuileries from the daily insults of such pretended patriots, the palace was repre- sented as national property, and the terraces of the gardens 1 For a further account of Lafayette see Book VI., Chapter I. 26 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1 . were encompassed with tricolored ribbons, instead of guards. The tricolor ribbon was respected, and the mob was thus excluded from the plots of ground immediately under the windows of the palace. The Hall of the Legislative Assembly was a wooden building which had been erected for a riding-school. It stood on the north side of the garden of the Tuileries, and was separated from it by a terrace thirty feet wide. The hall contained a gallery for spectators, which was daily frequented to overflowing by men and women of the worst description. It was the policy of the leaders of the factions to gratify these people by bold and false accusations of the government and every person the government employed. These stories they knew would obtain general circulation, with additions, through such auditors. It was in this place that the gravest suspicions were thrown out against the fidelity of the king and the virtue of his consort. With the same treacherous view General Lafayette was slanderously charged with having poisoned some of his soldiers about this period ; but he had still a sufficient number of friends in the Legislative Assembly to procure a Committee of Investigation, which, after visiting the camp, reported that, if any of his soldiers had been poisoned, it was caused by stained glass from windows in a church in which a quantity of provisions had beeri* stored. And that ended the matter. Hearing some individuais of the kind I have mentioned as frequenting the gallery of the Legislative Assembly, repeating to other persons who were walking on the terrace of the garden of the Tuileries that overlooks the river, these refuted charges, I ventured to explain the circum- stances. I was hooted at, and thought it prudent to retire for safety. CHAPTER II. AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS IN 1792. A LTHOUGH the Municipal Government of Paris had ** petitioned for the suspension or removal of Louis XVI., and their petition had produced no action on the part of the Assembly, it was very evident that his removal or dethrone- ment would soon be attempted by force. Early on the gth of August, 1792, the tocsin was rung in the eastern part of the city, and in the suburbs ; and the National Guard was assembled at the bridges and other sta- tions, while the Swiss Guard received orders to defend the palace with a detachment of the National Militia. At the same time, gentlemen attached to the royal family and Constitution went to the palace, prepared for what might happen. This was sanctioned by officers of the Department of the Seine, as well as by the Municipal Government, and indeed by a majority of the Legislature. Some members, however, plotted very successfully to detain many of the Swiss Guard at their barracks in the country, 1 leaving only about eight hundred of the Guard at the palace under Major Bachman, who, with the National Guard (there were at that time no regular troops in Paris), were under the command of M. Mandat. I went at nightfall with Mr. Corbin, a young gentleman from Virginia who had lately become my fellow-lodger, to ascertain in the streets what was likely to happen. We went first to the Jacobin Club, the seat of the chief faction. It 1 We now know that the larger part of the Swiss Guard was de- tained at Courbevoie on the Seine, to serve as escort to the king and his family, who, it was hoped, might take advantage of arrangements made to effect their escape. E. W. L. 28 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. was at the old convent of the Jacobite monks. Then we went to the Place du Carrousel, on the east front of the palace. The Hall of the Jacobins, into which we were ad- mitted, for we had disguised ourselves as Fe'de're's, con- tained a few other such volunteers. Some private letters from soldiers in the camp were read ; and it was declared during the debate that the mob waited only for the legis- lators to lead it on, to commence an attack on the palace ; also, that even then the Sections were assembled at their several Section-houses. The king's guards were under arms in the Carrousel when we quitted the Jacobin Club late at night, and we felt per- suaded that with these men at their posts, the assailants, if they did attack, would be repulsed. By eight o'clock in the morning, however, the crowd of Fede'res and rabble had so swollen that the mob began the attack by a discharge of artillery on the guards within the Carrousel. I was not awake until I heard the reports of the cannon ; for I had not retired until morning, having passed the night in the streets. I rose immediately, and proceeded to the Quai opposite the Louvre, where I saw as much of the contending parties as I could have done from any place in the city. I could not, however, see the Swiss or others stationed behind or within the palace. 1 Danton and his coadjutors had forced the city authorities to give up their scarfs of office and resign their commis- sions to them. Placing the mayor under arrest, they assumed his functions, ordering the National Guard to " dismiss," and M. Mandat, their commander, to repair to the Hotel de Ville. There, when he appeared, he was in- stantly murdered. The officers of the National Guard, being thus left without a head, became confused, and the men left their posts for their homes. Scarcely one man in uniform appeared among the mob, who had compelled many private individuals, and even strangers, to join them. Among these was one of my 1 For an account of what was going on within the palace, see a subsequent extract in this book from Carlyle's " French Revolution." AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS. 29 friends, a young doctor from Annapolis, who lodged at the southeastern extremity of the city. They furnished him with a pike. The Swiss Guard at the palace continued to fight after the royal family had been escorted by a deputation from the Assembly to the Hall of Legislation, for they had not received the order given by the king to cease firing ; and they actu- ally drove the rabble to some distance in every direction. The mob, however, after reinforcements had arrived, rallied and got possession of the palace, after killing most of the Swiss and many of the National Guard, besides private gen- tlemen. This they were better able to effect because some of the National Guards, who were enraged at seeing men in the mob wearing their own uniform, united with the Swiss, and, being fired on, seemed under some necessity to take part to save themselves. After pillaging the palace for a few hours, and conducting about two hundred Swiss to prison, the mob retired ; and the city became suddenly more quiet than it had been for weeks before. My friend Mr. Corbin, after we had viewed the flames which were set to the barracks in the Carrousel, on meeting some of the rabble patrolling, and others with heads upon pikes, became alarmed. The insurgents not having had time to mature their plans of vengeance, the gates of the city remained open ; so he departed for Havre that same day. I accompanied him in a hackney-coach across the river to the stage office. Our hack had just brought a wounded lodger to our house who had escaped from the palace. Few carriages were to be seen on the streets except those conveying public characters, and the one we procured demanded double the usual fare. The gentlemen who had devoted themselves to the king and Constitution by becoming members of the Cabinet were arrested, and were soon after tried and executed. Clermont- Tonnerre, and perhaps some others who had opposed the Revolution, were assassinated in the streets. It was indeed certain death to appear well dressed ; and the Swiss soldiers, 30 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. whose uniform was scarlet, could not find refuge or safety anywhere but in prison. Notwithstanding these untoward circumstances, I trav- ersed the field of battle and made my way into the palace, where the pavement was stained with blood. I was there, indeed, before all the bodies of the dead had been removed. The public were not permitted to know how many fell on either side ; but as several hundred Swiss had spent their ammunition before they died or surrendered, the whole num- ber of victims must have amounted to several thousand. Entering the gallery of the Assembly, which was filled with even worse-looking people than usual, I saw for the first time Louis XVI. and part of his family, in a box used by the reporters. The king was short and robust, of a countenance mild and pleasing ; the queen tall, graceful, and handsome ; the king's sister plain, but dignified ; and the children deli- cate and interesting. None of them manifested any idea of the horrid fate which awaited them, but seemed willing to conciliate the members by their condescension, without any effect, however, at least upon my neighbors in the gal- lery ; one of whom (and a female, too) did not hesitate to call the prince a bastard, and no better than his mother. Returning the next day to the vicinity of the Hall of the Assembly, I saw the unfortunate royal family set out in carriages for the Temple, which was formerly a royal castle, but by this time converted into a prison. It was situated in a remote, but thickly settled, part of the city. Wishing my friends in America to be acquainted with these acts, beginning with what I had seen of the reception of the king at the Champ de Mars, events which termi- nated the Constitution and the Constitutional Monarchy, I printed an account of them in 1795, an< ^ sent a ^ tne copies to America. After I had seen the things I have described, I went to wait on Mr. Gouverneur Morris, our ambassador. I found at his house a number of gentlemen and ladies, who from former intercourse with America, and in many cases services rendered to the United States, considered themselves en- AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS. 31 titled to protection in the hotel of the minister. Mr. Morris had had no communication with the authorities, nor had he even been in the streets from the commencement of the insurrection, and he expressed some surprise at the dis- guise I had assumed to avoid giving offence to the populace. After he had received my explanation and had learned my views of the situation, he took me into the adjoining room, and there stated to me in the following terms, as nearly as I can recollect : " The persons you have seen, six or more individuals, who have rendered services to our country, or are related to such persons, consider themselves in danger in their homes, and have taken refuge in my house. Whether they will be disappointed of safety here I cannot tell. I call you to witness, Mr. Griffith, if my protection of these persons should become a matter of reproach to me, here or at home (and I have reason to expect it will, from what I have already experienced), that I did not invite them to come, but that I will not put them out now that they are here, let the consequences be what they may." A deter- mination which I considered fully justified as much by patriotism as by private feeling. And so I expressed my- self to the minister. The frightful massacres that in three weeks followed the insurrection of the loth of August were precipitated by the manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick, and the ap- proach of the Prussian army to Paris. There was a wide- spread apprehension that French generals would betray the nation. Such a report was diligently circulated by the Revolutionists in the Assembly, and sustained by inferior officers in the army who wanted promotion. The popula- tion of Paris, greatly excited, was ready for insurrection, fearing which, many respectable citizens set out for the French camp to establish a character for patriotism, and place themselves above suspicion. By this they also hoped to place their families under the protection of the Revolu- tionists. This seriously diminished the number of well-dis- posed citizens in Paris who might have been the king's defenders. 32 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. For some time after the loth of August the gates of Paris were closed, and no one was permitted to leave the city, as it was intended to hunt out and take vengeance on a number of persons who, from their rank in life, their pro- fession, their talents, or their political sentiments, were ob- noxious to the insurgents. Members of the late Cabinet, who, from devotion to the Constitution or the king, had recently accepted office, were the first victims, and some were murdered in the streets without the formality of a trial ; others were crowded into the common jails to be massacred collectively. It was on September 2, when several hundred priests of all ages, and gentry of all ages and both sexes, had been thus collected, that the leaders were selected, the judges and executioners were chosen, and a band of hardened villains were sent to the prison of I^a Force, to the Abbaye, and to others to commence their fiendish operations. I was tempted to go to the Abbaye, but was stopped by my landlord, a most worthy citizen, who, returning himself when he found it was no longer safe to look on, brought me back to the hotel, which was not very far from the Abbaye. Many thousands of the citizens of Paris remained ignorant of the horrors then enacted within its walls, until they saw the remains of slaughtered men and women paraded through the streets. I myself was at dinner on one of those days with Messrs. Mountflorence and Anderson in the Rue St. Honore", nearly opposite the Palais Royal, then the residence of the Due d'Orleans, when we were roused from table by a noise in the street, and going out saw the head of a female borne up- on a pike, and the fragments of a human body dragged through the gutter by a few miserable wretches who ap- peared infuriated by intoxication and joy. Upon inquiry we found that these were the lifeless remains of the young and beautiful Princesse de Lamballe, whose flowing hair had been fashionably dressed after her head had been severed from her body. The head was pushed into the faces of passers-by upon the street ; even into carriages AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS. 33 containing others of her sex, who, as may be supposed, were for the moment deprived of their senses. Elated by their success on the loth of August, excited by the defection of Lafayette, and terrorized by the loss of Longwy and Verdun, strong posts which had been captured by the Prussians, a Revolutionary Government set itself up at the Hotel de Ville, Robespierre acting as president, Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes being secretaries. The massacre of the prisoners had been by them deter- mined on. The volunteers were crying out for the heads of their enemies before they could venture, as they said, to march against the enemy, and leave their wives and chil- dren behind. Before this I had visited Versailles, about twelve miles from Paris, from which the king and royal family had been compelled to go to Paris (Oct. 6, 1789) about three years before. It was said that Lafayette, commanding the Na- tional Guard, had not duly protected these persons, and that he should have done more, nine weeks earlier, to pre- vent the shedding of blood after the taking of the Bastille. I found the residence of the king most splendid. It had not. when I saw it, suffered the dilapidation to which it afterwards became a prey. I went also to St. Denis, a small town six miles east of Paris, in the cathedral of which had been deposited the corpses of kings, and of distinguished soldiers. The tombs when I saw them had been all plundered to obtain lead for munitions of war. I recollect seeing no grave but that of Turenne undisturbed ; his remains were afterwards removed. I saw his tomb with those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mira- beau in the old Church of Ste. Genevieve, called by the Revolutionists the Pantheon, and dedicated, as its inscription said, " to the memory of the great men of France by their grateful country." It was about this same time that the city government ordered the demolition of the statues of the sovereigns of France standing in different public places, even that of Henri IV., on the Pont Neuf. This statue was equestrian and 3 34 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. bronze. I happened to be a witness of the outrage. Work- men filed the legs of the horse, and, with a long rope at the neck of the king, brought the whole down with a tremen- dous crash. The same spirit effaced the initials and the insignia of the kings from off the palaces and public buildings, and obliged individuals to remove all armorial bearings from their houses and carriages. The horrors of the months of August and September and the loss of rest had thrown me into a slight fever, and the further outrages I witnessed determined me to leave Paris. Therefore, a few days after the gates were opened, I set out with a passport from Mr. Morris, our minister, duly counter- signed, in company with a fellow-lodger named Coulanges, who had obtained an English pass from some friend, and who, as he had been living in the king's palace on the day of battle, thought it necessary to take an indirect road to reach his home near Rouen in Normandy. Until then I had usually travelled unaccompanied by friends or acquaintances, and in the public diligences. The diligence is a heavy vehicle having room inside for six pas- sengers and in front the coupd, which holds three more, 1 also a covered seat on the top for one beside a guard, called the conductor, who takes charge of the baggage and goods contained in a basket behind. The, conductor overlooked the change of horses and the conduct of the postilions, who ride on one of the. four or six horses, booted in iron or steel. The horses are furnished, as those for private travelling carriages are, at the post-houses, usually about six miles apart. The horses belong to private individuals, who purchase from the government the privilege of furnishing them. The diligence travels at the rate of about four and one half miles g an hour, but the two-wheeled carts conveying the mail go about six miles per hour. Both take charge of valuable effects, of which they guarantee the amount, if paid for at the stipulated premium. 1 The diligences of this period seem to have had no rotunde, a compartment behind which carried four passengers. Fifty years later the baggage was placed on the top and covered by a tarpaulin. AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS. 35 M. de Coulanges and I now hired a light carriage, and took a roundabout route for Versailles. In the evening we saw the fire made for burning the clothes of the prisoners from Orleans who had been brought to Versailles to be massacred that day. 1 We had met on the road some of the murderers in wagons lighted by torches, and bearing the heads of several victims as trophies, or rather as evidence of their claims upon their employers at the capital. It was known that some obnoxious gentlemen had been collected at Orleans before the dethronement of the king. Orleans was thought to be a place where they might be constitutionally tried ; but no suspicion had been entertained by me or my companion, or indeed by the citizens of Paris, 1 believe, besides those accessory to the horrid scene, of what was to be enacted at Versailles on Sept. 9, 1792, or that travel- lers on that road would be saluted, as we were that evening, by such cannibals, and compelled, as was usual on such occasions, to shout applause for their gratification. So little disposed to follow the example of the people in Paris were the people in the provinces (now the departments) that there were at first only a few victims in the southern towns of France. To excite the country to deeds of vio- lence, it was always found necessary to send out professional incendiaries. It has been advanced by some, that if the morals of the French people had not been neglected by the clergy, a disposition to countenance such horrors could not have existed. But experience does not often make people wise, much less precept, and it is not given to man to convert the hearts of sinners. Infidelity had been for fifty years in the very air of France. The cures at least whatever may have been the case with the higher clergy were, in general, so virtuous and so zealous that a very great majority of people who had arrived at mature life (perhaps nine tenths of them) refused to abandon the Sabbath, or join in the worship of the new gods and goddesses. They re- membered their priests with gratitude, and trembled at 1 For an account of this atrocity, see a subsequent chapter. 36 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. offences which violated the commands of the true God, the God of their fathers. 1 After having been refused admittance to several public houses in Versailles on the night of September 9 which followed the massacre, we wandered about the city seeking a place to sleep. The city seemed deserted. We saw neither man nor woman until, late at night, we were kindly received by a private family to whom M. de Coulanges was known. The next day we continued our journey to the bank of the Seine, below St. Germains ; going thus, as it were, across country, that we might not be suspected of coming from the capital. We also, by way of precaution, quitted our carriage and hired a boat, proceeding alternately by land and water till we reached the city of Rouen. There M. de Coulanges stopped at a friend's house, bid- ding me adieu in terms which plainly implied that he never expected to see his fellow-traveller again ; which in fact was the case, nor do I know what became of the unfortunate man, who probably joined his amiable wife and daughter in Normandy, and I trust escaped the vigilance of his enemies, since Normandy was not distinguished by such acts of vio- lence as other parts of France soon after exhibited. It is my conviction that the population of Paris was as well informed, and had as correct principles, both as to politics and morals, as the same number of people in any place on the surface of the globe, but the Revolution had attracted thither philosophes and turbulent spirits from every country, and these were the more ferocious because they had no personal interest in the welfare of the nation. Uniting themselves with a few Frenchmen of the same general character, they became the employers of all the desperate villains ever to be found in any populous city. Until the disorders of the Revolution, no people had appeared more contented than the French with the rational liberty they were beginning to enjoy under their new constitutional government. But as soon as both king and Constitution 1 See an account of the French clergy exiled to England, in a subsequent chapter. AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS. 3Jr were overthrown, the real patriots the men whom France and the world looked up to for the support of liberal principles speedily became victims of the anarchy which followed. Duly appreciated, there is in every society a great dis- proportion between the wise and the weak. Even in Paris there were probably fifty ignorant persons for one possess- ing knowledge. I reached Havre in safety, after the perils of my journey from Paris to Rouen, and resumed commercial speculations, chiefly in tobacco, with my friend Taney, who had married into a French family, that of M. Govain. I was in Havre during the month of January, 1 793 ; in other words, during the time of the trial and execution of the king. Shortly before war was declared against France by England, I went to London for the purpose of attending to the purchase and shipment of tobacco. Whilst in London I attended some of the debates in Parliament, and had the satisfaction of hearing Messrs. Fox, Pitt, Burke, Dundas, and Sheridan speak on the declaration of war contemplated against France. In that country, the Royalists and Moderates having been entirely put down, the factions in the convention were determined, as they said, to endure nothing but a republican constitution, and, having killed their own king, carried their revolutionary warfare into every country subject to a different form of government. Although the interest elicited by all this in the British House of Commons was calculated to bring out all the elo- quence and talent of the British Senate, I did not think at the time, nor do I now believe, that it surpassed what I had heard not long before in our American Congress, from Ames, Madison, Smith of Carolina, Vining, and some others, on the far less interesting subjects of internal taxation, banking, etc. The speech of Mr. Burke was calculated in my opinion to make the greatest effect, but he wanted at that time per- sonal influence, for his desertion of the Opposition lost him his friends on that side, and he had not been long enough a supporter of the administration to obtain confidence from its friends outside the walls of the Parliament House. 38 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The people of England had been at first much pleased at the prospect that the French would model their government after that of Great Britain, but the execution of King Louis had disgusted them generally, and great pains were taken to mamiest their attachment to King George on every occasion. I was nearly pressed to death descending the steps into the pit of Covent Garden Theatre (Drury Lane having been destroyed by fire) on a night when the king was to be present, but I obtained a good seat, and was much gratified. The boxes were crowded by ladies elegantly dressed, and I thought them all beautiful, as they certainly were in respect of complexion, compared with our ladies in America; but both American and French ladies have advantages of person and expression of countenance over those of England. The king showed the greatest delight at every lively incident the play afforded, and heard the national air, " God Save the King," in full chorus, until he was tired, and waved his hand. Kemble, Palmer, Johnson, and Quick, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Crouch, Mrs. Esten, and Mrs. Jordan were the performers. After a pleasant and advantageous visit to England, where I made the acquaintance of many Americans settled in London, I embarked with my tobacco on a small American craft, which took some time to make the voyage to Havre, as she grounded repeatedly before getting clear of the Thames. My venture, however, proved very successful, and I made a second voyage to England. By this time war had been declared ; and the American captain of the scow in which I sailed landed me near Dungeness, for the sake of despatch, and to avoid the formalities which a state of war had intro- duced in the admission of passengers from France. But the vigilance of a guard upon the beach had nearly produced some unpleasant difficulties. I was followed closely into a smuggler's hovel, and was protected from arrest only by the courage of my host ; the red-coats insisting that I was a Frenchman, and the other insisting that I was no more * Frenchman than any of themselves. He afterwards engaged AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER IN PARIS. 39 himself to carry my valise to Romney, which was the first post town beyond the Downs or sands. My report of the tobacco market in France was so encouraging that other American merchants in -London and Liverpool joined in shipping a considerable quantity to our Havre house. Orders in Council were obtained to permit the departure of our vessels with their cargoes, but I was not taken before the Secretary at the Foreign Office to be examined on the state of affairs in France, as was usual in such cases. This voyage also yielded our concern a very handsome profit, and my share placed me in a more inde- pendent position than has ever been my lot before or since. Mr. Taney effected a sale of the tobacco to the Government itself for the use of the French army and navy, which, as usual, received rations of the article, and had been likely to come short of supplies, when a close blockade of the French ports should be carried into effect. Before leaving London I joined my countrymen on the Fourth of July, 1793, to celebrate our independence by a din- ner at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street. At this dinner there were about eighty gentlemen, including several London merchants who were attached to the United States by the interest they had in our trade, and regard for the sage republican principles of our citizens. This dinner, not accompanied by music or any outdoor exhibitions, cost us a guinea apiece. Boston vessels before the blockade continued to enter the port of Havre ; but French merchants had abandoned the ocean altogether, and it was lamentable to see their fine ships crowding the docks, never again to be sent to sea. About this time I abandoned all idea of establishing my- self at some port on the Mediterranean. As time went on, Mr. Taney became alarmed at the situation of affairs in France, both commercial and political, and, contemplating a return to America, purchased of the Count d'Estaing the lands presented him by the State of Georgia. To receive the money due by the Government for its purchase of tobacco, and commence Mr. Taney's payments to the 4 an d as tne strict English blockade had de- stroyed the trade of Havre, I never returned to it again. Before I left London I had been recommended to several French emigrants as a person to whom they might confide letters ; amongst others, M. Cazales, the late eloquent and intrepid opponent of the Revolutionary measures of the Con- stituent Assembly. He called on me, and, besides his own letters of a private nature, tendered me a polite introduc- tion, which I accepted, to his friend M. de Nanteuil of the Place Victoire, formerly one of the farmers of the diligences. This proved to be one of the most fortunate circumstances of my life ; for to this gentleman and his amiable family was I indebted for the greatest pleasures of the ensuing four years, being the happiest portion of my life during my absence from America. At the same time that Mr. Monroe, our new ambassador, reached Paris, came three friends of mine from Baltimore, Captain Barney. Mr. J. H. Purviance, and Mr. Henry Wil- son ; besides Mr. Skipwith, Mr. Monroe's secretary, and a number of Americans from other places. By the aid of Mr. Skipwith and my friend Major Mountflorence, also LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 59 attached to the embassy, I succeeded in obtaining an acknowledgment of the claims with which I was intrusted, including my own, and some payments were made in depre- ciated money ; but the major part remained unpaid until, by the cession of Louisiana in 1803, the American Govern- ment assumed most of the debts. By Mr. and Mrs. Monroe I was received and treated in a most friendly manner. The minister, contemplating a resi- dence of some time in Paris, and tempted by the low price of property, purchased a very handsome villa within the walls of the city, to the west ; where he and his lady, then young, beautiful, and affable, entertained at sumptuous dinners nu- merous parties of Frenchmen and Americans, besides giving a magnificent fete, long remembered, on the Fourth of July, 1795, soon after the installation of the new embassy. The only child of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe, a young daughter, was sent to Madame Campan's boarding-school at St. Germain. Nothing could have given me so much pleasure as the great change I found in Paris after my return to it in April, 1795. The excluded members of the Convention nearly seventy in number, and those the best had resumed their seats. The Jacobin Club was suppressed. The princess royal had been sent from the prison where she had lived, bereaved of her parents, to the palace of her uncle at Vienna ; the guillotine was put down, and there was an end to the infamous Revolutionary Tribunal. At Mr. Monroe's I met, besides Thomas Paine, whom Mr. Monroe charitably lodged and boarded for some time after obtaining his release from prison, my countrymen, Messrs. Barlow, Eustis, Putnam, Barney, Codman, Waldo, Sands, and Higginson ; besides Colonel Humphries, our minister, on his way to Spain ; Kosciusko, the Pole, who served in our War of Independence, and many others. I met also most of the officials or founders of the new gov- ernment, including the Abbe" Gregoire, 1 who retained his fidelity to the Catholic faith, and deserved the bishopric he got, while Gobel, the Diocesan of Paris, basely abandoned 1 See Book V., Chapter II. 60 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. the Church. I met, too, M. Mercier, author of a facetious but just picture of Paris ; and Cambaceres, then occupied in a compilation of Laws which was afterwards designated the Code Napole'on. With Napoleon he was subsequently associated as one of the three Consuls. There were also Lanthenas, Jean de Brie, and Boissy d'Anglas, convention- alists, men who sincerely labored to establish a republican form of government, of the practicability of which neither they nor Mr. Monroe seemed to entertain any doubt. I also saw there the Count de Segur, M. Volney the traveller, and many others. But Sieyes, the wily Talleyrand, and others of that stamp, affected to shun places of conviviality and the society of foreigners. It will be allowed that in such company I had great op- portunities for improvement, and also that it may have been hard for a young man to withstand contamination from the erroneous religious and political opinions that many of these gentlemen entertained. The man who afterwards became First Consul was not commonly spoken of till made chief of the Army of Italy. He was the offspring of a species of gentry in Corsica, whom it was the policy of France to conciliate at the time he was educated at the Military School at Brienne. He was a dema- gogue from infancy, and first signalized himself at Toulon in 1793. Under Barras he also put down the Sections, i3th Vendemiaire (Oct. 4, 1794). The Jacobins, alarmed, after the fall of Robespierre, by the condemnation of Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecu- tor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, attempted to regain their authority in the May following, and for a while succeeded, after killing in an emeute the member Feraud ; but their adherents were repulsed, the assassin of Feraud was arrested, and at once condemned to death. When carried, however, to the Place de Greve, where executions at that time took place, he was rescued from a few cowardly gendarmes by a small party of the populace, and hidden in the Faubourg St. Antoine. As I had never witnessed an execution by the guillotine, I took this opportunity to go to the Place de Greve CHARLES MAURICE TALLEYRAND. LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 6 1 with my friend Purviance, and was present at the rescue, which commenced by a few boys crying, Grace! Grace! The Convention, however, ordered the Faubourg St. Antoine to be besieged, and, after two or three days of commotion, the city was restored to quiet by the surrender and execution of the murderer. While Thomas Paine was lodged in our ambassador's house, Mr. Monroe informed me that he was writing a most abusive letter to General Washington, and asked me to see him and persuade him to have it suppressed, as he himself had in vain endeavored to do. This I did, but all in vain ; for Paine thought himself slighted by our Government, which had not demanded his release without waiting for his solici- tation. He was, like many other geniuses advanced in life, both vain and obstinate to an extreme degree. When Mr. Monroe was recalled in 1796, the Americans in Paris, who had received many services and civilities from him, and who had no knowledge of the objectionable com- munications that had passed between himself, his own and the French Governments, united in addressing him a compli- mentary letter, which he affixed to his defense on his return to America, and which was the innocent cause of some little coolness on the part of friends at home to some of the sign- ers, including myself. Although I always differed with Mr. Monroe's general politics, I do not reproach myself with signing this testimony to his private worth and public services. On my former visits to Paris I had always lodged at public hotels or inns, where I met other Americans or strangers ; but being desirous of forming French acquaint- ances to the exclusion in some measure of other society, I took the liberty to ask my friend M. de Nanteuil, after I had been introduced to his lady and his family, which consisted of two amiable young daughters and a young son, if I could live with them. But he very cordially informed me that the customs of the country would not allow parents who had unmarried daughters in the house to admit gentle- men on the footing I proposed, but that I might consider 62 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. his house like a home, so far as to call and take meals with them whenever I found it convenient. I was even urged to bring with me American friends and others at discretion. I was also introduced into the family of M. de Nanteuil's younger brother, who had an elegant little villa at Rhony, the same that had once been the residence of the Due de Sully. There I was present at many pleasant parties, and passed many happy days. I became acquainted and was often in company with Madame Tallien, who was certainly, though aged about thirty, 1 and the wife of a second husband, one of the most elegant and accomplished women of the age, as she was that one of all her sex who most contributed to serve humanity by her influence over the monsters who had usurped the government of her country. I also knew Ma- dame Recamier, the young and amiable wife of the banker of that name, who was universally considered the beauty of Paris for several years. She wats not so tall as Madame Tallien and more portly ; both had black eyes and hair. In the circle of young ladies, nearly all of whom were schoolfellows, having been together at the establishment of Madame Campan, I met Mademoiselle Oulot, who became the wife of General Moreau, Mademoiselle Agla'6 Angui, who in 1807 became the Princesse de la Moskowa, wife of Marshal Ney, and Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais, who was the step-daughter of Bonaparte, and became Queen of Holland. They were all rivals in accomplishments then, and all have since experienced the most painful reverses. Among all the young ladies whom I -knew in France, Made- moiselle Anguie, whose fate was the most deplorable, united the greatest charms of person and mind, and pleased me most. This young lady's father had suffered his share of Revolution- ary malice. Her mother had died by violence ; her aunt, Madame Campan, had been driven from the chamber of the queen to keep a boarding-school ; while her uncle, M. Genet, had rendered himself obnoxious to the American people, and was proscribed at home. Yet these afflictions, though 1 Mr. Griffith is mistaken ; she could not have been more than twenty-four, having been born in 1773. LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 63 far inferior to what she must have suffered in later life from the execution of her husband, Marshal Ney, gave her a sort of pensive modesty, which, at her age and with her gre'at beauty, made her exceedingly attractive. When Bonaparte assumed the extraordinary task of mak- ing matches between his generals and ladies who possessed a certain fortune, he presented Mademoiselle Anguie to Ney, and is said to have declared that he had selected "the fairest of the fair for the bravest of the brave." I was long enough privileged to be intimate in French society to assert, contrary to the statements of many travel- lers, that the chances of happiness in marrying among the French are as great, or nearly so, as they are anywhere. This will not appear so extraordinary when it is considered that young ladies in France always received their education in some convent, and were afterwards much restricted in their intercourse with the other sex. They come into society with- out any former" impressions or partialities, and, when their parents form suitable connections for them, will generally attach themselves to their husbands and their domestic duties, unless the husbands become libertines, or the fasci- nations of fashionable or court life overcome their religious principles. Although in other countries young ladies are permitted a more general intercourse, how seldom does it happen that they obtain in marriage the man they most admire ! They are not at liberty to solicit for themselves ; but in France their parents will often seek for them the object of their preference. I lived in furnished apartments in the Rue Richelieu at one time and in the Rue St. Roch, afterwards with Mr. J. H. Purviance, private secretary to Mr. Monroe ; but I was generally alone. I kept a cabriolet, or gig, and a servant, a native of Cologne, who was my hair-dresser, valet de chambre, and footman, and who prepared my breakfast. If I was not engaged abroad, I dined at a restaurateur's ; that is, one of those splendid cook-shops with which the capital of France abounds. I partook of all public amusements, 64 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. and was frequently in the streets till daylight, without ever receiving the slightest injury or insult from individuals. One of my country excursions was to Daumartin, a villa which had been purchased by my friend, Mr. Richard Codman, of Boston. The castle, erected probably a thou- sand years before, presented only piles of stone and mortar, which seemed to adhere as one mass and to be capable of resisting all attacks another thousand years. To counteract the excitement in France against the United States in 1797, I wrote an answer to a remark in the corre- spondence of the ambassador Fauchet, relative to the influ- ence of British trade in America. The title of my pamphlet was, "^Independence absolue des Etats Unis de I'Ame'rique prouve"e par 1'Etat actuel de leur Commerce," etc. Its style was corrected by a French friend, M. Billocq. I also pub- lished articles in the French newspapers for a similar purpose. The Revolutionary armies under Dumouriez, Pichegru, Jourdan, Hoche, and Moreau. aided by the sympathy of foreign populations and the want of a common feeling among the allied sovereigns, had enabled the French Government to procure peace with Spain, Prussia, Switzerland, and Hol- land. Soon after the fall of Robespierre, Bonaparte carried his victorious arms through Italy, and even to the neighbor- hood of Vienna. The British Government was left almost alone, and authorized Lord Malmesbury to enter into nego- tiations at Lisle ; but the Directors and the leading men in the Assembly became uneasy at the prospect of a general peace. They overthrew their opponents on the i8th Fructi- dor (Sept. 4, 1797) by calling in the military under Au- gereau, and broke off the negotiations, sending Bonaparte to Egypt to conquer other colonies in place of those they had lost in America ; and considering themselves destitute of any further interest in the neutrality of the United States, they began at once to plunder the Americans, and their gov- ernment used the most insulting language to our own. Having very weak eyes from infancy, I now attempted the "use of spectacles before I was twenty-four, and to that, and LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 65 perhaps to the use of Rapparee snuff (begun then also), I may impute the preservation of my sight, using my spectacles only for reading ; but a miniature painter whom I employed at this time to take a likeness of me for my father, dis- covered that my left eye was defective, being in part per- manently covered by an eclipse. Mr. Monroe was recalled in the fall of 1796, and General Pinckney was sent out to obtain some restoration of harmony. This venerable American officer and patriot was indignantly rejected by those self-created despots (the members of the Directory), and it became necessary to sat- isfy our people, who could not credit the horrid acts of pretended republicans. Another embassy was therefore sent : Gerry, Marshall, General Ellsworth, and Messrs. Davis and Murray. While these ambassadors of peace were on their way, American property was subject to many risks, and our persons were in danger. Mr. Skipwith, our consul, was obnoxious at Havre, and he was obliged to retire ; so also in Paris was Major Mountflorence, his late assistant. My own health requiring change and care, I spent some time in 1798 at Passy, and perhaps avoided molestation by doing so. As if the Directory feared that personal outrages on Americans should not be understood, they passed a decree enjoining foreigners (meaning particularly Ameri- cans) to leave the city and the country, within a very short period, unless they obtained a card of hospitality ; that is, a permit to prolong their stay from week to week. In con- sequence of this decree, Paris was almost deserted by Ameri- cans, but my commercial concerns would not admit of my departure, and I was arrested several times, because I had not taken care to renew week by week my card of hospitality. As if enough had not been done to open the eyes of Americans, the Directory sent an army into the Swiss Can- tons, and compelled those brave and ancient republican allies to put themselves under French protection. I endeavored to become attached to the Dutch embassy, but Mr. Murray had engaged Mr. I. Henry as his secretary ; however, after all official characters had left Paris, I became 5 66 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. the medium through which he transmitted American official despatches to the French minister for foreign affairs. When I published my Defence of the Independence of the United States (of which I have already spoken) I sent copies to MM. Rccderer, Angui, Dupre', and others ; also to M. Talleyrand, the minister, who in a note of thanks replied that, if I had not proved what I proposed, I had abundantly shown that it was the interest of the United States to cultivate a good understanding with the French nation. The corrupt conduct of this artful man, while minister for foreign affairs, and the energy with which our government exposed his intrigues, together with reverses to the French arms in Italy, and the destruction of the French fleet on the coast of Egypt, first compelled the Directory to renew amicable negotiations with the United States, which they wpuld gladly have extended to Great Britain. Then came their final overthrow in 1799 by the military party. I took an opportunity once to ask M. La Forest, who had been French consul at Philadelphia, and was then chief clerk in the Foreign Department, how he could reconcile it to his conscience to serve such wicked rulers. To which he pleaded poverty as his excuse, but also declared that greater evils might have taken place but for the influence of M. Talleyrand. While the relations of the French Government with America continued unsatisfactory, nothing profitable could be done by an American in France. Messrs. Pinckney and Gerry had gone home, and the hostility of the French Government to all Americans who remained in Paris was apparent in many ways. I therefore determined to return home, and, when things should improve, attempt to obtain a more profitable situation than that of consul at Havre. That a change would take place before long I did not doubt. The people had long since become tired of strife and of the many shifting changes in their Government ; and some Rev- olutionary leader had to be sought on whom power and authority should devolve sufficient to defend the country CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY. * LIFE IN .rARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 67 externally and maintain peace in the interior. For this they chose a person who, being a foreigner, entertained no par- tiality for any district of the country, nor any class of people, and yet was committed to the Revolution. To Napoleon Bonaparte the nation submitted, with few exceptions, as sordially as if he had been born their king, for the French, like other people, will go from one extreme to another, and, after contending with great zeal for some particular object until they are exhausted, will become so relaxed and indif- ferent as to appear better contented without it. Before I left Paris in July, 1799, it was known that the government of France had been offered to Moreau, Hoche, and some other military commanders. People were then ignorant that Bonaparte was on his way from Egypt, and there was a general feeling that the king would be restored, and universal peace take place immediately. In the course of my exertions to provide for myself in the future in case I should never receive the money that was due me from the French Government, I purchased for a large sum in assignats a hotel in the Rue de Richelieu. Upon the fall of this paper money I sold the same property for payments in specie, of course at an enormously reduced price, but one nevertheless that would have left me a con- siderable profit. Before the payments were all due, however, the new paper money called mandats was created, which, like assignats, fell in value as soon as it appeared, but, having been made legal tender, my purchaser took advantage of it, and thus my hopes of a successful speculation in real estate cost me dear. As no passage direct for America could be obtained in France in 1799, and as I was desirous to see Bordeaux, I determined to proceed home by Spain. I procured a pass- port from Mr. Skipwith, indorsed by the minister for foreign affairs, to be countersigned by the resident Spanish minister and head of the Department, when I should have deposited my card of hospitality. Fully impressed with the idea that I should soon be in France again, I did not feel that regret I otherwise should 68 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. have done at parting with my inestimable friends. I even entertained hopes of seeing again General Decoudray, who, a bachelor, and at the age of eighty, entertained in the most agreeable manner large parties of gentlemen, of whom I was one. He inhabited an ancient castle of his family at Brie. He was sincerely beloved by his tenantry, and even in the days of party violence the castle gate served only as a com- mon door, the moat was dry, and the battlements without a guard. From a pleasure house in the park we could see a distant castle, once the residence of La Belle Gabrielle. Some anecdotes relating to that amour of the Great Henry were told us as family traditions, and the general had in his town house in the Place Royale two chairs that had served the happy couple, as he said. I took charge of some letters from Madame de Lafayette to General Washington, and from M. Leroy to Mr. Adams and Colonel Hamilton. At the moment I was stepping into the diligence, that gentleman told me in a whisper that our friends in America might be certain of a speedy revolution in the government of France. My servant, Louis Monnard, being a native of Cologne, and liable to the conscription, was very desirous to leave France, but could only do so by obtaining the security of some friends for his return. We passed through a fine arable country on the banks of the Loire, to Orleans ; thence by Blois to Tours, and so on to Bordeaux ; there I hired a light carriage, and crossed the sands to Bayonne. The ^Landes, as they are called, present a surface almost bare, and the people appear to live on the produce of their pine timber, and on flocks of sheep, which the shepherds watch and drive mounted on stilts, while they spin tow or flax by hand. I lived upon the road on the thighs of geese, smoked like bacon. However, as I ap- proached Bayonne, the country improved. At Bayonne I hired mules, and a guide to conduct me over some small spurs of the Pyrenees into Spain. The guide proved to be a girl of twenty-two, daughter of the man who owned the mules. It seems that the commandants LIFE IN PARIS UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 6$ of the French and Spanish guards on the frontier treated the Biscayan women with much confidence ; and although I was not permitted to see my baggage, I do not believe that any- thing was even opened. When I reached San Sebastien, having happily got out of France, I found in the harbor several American ships armed, manned, and furnished with letters of marque against the French. The first vessel sailing for America was a small schooner bound to New York, and its commander, Captain Palmer, tak- ing me as a passenger, we sailed early in August, 1 799. We made two or three narrow escapes from vessels which we supposed to be British cruisers. At one time there were two which we did not discover till quite near us. At another time a frigate by press of sail got within gunshot of us after a day's chase ; but as we were in the act of coming to, she carried away her fore-topmast, which emboldened us to cheer and fill our sails again. We finally lost sight of her, to the great joy of our captain, for his vessel and his cargo of French goods actually belonged to French merchants in New York ; and if he did not lose all, he would at least have been sent to England and detained at great expense. On September 20 we made the Highlands, but too late in the day to pass Sandy Hook, and, not to be obliged to tack at a critical season between Long Island and the Jersey Shore, Captain Palmer stood out to sea till the next day, when we reached New York. We heard from the health officer, who made no difficulty in letting us go up to the city, that yellow fever, that fatal disease which several times during my absence had visited my country, was now raging in New York so terribly that almost all the inhabitants had quitted the city. BOOK II. FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. I. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. II. A PEASANT'S VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION. III. PARIS IN 1787. IV. COURT LIFE AT VERSAILLES ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON BOOK II. 'T'HE French Revolution of 1789 was not primarily a -*- revolt of the peasantry. All over France, indeed, the salt tax, or gabelle, and the corvee (or forced labor on the roads) were held to be sore grievances by the rural popula- tion ; but in Northern, Western, and Southern France the peasants were unfavorable to the Revolution, and it required a great deal of Revolutionary " mission work " to stir them up against their clergy and their nobles. It was not so in Central France, or in Lorraine, a province that had not long been annexed to the French crown. Lorraine had been burdened by all sorts of feudal exactions imposed upon the country by its semi-German rulers, and even after its annexation to France in 1766, some of its nobles re- tained what was called office et seigneurie, which gave them jurisdiction, and even the power of life and death, in certain townships and villages. The Revolution in its earlier stages, before the roughs of Paris learned their power and took the upper hand stimulated by a large foreign anarchic element, was the offspring of a sense of oppression that pervaded the intelli- gent classes. The nobility, especially the cadets of noble houses, dreaded personal oppression by the crown, above HENRI MASERS DE LA TUDE INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON BOOK 77. 71 all, its lettres de cachet, distributed with a strange recklessness in all directions ; the professional class felt bitterly its exclu- sion from all careers of honor. No man could rise in life without his quarterings ; he might gain wealth, but place, power, and social consideration were denied him. In the army and navy the officers were all nobles, and those who could not exhibit a certain length of pedigree without a flaw were called officiers bleus and socially ostracized by their comrades. A desire for " liberty " was in the air. It pervaded all classes, it was stimulated by the fin du siecle literature of that day, and, above all, by sympathy with American ideas brought back to France by young French officers who had served under Washington in our War of Independence. The queen and her court party shook off the fetters of court etiquette for the enjoyment of liberty at the Trianon. Liberty of opinion, liberty of action, freedom from the bonds which shackled every free movement in every man's daily life, was the aspiration of many millions of hearts in France for ten years before the cry arose for reform in the finances, and for the assembling of the States-General. The iron had entered into every man's soul who belonged to the cultivated classes ; but the movement did not affect the peasantry until the desire for plunder took possession of them, and in Central France they burned the chateaux of their lords. What the terrors of the Bastille were we may learn from the narrative of Latude ; what the Revolution effected for the peasantry has been told by MM. Erckmann and Chatrian, who wrote down their narrations from the lips of ancient actors in these stories ; * and how Paris and Versailles on the verge of the Revolution looked to the gay, the young, and the careless, we may read in the narrative of two young 1 There is no better picture of the Revolution and peasant life before the Revolution than may be found in George Sand's charming story of Nanon ; of which the " Christian Union " said, when a transla- tion of it appeared in 1886, published by Messrs. Roberts, that "it was like the Pastoral Symphony in prose." E. W. L. 72 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. men of the middle class who came up to the capital on a frolic on the eve of the outburst of the great volcano. I have added a paper, also translated from the " Supple'- ment Litte'raire du Figaro," in which a modern reporter feigns to give us his impressions of Paris and court life at the same date. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 1 Henri Masers de Latude was born March 23, 1725, near Montagnac in Languedoc, in a castle belonging to his father, the Marquis de Latude, Knight of the order of St. Louis, Lieutenant- Colonel of the dragoons of Orleans, and at the time of his death (which took place during his son's im- prisonment) the king's lieutenant at Sedan. Henri de Latude, a younger son, and by a second marriage, was well educated with a view to his becoming an officer and a courtier ; but from some slight hints in his story, we judge that he made more enemies than friends at Montagnac in his early years. A taste he had for mathematics led his father to get him an appointment as a supernumerary officer in the Engineers, under an old friend of the family, then serving at Bergen-op- Zoom ; but the peace of 1748 cut short his military career, and he repaired to Paris to push his way in life, and to improve his education. At that time Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, had reigned about three years over Louis XV., over France, and almost over Europe. She had resented Frederick the Great's refusal to receive her compliments through M. de Voltaire, by a declaration of war, and had forced the Empress Marja Theresa, staid wife and good mother, to address her as "my cousin." Her reign lasted in France for nineteen years. Latude, with all his wrongs, has painted her in no darker colors than history. The woman was possibly no worse than her generation, but on her was visited the nation's sense of oppressions, evils, and 1 By Mrs. E. W. Latimer. Published in " Littell's Living Age," Feb. 17, 1883. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 73 abuses ; and this exasperation, before the century was out, was to culminate in the Revolution. The difficulty of approaching this lady, who was the fountain of all favor, both in camp and court, seems to have inspired more than one young simpleton with projects as dishonorable, ill advised, and ill laid as one conceived and carried out by Latude. He addressed a package to Madame de Pompadour into which he put a powder perfectly harm- less. Then he hastened to Versailles, and requested an audience. Having procured it, he informed her that in the garden of the Tuileries he had overheard a project formed by two men to poison her ; that he had followed them to the general post-office, where they had deposited a letter ; this letter he believed to be for her, and to contain a subtle poison. Madame de Pompadour expressed the utmost gratitude for his zeal, and offered him upon the spot a purse of gold, which he declined, saying he only aspired to her patronage and protection. Madame de Pompadour, however, was a shrewd woman. She made him write down his address, which he did, without reflecting that on the envelope of his package he had not disguised his handwriting. He there- fore returned to his own lodging exulting in the success of his ruse, and dreaming of future advancement in the court and army. Madame de Pompadour at once obtained her letter from the post-office, and tried the effect of the powder it con- tained on several animals. As these were none the worse for taking it, she compared the handwriting on the cover with Latude's. He was detected at once, and forthwith was waited upon by an agent of police, who hurried him into a voiture de place, and set him down about eight o'clock in the evening of April 27, 1749, in the courtyard of the Bastille. He was taken into the Chamber of Council, and there found the prison authorities awaiting his arrival. Here they stripped him and took from him all his money, papers, and valuables. His clothes were retained for further search, and he received in exchange some miserable rags, which, as 74 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. he phrases it, " had been watered by the tears of other unfortunate prisoners." This ceremony was 4 at the Bastille called faire F entree d'un prisonnier. They then made him write his name, and the date of his arrival, in the prison register, after which they conducted him to a room in one of the towers, into which they locked him. Berryer, the lieutenant (or, as we should say, the min- ister) of police, was sent next morning to interrogate him. When Latude had told him exactly what he had done and the motives that prompted him, Berryer replied that he saw nothing in his action but a piece of youthful folly. He promised to intercede with the Marquise de Pompadour, and did so ; but the incensed favorite could not be brought to consider the offence " a young man's indiscretion," and emphasized her intention to keep him in strict and solitary confinement. M. Berryer, however, ordered that he should have every indulgence, and even the society of an English spy, a Jew named Joseph Abuzaglo, betrayed by the open- ing of his letters in the post-office. But these companions in misfortune only increased each other's despair. Abuzaglo had a wife and children, ignorant of his fate, with whom he was denied any communication whatever. He had, however, a supposed patron in the Prince de Conti, who he expected would exert himself in his behalf ; and he and Latude made mutual promises that whoever was first released should spare no pains to procure the liberation of the other. These vows must have been overheard by their jailers. One morning, about four months after Latude's arrest, three turnkeys entered their chamber, one of whom informed Latude that the order for his liberation from the Bastille had come. He took an affecting leave of Abuzaglo, promising to remember their agreement ; but no sooner was he outside the double door of his late dungeon than he was informed that they were going to remove him to Vincennes. Abuzaglo a short time after regained his liberty ; but, be- lieving Latude to be already free, and outraged by his total inattention to his promises, he took no steps in his behalf. Latude, in his new prison, fell dangerously ill. Kind IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 75 M. Berryer still watched over him. He assigned him the most comfortable apartment in the castle of Vincennes, with a window that commanded a superb view of the surrounding country. It was now that the ardent, scheming spirit of Latude began first to conceive the idea of an escape. A poor old priest had been confined in the castle many years, on a charge of Jansenism. He was permitted to teach the children of one of the turnkeys, and to receive frequent visits from an old friend, the Abb de St. Sauveur. For two hours every day Latude was allowed to take exercise in the garden of the castle, always attended by two turnkeys. Sometimes the elder turnkey waited in the garden while the younger went upstairs to unlock the prisoner's door. Latude began by making a practice of running downstairs in advance of his attendant, who always found him conversing with his fellow-turnkey within the garden door. One evening the bolts were hardly withdrawn when Latude rushed downstairs, closed the outside door, and fastened it upon the younger man. How he settled with the elder he does not tell. After that he had to pass four sentinels. The first was at a gate which led out of the garden, which was always closed. He hurried towards it, calling out eagerly, " Where is the Abbe' St. Sauveur ? The old priest has been waiting for him two hours in the garden ! " Thus speaking, he passed the sentinel. At the end of a covered passage he found another gate, and asked the sentry who guarded it where the Abbe St. Sauveur was. . He replied he had not seen him, and Latude hurried on. The same ruse was suc- cessful at the other two posts. Latude was free, after twelve long months of captivity, four in the Bastille and eight at Vincennes. He hurried to Paris across country, and shut himself up in furnished lodgings. Will it be believed that the man who had planned and executed so audacious an escape could think of no better mode of retaining his liberty than to draw up a memorial to the king, " speaking of Madame de Pompadour with respect," and expressing regret for his past conduct? He ended by giving his address in Paris ; and then, having 76 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. intrusted this document to one of the physicians of the court, he waited impatiently for an answer. Throughout the narrative we are struck by the extreme ignorance or indifference of this young man of quality re- specting the outside world. To him France, or rather Paris and Versailles, seem to have contained the whole human family, or at least all that portion of it with which alone it was possible for a man of his position to hold civilized intercourse. In a few days his retreat was visited by another agent of police, who reconducted him to the Bastille. In spite of the good offices of M. Berryer, in spite of the promise made him on his arrest that he should be set at liberty if he would reveal the exact manner of his escape, he now changed his former comforts for a dungeon. This place was lighted by a loophole which admitted some faint rays of light, and M. Berryer ordered him to be supplied with books and writing materials. This indulgence proved his ruin. Hot- headed and imprudent, he could not refrain from writing on the margin of one of the volumes furnished him a coarse squib upon his persecutress, such as few women of her con- dition could have been expected to forgive : " Unblessed with talents, unadorned with charms, Nor fresh nor fair, a wanton can allure In France the highest lover to her arms. As proof of this, behold the Pompadour ! " l Latude was not aware that every book was carefully exam- ined after it had been in the hands of a prisoner. His wretched verses were no sooner found than they were pointed out to the governor, who forthwith carried them in person to Madame de Pompadour. " Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." In her first paroxysm of rage she sent for M. Berryer. 1 " Sans esprit, et sans agrements, Sans etre ni belle ni neuve, En France on peut avoir le premier des amants ; La Pompadour en est la preuve." IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 77 " See ! " she cried, stammering in her excitement ; " learn to know your protege 1 , and dare again to solicit my clemency ! " For eighteen months after this the compassionate Berryer left poor Latude unsolaced in his dungeon ; at the end of that time he had him removed to a more comfortable apart- ment, and offered him the companionship of a servant if he could procure one to share his captivity. Persons confined under a lettre de cachet could sometimes obtain this favor on condition that the servant should share the imprisonment of his master until the death or pardon of his principal released him from his obligation. Pierre Cochar, the young man whom the family of Latude succeeded in inducing to share the solitude of their kins- man, soon broke down under the horrors of captivity. He pined, he bewailed his engagement, and at last fell ill. In vain his master implored his release from prison. He was only carried from the cell when in his dying agony. The three months of imprisonment which killed Cochar were the three least intolerable months in a captivity of thirty-five years suffered by his unhappy master. M. Berryer, unwearied in his kindness, next procured him the society of another prisoner, young, enthusiastic, talented, and full of spirit, who had already languished three years in the Bastille under a lettre de cachet. He had written to Madame de Pompadour, " pointing out the odium in which she was held by the pub- lic, and tendering advice as to how she might recover the good opinion of the nation while retaining the confidence of the king." This young man was named D'Alegre ; and towards him, as towards Latude, Madame de Pompadour had sworn undying vengeance. Penetrated with the conviction that only her death or her disgrace could end their mis- ery, Latude was maddened into energy, D'Alegre reduced to despair. The former planned, and both together executed, the most daring escape known in prison annals. It was out of the question to attempt to get out of the Bastille by its gates. " There remained," says Latude, " no other way but by the air." In their chamber was a chimney, the flue of which 78 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. came out at the top of the tower ; but, like all those in the Bastille, it was filled with iron gratings, the bars of which were hardly far enough apart to let the smoke pass upward. From the top of this chimney to the ground was a descent of two hundred feet. The ground, however, was a deep moat, com- manded on its other side by a very high wall. The two prisoners had no means of communicating with the world outside their prison. They had no implements, and no materials ; only their bare hands, their education, and their manhood. The first thing to be done was to get to the top of the chimney ; or, to speak more correctly, they had to begin by discovering a place of concealment for any tools and mate- rials they might find means to secure. Latude came to the conclusion that there must be a space between their floor and the ceiling of the chamber beneath them. In order to make sure of this he made use of an ingenious stratagem. There was a chapel attached to the Bastille in which four little closets were arranged for any prisoners permitted to attend mass. This was a great favor, but it was enjoyed, thanks to M. Berryer, by our young men, and by the pris- oner in No. 3, the room beneath theirs. Latude got D'Alegre to drop his toothpick case while gojng up the stairs, near the door of No. 3 ; to let it roll downstairs, and ask the turn- key to pick it up for him. While the man (who was still living in 1790) was so engaged, Latude contrived to get a hurried peep into the chamber. He measured it with his eye, and thought its height about ten (French) feet and a half. He then measured one step of the stairs and counted thirty-two of them up to their own apartment. This con- vinced him that there must be a considerable space between the ceiling of No. 3 and the floor of the room he and D'Alegre occupied. As soon as he and his companion were shut into their own chamber, he threw himself on his friend's neck, exclaiming in a transport of delight, " We are saved ! " D'Alegre naturally objected that they had no tools, and no materials. " Yes ! " cried Latude, " in my trunk there are at least a IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 79 thousand feet of rope ! " In Languedoc, as still in Germany and in some parts of Scotland, the domestic life of woman- kind was simplified in those days by the practice of having the family washing done about three times a year. This necessitated enormous supplies of linen. Latude had been permitted to have his wardrobe sent him. He had thirteen dozen and a half of linen shirts, and towels, stockings, and night-caps in proportion. Part of this linen he had bought cheap from French soldiers after the plunder of Bergen-op- Zoom. They had a folding table with two iron hooks, which fas- tened it to the wall. They managed to sharpen these hooks, and in two hours more had whetted part of the steel of their tinder-box until it made a sort of knife, which enabled them to fix handles to the hooks, which were to be used to get the gratings out of the chimney. Their first work, however, was to raise some tiles from the floor of their room, when, after digging about six hours, they ascertained that there was in- deed a space of about four feet between their floor and the ceiling below them. They then replaced the tiles and pro- ceeded to draw out the threads of their shirts, one by one. These were knotted together, and wound into two large balls, each of which was composed of fifty strands sixty feet long. Of these they next twisted a rope about fifty-five feet in length, with which they contrived a rope-ladder of twenty feet, intended to assist their work in the chimney. For six months they labored to remove the iron gratings. An hour at a time was all each man could endure at this arduous employment, and they never came down without their hands and legs being covered with blood. The iron bars were set in exceedingly hard mortar, which they had no means of softening but by blowing water on it from their mouths, and it took a whole night to work away the eighth of an inch. When a bar was taken out they reset it loosely in its place again. Next they went to work on a ladder of wood, on which they intended to mount from the moat to the top of the wall, and thence to descend into the garden of the governor. It was from twenty to twenty-five feet long, and 80 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. must have cost incredible labor. They next found that they would want blocks and pulleys, which could not be made without a saw. This saw they contrived out of their iron candlestick, and the remainder of the steel in their tinder- box. With their rude knife, their saw, and the iron hooks, they chopped and fashioned the firewood doled out to them. Their ladder had one upright, through which holes were pierced for the rungs. It was constructed in three pieces, mortised and fitted so that they could be put together at any moment. Each hole had its rung, and two wedges to keep it steady attached to it by a pack-thread. The upright was three inches in diameter, and the rungs projected about a foot on either side. As each piece was finished, it was carefully laid away under the floor. They also made a pair of dividers, a square, and a carpenter's rule. The prisoners were liable to domiciliary visits, though none were ever made them after dark. They therefore worked during the night, and had to be careful not to leave a chip or shaving to betray them. For fear they should be over- heard when speaking of their project, they invented names for all their tools, and signs to put each other on their guard when threatened by any danger. Their principal rope-ladder, which was to let them down from the roof of the Bastille to the moat, was one hundred and eighty feet long. When the Bastille was captured in 1789) it was found in the museum of the place, among the curiosities of the prison. The roof of the Bastille, after they should have descended twenty feet from the tower in which they were confined, pro- jected about four feet over the main building, and in order to keep the person steady who should be descending the rope- ladder, they made a second rope, three hundred and sixty feet long, which was to be reeved through a block for the fugitive to hold on by. They continued to manufacture smaller ropes for various purposes, until they had almost fourteen hundred feet of rope, and two hundred and eight wooden rounds for their IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 8 1 two ladders. These rounds were muffled by strips of their clothing. Presuming them to have reached the moat, the next ques- tion was how to cross the wall, which was at all times lined with sentinels. They dared not risk the darkness of a rainy night, and were afraid of the torches carried by the Grand Round. They resolved, if necessary, to undermine the wall which stood between the moat of the Bastille and the Fosse of the Porte St. Antoine. For this purpose they needed an auger, and made it out of one of their bed-screws. The day fixed for their escape was Wednesday, Feb. 5, 1756, seven years after the first imprisonment of Latude. They packed up a portmanteau, containing for each of them a change of clothes, and provided themselves with a bottle of cordial. In the afternoon they risked putting together their great rope-ladder. Happily no one looked in upon them, and they hid it under a bed. The gratings were already out in the chimney. After supper their turnkey locked them in for the night, and the moment of escape had arrived. Latude was the first to climb the chimney. He had rheumatism in his arm, but was conscious of no pain under the influence of excitement. Choked by soot, and with his knees and arms excoriated, he reached the open air, and sent down a ball of twine to D'Alegre, who tied it to the end of a rope, to which was fas- tened their portmanteau. In this way they hauled up their various stores. D'Alegre came up last on the loose end of the rope-ladder. On looking over the roof of the Bastille they decided to descend from the foot of another tower, the Tour de Tresson, where they perceived a gun-carriage to which they could fasten the rope-ladder, and their block with the guide-line. Latude, with this line fastened to his body, went gently down the ladder, watched breathlessly by his companion. Notwithstanding all precautions, he swung fear- fully. The remembrance of it, forty-five years after, made him, he says, shudder. At last he landed safely in the moat. D'Alegre lowered the portmanteau and other articles, for which a dry spot on the bank was luckily found. When 6 82 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. these things were all down he descended, and found Latude up to his waist in water. It was with much regret that they left their ropes behind them. Latude recovered . them thirty-three years after, July 16, 1789, and they were publicly exhibited during the excite- ment that succeeded the destruction of the Bastille. It did not rain, and they heard the sentry treading his rounds about twelve yards from them, so that there was no hope of crossing the wall, for which they had prepared their wooden ladder. The alternative was to pierce it. The water was very cold, and there was floating ice upon its surface. They chose the deepest part of the moat, and for nine hours worked in water up to their arm-pits, diving when alarmed by the torches of the Grand Round. At last through a wall four and a half feet thick, they made a hole wide enough to admit their bodies. They scrambled through into the Fosse St. Antoine, got out of this, and were rejoicing in their safety, when they fell into another drain whose situation had been unknown to them. It was only two yards wide, but it was very deep, and at the bottom were two feet of slime and mud. Latude fell in first, and D'Alegre. on top of him. Vigorously exert- ing himself, however, Latude scrambled out, and dragged up his companion by the hair. As the clocks of Paris were striking five in the morning, they found themselves upon the highway. Their first impulse was to embrace each other, their next to fall down on their knees and to return thanks to the Almighty. They then proceeded to change their clothes, but they were so exhausted that neither could have dressed himself without the assistance of the other. Getting next into a hackney-coach, they were driven to the residence of M. Silhouette, chancellor to the Due d'Orleans. He was away from home. They then took refuge with a tailor of Languedoc. Here they remained concealed for nearly a month, while a search was set on foot for them in all directions. D'Alegre left first, disguised as a peasant, and went to Brussels (then IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 83 the capital of the Austrian Netherlands), sending word back to Latude that he was safe, by some secret sign arranged be- tween them. Provided with false papers through the help of the good tailor, and the documents of an old lawsuit, Latude set out upon his journey to Brussels. He walked some leagues out of Paris and let the diligence to Valenciennes pick him up upon the high-road. The story that he told was that he was a servant going to Amsterdam to carry his master's brother some important papers. He met with several small adventures on his journey, and committed some acts of imprudence ; for example, on passing the boundary between France and Austria (a wooden post, painted with lilies on one side and an imperial eagle on the other) he fell upon his face and kissed the dust, to the amazement of his fellow-travellers. Eleven years before he had passed part of a winter in Brussels ; he was therefore well ac- quainted with its localities. On inquiring for his friend at the Hotel de Coffi, in the Place de 1'Hotel de Ville, where he had planned to meet D'Alegre, he became convinced, from the hesitation and prevarication of the landlord, that evil had befallen his comrade. He therefore resolved to start at once for Antwerp. He was dressed like a servant, and travelled like one. In the canal-boat in which he took his passage, he found a chatty young Savoyard chimney- sweep and his wife, who related to him, as news of the day, the details of his own escape, and ended by informing him, that one of the two fugitives had been arrested a few days before, by the high provost of Brussels, who had sent him at once over the French frontier in charge of a French police officer. The Savoyard added that this story had been told him by the servant of an official who had charged him to keep the matter close, as they were anxious to secure the arrest of .the other party. Greatly alarmed at what he heard, and full of solicitude for poor D'Alegre, Latude determined to break off from the Savoyard, and left him at the first stopping place, under pretence that he had taken the wrong boat for Bergen-op-Zoom. He pushed 84 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. on alone on foot until he reached the Dutch frontier, quak- ing at every footstep ; for the fate of D'Alegre proved that the Austrian Netherlands were no safe asylum. He had had seven louis d'or (thirty-five dollars) when he left Paris, and this little sum was now exhausted. While try- ing to relieve his hunger on a canal-boat by some black bread and a salad of grass, he excited the compassion of Jan Seerhorst, who kept a sort of tavern in Amsterdam. This man took him under his protection and promised to intro- duce him to a Frenchman, who proved, however, to be from Picardy, and acknowledged little fellowship with a native of Languedoc ; but Seerhorst, seeing the disappointment of Latude, took him to his own abode, where he slept with five other persons in a cellar. Chance next threw our escaped prisoner in the way of a native of the same town as himself, named Louis Clergue, who gave him clothes, linen, and a comfortable chamber. On learning his story, he expressed great alarm lest the same power that had arrested D'Alegre in the Aus- trian Netherlands should extend to Holland. ' He proposed to get Latude a passport to Surinam, but the young man, made confident by the opinion of Clergue's friends that the States-General would never betray an unfortunate fugi- tive, decided to remain in Amsterdam. The French ambassador at the Hague was already negotiat- ing for his arrest. Among the records of the Bastille were found proofs that it cost the French Government upwards of forty thousand dollars to effect his recapture. Part of this money is supposed to have been spent in bribery. June i, 1756, as Latude went to a bank to receive a letter and remittance from his father, he was arrested in broad daylight, and dragged through the streets of Amster- dam with violence and blows, like a notorious criminal. In vain Louis Clergue and his friends protested against the outrage. Latude was closely confined, and permission had been obtained from the Archduke Charles, the repre- sentative of Maria Theresa, to take him through Austrian territory. When this arrived, with a belt around his body IMPRISONMENTS 9lND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 85 to which his arms were pinioned, Latffde began his journey under charge of Saint-Marc, a French agent of police who had arrested him. Travelling with all kinds of tortures and indignities, Latude arrived at Lille. There he was fastened for the night to a deserter of nineteen, who was to be hanged next day, and who proposed that they should strangle each other. The next evening he reached the Bastille. Here Saint-Marc received a sort of ovation, and Latude was committed to a dungeon under charge of his former jailers, who had suffered three months' imprisonment for his escape. In this dungeon, desperate and hopeless as his situation was, he still found something to cheer and occupy him. He made friends with the rats, numbers of which came hunting for food and lodging in his straw. The dungeons in the Bastille were octagonal. The one in which he was confined had loopholes eighteen inches wide on the interior, reduced to three inches by the time they reached the outer wall. There was no furniture in the dungeon, and the sills of the loopholes served for seat and table. Latude often rested his chained arms upon these slabs to lighten the weight of his fetters. One day while in this attitude a rat approached him. He threw it a bit of bread. The rat ate it eagerly, and when his appetite was satisfied carried off a crust into his hole. The next day he came again, and was rewarded by more bread and a bit of bacon. The third day he would take food from Latude's hand. After this he took up his quarters in a hole in the wall near the window, and after sleeping in it two nights, brought to it a female companion. Sometimes she quarrelled with her mate over their food, and generally had the best of it, retiring to her sleeping place with the disputed morsel. On such occasions the old rat would seek refuge with Latude, and devour out of his mate's reach whatever was given him, with an air of bravado. Soon, whenever dinner was brought in, Latude called his 86 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. family. The male rat would come immediately, the female more timidly. Soon appeared a third rat, very familiar and sociable, who no sooner felt at home than he proceeded to introduce seven others. At the end of a fortnight the family consisted of ten large rats, and subsequently of their pro- geny. They would eat off a plate that their human friend provided for them, and liked to have their necks scratched, but he was never suffered to touch one on the back. He gave them all names to which they learned to answer, and taught them tricks of various kinds. One of them, a female, was a remarkable jumper, and very proud of her accomplishment. For two years Latude solaced his captivity by this strange society. One day he found a bit of elder in his cell, brought in in some fresh straw; and although his hands were manacled, he contrived, by the help of a buckle from his small-clothes, to fashion it into a flageolet. His attachment to this instru- ment was such that he never parted with it during his lifetime. At last he bethought him of the advantage it would be to the French army if its sergeants as well as privates carried fire-arms, instead of the old-fashioned halberd, half pike, half battle-axe. He proposed to recommend this improvement to the king, hoping thus to direct his attention to himself. He was no longer allowed pen and paper. He had there- fore to invent substitutes. His paper was made out of tablets of moistened bread, his pen was a sharp fish-bone, and his ink his blood. When he had finished his memorial, he obtained per- mission to see Father Griffet, the confessor of the Bastille. From him he obtained writing materials, and in April, 1758, the memorial was presented to Louis XV. The plan, being found beneficial to the service (as it in- creased the effective force by twenty thousand men), was carried out ; but no notice was taken of Latude. Three months passed, and he ventured on a new sugges- tion. This was to add a cent and a half to the postage of every letter, and use the proceeds as a fund to pension the IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 8/ widows of officers and soldiers killed in battle. This likewise was adopted, so far as the increased postage went ; but the prisoner was still disregarded. Among the papers found in the Bastille when it was sacked in 1789, was a letter from an oculist, Dr. Dejean, ordered about this time to examine Latude's eyes. Each prisoner au secret had a prison name ; that of Latude was Daury. MONSIEUR, In compliance with your wishes I have several times visited the prisoner Daury in the Bastille. Having care- fully examined his eyes, and reflected on all he has communi- cated, I am not surprised that his sight has almost entirely failed. For many years he has been deprived of sun and air; he has been chained hand and foot in a cell for forty months. . . . The winter of 1756-57 was extremely severe; the Seine was frozen over, as in the year preceding. During this period the prisoner was confined in a dungeon with irons on his hands and feet, and no bed but a truss of straw, without covering. In his cell there are two loopholes, five inches wide, and about five feet long, with neither panes of glass nor shutters to close them. Throughout the day and night his face is exposed to the cold and wind, and there is nothing so destructive to the sight as frosty air, especially during sleep. A continual running at the nose has split his upper lip until the teeth are exposed; the intense cold has decayed them, and the roots of his mus- tachios have likewise perished. (The walls of the Bastille are from nine to ten feet thick, consequently the chambers are ex- tremely damp.) This prisoner, unable to endure his situation, resolved to commit suicide. With this object he remained one hundred and thirty-three hours without eating or drinking. They forced open his mouth with keys, and compelled him to swallow food by main force. Seeing himself restored to life against his will, he contrived to secrete a piece of broken glass, with which he opened four principal veins. During the night his blood flowed incessantly, and there remained scarcely six ounces in his body. He continued many days in a state of in- sensibility. . . * He is no longer a young man, and has passed the meridian of life, being forty-two years old, and has gone through very severe trials. For fifteen years he has been a constant prisoner, and during seven of them entirely deprived of fire, light, and sun. ... I have considered it my duty to be 88 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. thus minute in my report, as it is useless to waste the public money in paying me for my visits or remedies. Nothing but the termination of his sufferings, with fresh air and exercise, can preserve to the prisoner the feeble remnant of his eyesight. Air will strengthen every part of his frame, and exercise will disperse the humors in his head, which at present bring on the convulsive fits he is subject to, fits which will ultimately extinguish the powers of vision. (Signed) DEJEAN. This heart-rending letter produced no effect. It needed an overflow of the Seine, which put the floor of the dungeon under water, and wet the feet of the turnkeys who brought him food, to procure any alleviation. The room into which he was next moved had a view of the open sky, and was much less damp and miserable. He was separated, however, from his rats, which he regretted bitterly until he contrived to tame two beautiful white pigeons, which he caught from his loophole with a noose. His delight when the pigeons built their nest, and hatched their brood inside his cell, amounted to ecstasy. All the officers of the Bastille came to look at them. But, alas ! the turnkey (one of those wlio had suffered punishment some years before for his escape) resolved to deprive him of his pets, or to make him pay dear for the privilege of keeping them. He already received one bottle of wine in seven of the prisoner's allowance. He now demanded four ; and when this was refused, he pretended an order from the governor to kill the pigeons. Latude's despair drove him to sudden madness. The turnkey made a movement towards the birds. Latude sprang forward, and with his own hands destroyed them. "This was probably," he says, "the most unhappy moment of my whole existence. I never recall the memory of it without the bitterest pangs. I remained sev- eral days without taking nourishment. Grief and indigna- tion divided my soul." Not long after this a change came in his condition. A new governor, the Comte de Jumilhac, came to the Bastille. He was a man of generosity and mercy, and took pity on IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 89 Latude, whom he permitted to walk every day two hours on the roof. He also procured him an interview with M. de Sartine, lieutenant of police, who had succeeded M. Berryer. From this time forth for twenty years Latude's existence was one long struggle with De Sartine. Encouraged by the interest which at first he believed himself to have inspired in the new minister, he made two new plans for the good of the public : one for the better regulation of the currency, subsequently adopted, with little benefit to France, by the National Assembly ; the other a plan for the establishment of national granaries, the ex- penses of which were to be met by a tax on marriage. This plan was considered so important that De Sartine wished to adopt it as his own, and offered his prisoner an annuity of three hundred dollars to give it up, promising his influence to procure his liberation. " I would not part with my plan for fifty thousand crowns down ! " cried Latude, vehemently. " If I were in your place," said the aide tnajeur of the Bastille, deputed to conduct the negotiation, " I should think myself too happy to receive the proposal." "No doubt you would if I were you!" replied the prisoner, with a sneer. He thus made himself two powerful enemies ; and Father Griffet prophesied the truth when he told him, " Your refusal, and more particularly the manner in which you made it, will incense M. de Sartine against you, and I fear he will give you reason to repent." The food of the Bastille seems to have been sufficient, though Latude complained bitterly about the cooking. It ought to have been far better than it was, for the king paid from a dollar and a quarter to two dollars a day for the subsistence of each prisoner. Whilst walking on the roof of the Bastille, Latude heard from a soldier who had served under his father, that the old man was dead. This cut off his supplies of money. From that time his relations took little notice of him, with the ex- ception of his mother, who must have been a second wife, as she speaks of him as her only son, while he tells us that go THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. his elder brother, the Comte de Vissac, succeeded to the title of Marquis de Latude. Here is a letter that the poor mother addressed to the Marquise de Pompadour. She was occasionally permitted to send a letter to her son : " My son, madame, has long groaned in the dungeons of the Bastille for having had the misfortune to offend you. My grief surpasses his. Day and night his sad fate torments my imagi- nation. I share all the agony of his sufferings without having participated in his fault. What do I say? Alas! I know not how he has displeased you. He was young, and had been led astray by others. How differently must he reason now ! The reflections of a prisoner are very opposite to the vain thoughts of unbridled youth. If he, madame, is unworthy of your par- don, extend your indulgence to me in his stead ; feel for my situation ; have compassion on an afflicted mother ; let your heart be softened by my tears. Death will soon close my eyes. Do not wait till I am in my grave to show compassion to my son. He is my only child, the sole shoot of the stock, the last scion of my family, the only prop of my old age. Restore him to me, madame, you who are so kind-hearted (si bonne). Do not refuse me my son, madame ; give him up to my affliction ; restore him to my entreaties, my sighs, my tears." Latude's next attempt was to throw a package from the roof of the Bastille to some one who would pick it up and forward it to its destination. Having made himself as ob- noxious as possible to the aide majeur and two sergeants deputed to watch him in his walk, he was left to himself while they conversed together ; and he contrived to establish a correspondence by signs with two young workwomen, whom he observed at an upper window in a neighboring street. After some time he made them understand that he would throw them a package. This package the arrogant, exasperated, imprudent young man filled with a memorial addressed to a literary man named La Beaumelle, containing a secret history of Madame de Pompadour's early life, abounding in scandals. " I steeped my pen in the gall with which my whole heart and MME. DE POMPADOUR. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 91 soul were overflowing," he says. He wrote upon a shirt, with a pen which, in anticipation of our pens of the present day, he fashioned out of a copper coin. But ink was wanting. For eight years he had never been allowed fire or candle. He affected toothache, got one of his guards to let him have a whiff or two of his pipe, and having let it go out begged for his tinder-box to light it again. In this way he obtained and secreted a bit of tinder. Next he pretended to be taken with violent pains, and the doctor ordered him some oil. This he put in a pomatum pot with a wick made of threads drawn from his linen. By friction he obtained a spark which set fire to his tinder. It enabled him to light his lamp, and he was in an ecstasy of triumph and happiness. With this lamp and an old plate, he got lamp-black, which he mixed with some syrup prescribed for him by the doc- tor, and then proceeded to pen his memorial to his own destruction. Sept. 21, 1763, he flung his package. Mademoiselle Lebrun picked it up as he intended, and he waited the re- sult. Nothing came of it, however, until April 18, 1764, when the sisters held up a placard at their window : " The Marchioness de Pompadour died yesterday." Wild with de- light and hope, he wrote on the instant (having in the interval been permitted to receive writing materials) to demand his liberation from M. de Sartine. Every official in the Bastille had been charged not to communicate the news of Madame de Pompadour's death to the prisoners. The lieutenant of police was therefore amazed on the receipt of this letter. He sent for Latude, and told him that his liberation de- pended upon his divulging the channel through which the news had reached him. Latude broke into violent language, little calculated to advance his interests. In vain he subse- quently offered De Sartine the project about the granaries ; the personal enmity of Madame de Pompadour had passed into the body of the minister, and a few months later Latude further exasperated De Sartine by writing him another abusive and indignant letter. In consequence of this, he was re- moved to Vincennes with especial orders to the governor to 92 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, keep him safe, and to put him in an oubliette. Here he was taken very ill, and the good governor, M. Guyonnet, took pity upon him. He gave him a better chamber and allowed him to walk, attended by three guards, in the garden of the castle. The result of this last indulgence was that Latude made his escape in a dense fog. " Seize him ! seize him ! " was shouted all over the grounds of the castle. "Seize him !" cried Latude, running ahead of the others, until he reached the sentry at the gate, whom he threw down, and jumped over as the man was gaping with surprise. Latude took refuge close to the Bastille with the Lebrun sisters. They were daughters of a hair-dresser, and were poor, but very good to him. They had, however, mismanaged his memorial. His scheme had been to place it in safe hands, while he threatened Madame de Pompadour with its circulation. The first thing he did in the Lebrun house was to write a letter of repentance and submission to M. de Sartine. What effect this appeal may have produced cannot be known. Its answer miscarried ; and Latude, more angry than ever at finding no notice taken of what he wrote, threw him- self at the feet of the Prince de Conti. A reward of one thousand crowns was this time offered for his return to prison. All channels of communication with the court appeared to be closed. He, however, contrived in the middle of winter, weary, torn, famished, and looking like a lunatic, to reach Fontainebleau, and there requested an audience with the good Due de Choiseul, the prime min- ister. The duke, influenced, as Latude maintains, by M. de Sartine, believed him to be out of his senses, and returned him into the power of the police, who restored him to Vin- cennes, where he was immured in a more frightful dungeon than any he had yet inhabited. It had four iron-plate doors, each one foot from the other, and no other opening whatever. It was six and one half feet long by five and three quarters wide, just long enough to lie down in. Here, to increase his sufferings, he was informed that Viel-Castel, the sergeant from whom he had escaped, had been hanged. Months after, IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 93 a compassionate sentinel, moved by his grief at the supposed fate of the poor fellow, assured him that it was a falsehood. His escape put it out of M. Guyonnet's power to give him any more indulgences. " M. de Sartine," he said to his prisoner, " lays the blame of your escape on me. He is furious at it. Your case is hopeless. From henceforward I can only pity you." Here is a letter from him, however, at this period, found among the records of the Bastille. To M. de Sartine, MONSIEUR, I have this morning visited the prisoner Daury. I found him given up to despair as usual, but always submissive, and entirely disposed to agree with any conditions you may prescribe as the price of his liberty. I am sorry to add that grief has destroyed his appetite, but he still retains his mental faculties. Heaven grant this may continue ! I have the honor to be, etc., etc. About this time three of the police were sent by M. de Sartine to say : " You can by one word obtain your liberty. Give M. de Sartine the name and the address of the person who has possession of your papers. He pledges his word of honor no evil shall be practised towards him." Latude replied : " I entered this dungeon an honest man ; I will die rather than leave it a knave and a coward." After this, in frightful darkness, for in the oubliette he could distinguish neither night nor day, his sufferings would have reached their close, had not a compassionate turnkey brought the prison doctor to visit him, who insisted he must be moved at once to a better room. The reply was that M. de Sartine had expressly forbidden it. The doctor, however, insisted, and the removal was accomplished. By degrees his strength returned to him, and he requested pen and ink to write to M. de Sartine. These were judiciously refused him. Probably the officers at Vincennes were afraid lest the lieu- tenant of police should find out that he was not still in his dungeon. His next enterprise was to bore a hole with an auger through the wall of the donjon of Vincennes. This he did 94 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. by means of part of an old sword and an iron hoop from a bucket, which a year before he had picked up and secreted in the garden. This garden he was no longer allowed to walk in, but by a stratagem he succeeded in being double- locked into it for half an hour, and returned to his prison very happy, with the broken sword in the leg of his drawers, and the hoop round his body. The granite wall was five feet thick. It took Latude twenty-six months, with his imperfect tools, to make his aperture. The hole was long displayed to visitors, and very probably may still be seen. Latude himself showed it to the Prince de Beauvau during the early days of the Revolution. It was made in the shadow of the chimney- piece, and closed by a cork ; a long peg was thrust through it, not quite the length of the hole. If anybody had observed it from without, or sounded it, they would have found it only two inches deep upon the garden side. Latude then fashioned a wooden wand about six feet long. To this he tied a bit of ribbon, and thrusting it through the hole he secured the attention of a prisoner who was walking in the garden. This was a Baron de Venae from Languedoc, confined nineteen years for offering impertinent advice to Madame de Pompadour. There was another prisoner there, arrested on suspicion of having spoken ill of the same infamous woman. There was also an Abbe' Prieur, who had conceived the idea of phonetic spelling. He wrote on the subject to Frederick the Great, as one of the patrons of men of literature, " a letter consisting of words of his own com- position, and of course they were wholly illegible." Accord- ing to custom, it was opened at the post-office. Ministers, not being able to comprehend the contents, imagined they beheld hieroglyphics full of treason and danger, and the unfortunate abbe" was committed to Vincennes for an offense, adds Latude, " that at most merited a short confinement in a mad-house to teach him to spell." He had been in captivity seven years. Another prisoner had been arrested at Antwerp on suspi- cion of being the author of a pamphlet against Madame de IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 95 Pompadour, which he had never seen. He had been twenty- three years in confinement. No evidence had ever been produced against him, nor had he ever been allowed any opportunity of proving his innocence. An old man whose daughter was an inmate of the Pare aux Cerfs, was confined on a lettre de cachet obtained by that daughter, who dreaded his remonstrances on the infamy of her career. There were also three other prisoners in close confinement for daring to express the views of honest men upon an in- famous monopoly, which towards the end of Louis XV. 's reign almost reduced the kingdom to bankruptcy. All these prisoners were confined on lettres de cachet, which were orders for the arrest and imprisonment of individuals in the king's own handwriting, countersigned by a secretary of state and sealed with the king's seal. Many of these were distributed to important persons, and to heads of noble families, who kept them for their own use, and filled up the space left blank for the prisoner's name with that of some victim of their own selection. No one imprisoned on a kttre de cachet could be defended by counsel. I? ami des hommes, the father of Mirabeau, is said to have used fifteen of them. When a member of a noble house had done any- thing to offend its head, or had committed any offense whose exposure would have been painful to other members of his family, he was quietly disposed of by a lettre de cachet. One day in 1774 Latude, in a fit of petulance, declared that he would rather be sent back to his oubliette, never to quit it until M. de Sartine sent a lawyer to hear and to advise him, than remain forever disregarded. He was taken at his word, and the next day was removed to the dark and loathsome cell he had once nearly died in. About this time M. de Sartine was made minister of marine, and his place in the police was supplied by his personal friend Lenoir. Not knowing of this change, and still endeavoring to write to M. de Sartine, Latude on one occasion procured a light by means of several straws tied together, which he thrust out, while his jailer's attention was turned a moment, to a candle that the man had brought into the gallery while handing to 96 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. the prisoner his daily food. With this Latude instantly lighted a lamp he had prepared in his pomatum pot, and covered it over with a sort of beehive he had constructed with wisps of straw. When it was discovered that he had possessed him- self of a light, the turnkeys began to dread him as one who had a familiar demon. All the pains he took to address M. de Sartine in various strains, vituperative or pathetic, were entirely useless. That minister had long before given orders that no letters from Latude were to be opened, even by his secretary. When the Bastille was destroyed, nearly one hundred of these docu- ments were found with their seals unbroken. It seems probable that at this period Latude really lost his reason. As he was recovering, having been removed to a better chamber, the door of his cell opened, and the lieu- tenant of police announced a visit from the prime minister, the good and great M. de Malesherbes. When Latude told him he had been imprisoned twenty-six years, his face expressed the deepest indignation. He told him to take heart, supplied him with money, and took him under his protection. But De Sartine, as Latude always suspected, did all that fear and vengeance could suggest to prevent his liberation. He informed M. de Malesherbes that Latude was a confirmed lunatic, and he was in consequence re- moved to the hospital for insane prisoners at Charenton. He went to this place with the new name of Le Danger instead of that of Daury, and with an especial recommenda- tion to the brethren who had charge of the insane to treat him with severity. It was not long, however, before he entered into communication with prisoners in the next chamber. These were not lunatics ; they were young men of good family but ungovernable dispositions, confined by their relatives on lettres de cachet. They led sufficiently comfortable lives, had good food and good society. The chief among them was a young man named Saint-Luc, who took compassion on Latude, and succeeded in interesting the brethren in his protege. Latude became a favorite even among the madmen. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 97 Among these last at Charenton were some who were subject to periodical fits of frenzy. While these lasted they were chained in subterranean dens, or confined in iron cages. When they recovered they were taken back to the other prisoners. One of these men told Latude that in one of the dreadful cages was D'Alegre, his former comrade. His mind had given way after he was restored to the Bastille. He had become a raving maniac, and for ten years had been confined at Charenton. Latude requested permission to visit him. He found a squalid spectre, who replied to all he said to him with curses. In vain Latude tried to recall himself to his remembrance. This was in 17 70. D'Alegre was still living in 1790. Thanks to the good offices of one of the prisoners, con- fined under a lettre de cachet for drawing his sword upon his elder brother, an order for Latude's liberation (July 7, 1777) at last reached him. He set out on the instant for Paris like a madman clad in rags, and without a sou in his pocket. On arriving, he sought out a man from his own village, who told him that the people of that place believed that after his escape to Holland he had embarked for the West Indies, and had perished on the ocean. This man lent him twenty-five louis. With this money he fitted himself out with clothes, and next day visited, as he had been directed to do, the lieutenant of police, M. Lenoir. The order for his release had been accompanied by direc- tions to repair at once to his native town of Montagnac, which order Latude was determined to evade, if possible. Lenoir received him kindly enough, and gave him the address of a person charged by his family to provide him with necessaries. He even allowed him to go to Versailles to see the mother of his prison friend. At Versailles, by some means, he obtained an audience with the king (then Louis XVI.), and told his story. What he said on this occasion probably roused the fears and anger of the king's ministers. He was ordered to leave Paris at once, and found himself under the deepest displeasure of Lenoir. 7 98 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Alarmed at this, he took passage on a flatboat to Auxerre. Three days later he was arrested on the road, and taken back to Paris. There he was thrust into the Bicetre, one of the lowest prisons. At the Bictre he was treated as a miscreant and common malefactor, and was associated with wretches chained, like himself, in stalls along a gallery, " as horses are chained in a stable." Latude was now fifty-three years old, and nearly one half of his life had been passed in prisons. In the Bicetre all Latude's resources failed him. His friends, misled by the representations of the police, imagined he had been guilty of some ignominious crime, and seem to have abandoned him. He was herded with the lowest of his kind, and descended from his place as a gentleman. In vain he protested his innocence, and implored a trial. From that time (1777) for upwards of six years, his auto- biography, now a very scarce book, is a monotony of misery. His heart had even turned against the rats. " Those ac- cursed beasts," he calls, in the Bicetre, the animals who in the Bastille twenty years before had been his friends. He lost even his name, and was known as Father Jedor. He was covered with scorbutic sores, and sent to a hospital, a place still more loathsome than the prison. At last he was removed to a more comfortable apartment, an alleviation he soon forfeited by trying to interest a visitor (the Princesse de Beaulieu) in his favor. About this time M. Necker was called to be the king's prime minister, and Madame Necker made a visit of inspec- tion to the prisons. Her account of what she saw caused an eminent man, the President de Gourgue, to visit the prisoners. These men, dregs of rascality though they were, all seem to have felt compassion for Latude. They directed M. de Gourgue to his cell, and even one of the guards rejoiced to see the visitor shedding tears over its inhabitant. " The worst part of your case," said De Gourgue, " is that you are confined under a lettre de cachet. Send me a me- morial of your sufferings, and trust to my good offices." For nine days Latude sold his pittance of black bread to IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 99 procure writing-paper. When his memorial was finished, with his last shirt and a pair of silk stockings, he bribed a prison underling to convey it to his protector. The man was drunk, and dropped it in the street. Happily for Latude, it was picked up by a woman who became his friend and guardian angel. The envelope was wet and stained. The seal was broken. The signature was, " Masers de Latude, a prisoner during thirty-two years at the Bastille, at Vincennes, and at the Bicetre, where he is confined on bread and water in a dungeon underground." Having read the record of his sufferings, this good woman, Madame Legros, resolved to effect the liberation of Latude. She copied the paper before she sent it to its destination. Her husband was a private teacher, and she kept a little thread-and-needle store. They had no personal influence, and their resources were very limited. On M. Legros' delivering the package with his own hands to M. de Gourgue, that gentleman told him that he had been greatly affected by the writer's story, and had taken steps on his behalf, but had been informed that for thirty-two years he had been a confirmed lunatic, whose confinement was necessary for his own and others' safety. Still M. and Madame Legros would not give up the cause of their protege. Madame Legros sought out the chaplain of the Bicetre, and obtained from him a certificate of the prisoner's sanity. She also went to the prison, where she saw the prisoners who were not au secret, and learned that the object of her interest was known amongst them as Father Jedor. With three louis, a great sum for her, she bribed one of the turnkeys to deliver to Latude a letter and a louis d'or. This was the first he had heard of his benefactress. He replied by imploring her to give up his cause rather than run any risk on his account. Both husband and wife, having made several copies of the memorial, approached various influential persons in Latude's behalf. M. Lenoir said that Latude was not in the Bicetre, but was a confirmed lunatic at Charenton. He added that 100 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION-. he was accused of no crime, but his release would be dan- gerous to society. Afterwards he shifted his ground, and declared that, since Latude was imprisoned by the express orders of the king, he should not be justified in disputing the commands of his Majesty. This announcement alarmed all those whom Madame Legros had already interested in Latude's favor. She, how- ever, would not relax her efforts, and addressed herself to upwards of two hundred persons with varying success. Next Madame Legros obtained an interview with Latude. She saw him for a few moments as he was conducted through the courtyard to receive a visit from a former chaplain of the Bicetre, and she was permitted by the humanity of his guards to exchange a few brief sentences with him. The first dauphin was born Oct. 22, 1781 ; and Latude, in common with other political prisoners, hoped for deliver- ance. He appealed, in presence of the king's commissioners of pardon appointed to examine the prisoners of the Bicetre, to M. Tristan, the governor, as to his behavior during the four years he had been in his custody. M. Tristan con- fessed that he had never given him cause of complaint. The Cardinal de Rohan, who was present, seemed much affected by his story, and spoke to the king upon the subject ; but Louis, irritated by the result of his former interference, declined to reopen the matter. Meantime the cardinal was beset by Madame Legros, and at last referred her to M. de Saint-Prest, one of the king's ministers. Saint- Prest described her protege as a common thief and an abandoned criminal ; and though she complained of this outrage to the cardinal, the affair of the diamond necklace was approach- ing a crisis, and that poor gentleman needed all his court influence to keep himself out of the Bastille. Next Madame Legros applied to a celebrated lawyer, the advocate De la Croix. He was barred from carrying the case before any tribunal by the law forbidding lawyers to defend any prisoner confined by lettre de cachet, but he took up the case warmly, and interested a certain Madame D. (could it have been De Stael?), wife and daughter of a IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. IOI minister. This lady became as much interested in Madame Legros as in the prisoner; but taking advantage of her position, she came to the Bicetre, and there heard from Latude's own lips his miserable story. Not long after this he had an interview with Lenoir, who could find no better evidence of his madness than that a man must have been mad to have attempted an escape from the Bastille. Next De la Croix interviewed De Sartine and drove him to exposing the real cause of Latude's detention. " If this man should obtain his liberty, he will take refuge in foreign countries, and write against me." M. de la Croix suggested that if he were released there were persons willing to be held responsible for his good behavior. This remark, after six more months of delays, deceptions, and disappointments, facilitated the desired end. The result was finally due to the exertions of Madame Necker, who refused to divulge to any one how the order for Latude's release was obtained. In sending the good news to Madame Legros, Madame Necker wrote as follows : " The individual through whose powerful influence I have so long and ardently endeavored to attain the object of our mutual solicitude is in some measure apprehensive of the consequences. We fear lest the future conduct of our protege, excited by the remembrance of his wrongs, should lead him into actions which might cause us to repent. I rely on your prudence and management in a matter which really includes the happiness of my life, for, from reasons exclusively personal, I should suffer cruelly if M. de Latude were to excite any just cause of complaint against him after the steps I have taken in his favor and the responsibility I have incurred. Since you have judged it proper to acquaint him with my name, and he has expressed himself fully sensible of the interest I have evinced, I entreat you to require from him, as the only token of his gratitude I shall ever have occasion to exact, his full and unqualified forgiveness of the many injuries he has sustained, and a profound silence on the subject of his enemies. This is the only course by which, he can expect happiness, and it is 102 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. absolutely essential to my tranquillity that he should adopt it. I leave this important matter entirely in your hands, madame, in the fullest confidence, and relying on the sentiments of esteem and attachment with which you have inspired me." But the pardon was accompanied with a most distasteful condition : Latude was to be exiled to Montagnac, there to reside under the surveillance of the police. Madame Legros earnestly represented that, if separated from herself and her husband by a distance of two hundred leagues, they could not possibly watch over him as they had pledged themselves to do, " and prevent the ebullitions of temper or the natural dictates of long-suppressed indignation." At last she obtained the necessary papers permitting Latude to reside in Paris, on condition of never appearing in the coffee-houses, or on the public walks, or in any place of public amusement. March 22, 1784, Latude quitted his prison. He accom- panied his good friends to their humble dwelling, where a chamber had been prepared for him. He gazed around him with the rapture of a child, and the ordinary comforts of life seemed luxuries beyond his imagination. Soon came the kind anonymous lady who had assisted Madame Necker. On quitting Latude she left him a purse of gold and a letter. The latter was full of kindness and good sense, and reiterated the wise counsels before given him. By degrees a small income was secured by private sub- scription to enable Madame Legros and her husband to support themselves and the new member of their household. It amounted to about four hundred and fifty dollars. The Monthyon prize for 1784 (that is, the prize given to the poor French person who in the course of the year has performed the most virtuous action) was unanimously awarded by the Academy to Madame Legros, but her receiving it was opposed by the king's ministers. At the taking of the Bastille in 1789, Latude was in Paris. He does not seem to have been among the attacking party, MADAME NECKER. IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LATUDE. 103 but the next day he was carried over the castle in triumph, and encouraged to take possession of the relics of his escape and the papers relating to his captivity. In 1 790 he published his autobiography, and in the year following brought suit for damages against the heirs of Madame de Pompadour. He succeeded in obtaining a verdict, but probably did not reap much benefit from his success, as he died a poor man in 1805, at the advanced age of eighty-two, after having gone through tortures and privations enough, one would think, to have prematurely destroyed a frame of iron. As we know, the Revolution began in May, 1 789, with the meeting of the States-General. In this body the Commons, soon becoming supreme, formed what is called in history the Constituent Assembly; that is, an assembly to make a constitution. While these things went on at Versailles, Paris was in a ferment, and the ferment was spreading to provincial towns. On Sunday, July 12, excitement was rising to fever heat. Some of the agitators were arrested and imprisoned, but to imprison one was to raise up others. The Palais Royal, with its gardens and arcades under the very windows of the Due d'Orleans, rang with inflammatory oratory. " To arms ! " was the cry But the populace had no arms. Arms were even wanting to the National Guard. The mob broke open prisons ; they broke open the arsenal ; they plundered the King's Garde Meuble, the depository of curious things belonging to the crown. In it they found two little silver-mounted cannon, a present to Louis XIV. from the King of Siam. A rumor rose that arms were concealed at the Invalides, and thither the mob marched on Monday, July 13, at five in the morning. Old M. de Sombreuil, governor of the Invalides, had had twenty men at work all night unscrewing the locks of the muskets in his care, amounting to twenty-eight thousand. But in six hours they had only unscrewed twenty locks, their sympathies being with the populace. The mob broke in and seized the muskets, and then from twenty-eight thousand armed men the cry arose, " To the Bastille ! " One rather won- IO4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. ders why the Bastille was the object of attack ; no men of obscure birth were commonly imprisoned there. It was garrisoned only by eighty-two old Invalides and thirty-two young Swiss soldiers. However, it had cannon and ammuni- tion ; its guns could fire upon Paris, and it was a sort of landmark of the Old Regime. Its destruction would be an object lesson to tyranny. Old M. de Launay, its governor, had made what prepara- tions he could, but he had only one day's provisions. His walls were nine feet thick ; he had a moat and two draw- bridges. He had also had missiles of all kinds piled on the battlements, paving-stones, old iron, etc., and cannon in every embrasure. Above all, he had a powder magazine, and professed his intention of blowing up the place, the garrison, and himself rather than surrender. But what were a hun- dred and thirty-four men against a hundred thousand? The Invalides fired a cannon, and killed some of the crowd. Then the rage of the assailants rose to fury. The King of Siam's cannon were impotent to reply, but the fire brigade was called out, and attempted to squirt water into the touch-holes of the cannon. The first gun had been fired at i P.M. ; the garrison fought on till five. The Invalides, shot down whenever they showed themselves, grew disheart- ened. They reversed their muskets. They pinned some napkins together, and showed a white flag ; while the Swiss put out a paper with an offer to surrender, their terms being, Pardon to all. Some attempt was made to march the garrison as prisoners to the Hotel de Ville ; but M. de Launay was torn in pieces before he could be got there, and his queue was borne aloft as a trophy, the sole remnant of his massacre. The Gardes Franqaises, however, trained soldiers, interfered, and, with a few exceptions, saved the lives of the rest. The Bastille was levelled to the ground. A column to Liberty now stands where it once stood. " Its secrets came to view," says Car- lyle, " and many a buried despair at last found voice. Read this fragment of an old letter : ' If for my consolation Mon- seigneur would grant me, for the sake of God and the most IMPRISONMENTS AND ESCAPES OF LA TUDE. 105 Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife, were it only her name on a card to show that she is alive, it would be the greatest consolation I could receive, and I should ever bless the goodness of Monseigneur.' Poor prisoner, who namest thyself Quinet-Demay, and hast no other history ! It was fifty years before the fall of the Bastille that thine aching heart put these words on paper, to be at length heard and long heard in the hearts of men ! " In the Bastille at the time of its capture there were found seventeen prisoners. The list, obtained by a foreigner who was present, is preserved in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg. Twelve of these persons were counterfeiters and forgers, among whom was one officer of rank, Jacques Luc Pillotte de la Baroliere. The remaining five were : JACQUES DE LA DOUAI, a spy of M. Lenoir, employed to report on men of letters. He had entered into an agreement with a foreign bookseller to import interdicted books on joint account. An accomplice betrayed him. HENRIETTE SANDO, arrested under the false name of Comtesse de St. Anselme. A dressmaker, imprisoned for bringing into France a proscribed pamphlet. ANNE GEDE"ON DE LAFITTE MARQUIS DE PELLEPORT, author of many pamphlets obnoxious to the government. He ex- erted himself to save the life of M. de Launay after the taking of the Bastille. JEAN JACQUES RAINVILLE, arrested for being the owner of ' a package of books entitled, Au redacteur du petit Almanack des grands hommes. DE WHIT, arrested in 1782. No one ever knew who he was, nor what he was imprisoned for. He had been at first confined at Vincennes with the Marquis de Sada, who was subsequently sent to Charenton. De Whit had lost his reason, and could give no account of himself. Some thought him a Comte de Lorges. He was consigned to Charenton. 106 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The key of the Bastille was forwarded by Lafayette to General Washington. It now hangs in a glass case in the hall at Mount Vernon. The Bicetre continued to be a prison until after the mas- sacres of September, 1 793. It was then besieged by a fero- cious mob. The prisoners were all liberated and fought side by side with their jailers, though they had no arms but iron bars torn from their windows, and their broken fetters. At last they were overpowered by numbers, and then com- menced a general massacre. In vain Petion exerted himself to stop the carnage. When all was over it was said that six thousand dead bodies lay within the precincts of the prison. There were no political prisoners in the Bicetre at that period, and nothing but a thirst for blood could have prompted the massacre. Vincennes is still used as a military prison. CHAPTER II. A PEASANT'S VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION. 1 ANY persons have taken upon themselves to write the history of the great Revolution made by the laboring classes and the bourgeoisie against the nobles in 1789. These writers have been men of education, men of talent, who looked on things from a point of view that was not that of the people. I am an old peasant myself, and I shall speak only of what concerned the peasantry. A man's chief busi- ness is to look after what concerns himself. What a man has seen with his own eyes he knows about. He may as well turn it to others' advantage. You must know, then, that before the Revolution the lord- ship and jurisdiction of Phalsbourg in Lorraine, in which I lived, contained five villages. Two of these were free villages ; but the inhabitants of the other three men and women were serfs, and could not leave the limits of their seigneurie without their magistrate's permission. This magistrate the prevot administered justice in Phalsbourg in a sort of public building ; he had jurisdiction over all persons and their property ; he bore the sword of justice ; and he had even the right to hang any man whom he thought proper. The building where our maire now has his office, and where the National Guard now has its head- 1 From Messrs. Erckmann and Chatrian's Memoires d'un Paysan, which I think has never been translated. The authors took their nar- ratives from the lips of peasants; and their books, though in the form of fiction, may always be relied upon as history. Pere Michel, the Paysan, was a native of Lorraine, the most oppressed province in France. As is always the case in rural revolutions, the primary grievances of the peasants were against the landowner, the tax- gatherer, and the money-lender. 108 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. quarters, was in my young days the place where they used to put prisoners to the torture when they would not confess their crimes. The prevdfs orderly and the executioner used to put them to such horrible pain that we could hear their screams in the market-place ; and the next thing that hap- pened was that a scaffold was erected on a market day under the great elms, and the executioner would hang them, holding them down by putting his two feet upon their shoulders.' At Phalsbourg there was what was called the haut pas- sage; which meant that every wagon-load of manufactured goods, whether linen, woollen, or anything else, paid a tax at the barrier on entering the jurisdiction. So did every wagon-load of lumber, or wood not in the rough, and every wagon loaded with expensive luxuries, velvets, silks, or fine linen. A pack-horse paid twelve francs ; a basket on a pedler's arm paid three francs ; a fish-cart, or a cart with farm produce, butter, eggs, cheese, etc., paid its tax ; and salt, wheat, barley, iron, all had to pay, too. A cow, an ox, a calf, a pig, or a sheep had to pay, sometimes very heavily ; so that the inhabitants of Phalsbourg and its surrounding villages could neither eat, drink, nor clothe themselves with- out paying a round sum in taxes to the Duke of Lorraine. Besides this there was the gabelle, or salt tax, and a law which obliged all householders, lodging-house keepers, or tavern-keepers to pay to his Highness six pots of wine or beer for every cask of those liquors that they sold. The duke likewise had his right to a percentage upon every sale of landed property ; and all grain sold in the market-place paid an additional tax to him. There were municipal taxes levied upon every booth erected at the three fairs held yearly in Phalsbourg ; and his Highness had the right to pasture his sheep and cattle wherever he pleased. He could cut wood in any man's wood-land, and claimed a share in all the gains of the fullers and the weavers. Of the great tithes, two thirds went to the duke, and one only to the clergy. The tithe on wheat belonged only to the Church ; but his Highness contrived mostly to get hold of it, A PEASANT'S VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION. 1 09 because he cared more for his own pocket than he did for religion. The town of Phalsbourg in my boyhood was little like what you may see to-day. Not a house in it was painted ; all had very small doors and windows set deep in the masonry, so that the rooms where our tailors and weavers carried on their work were always in semi-darkness. The soldiers of the garrison, with their big cocked hats and their frayed white greatcoats down to their heels, were about the poorest of us all. They were furnished but one meal a day by the government. The innkeepers and keep- ers of cook-shops who had to supply their other food used to beg scraps from door to door for the poor devils. This continued until within a few years of the Revolution. Our women were worn and haggard. A gown passed down from grandmother to granddaughter, and men wore the sabots of their fathers' fathers. There were no pavements in the streets of Phalsbourg, no street-lamps in the darkness. The window-panes were very small ; many had been stuffed with rags and paper for twenty years. Through all the poverty in our streets the prfadt would stalk in his black cap, and mount the steps up to the mairie ; young officers (all noble, for no man could be an officer in those days without his quarterings) would lounge about in little three-cornered hats and white uniforms, with thetf swords at their sides ; Capuchin friars would pass through our streets with dirty long beards, serge robes, no shirts, and red noses, going troops of them up to their convent, turned into the town schoolhouse at the present day. ... I see it all in my mind's eye as if it were but yesterday ; and I say to my- self, " What a blessing for all of us that the Revolution ever took place, but most of all has it been a blessing to the peasantry ! " For if poverty was great in the city, it was worse than you can imagine in the country. In the first place, all the dues and taxes paid by the burgher were paid by the peasant as well ; and the peasants had other exactions to suffer besides. 1 1 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. In every village of Lorraine, either the seigneur or the monks owned a farm. All the best land was included in these farms ; poor people had nothing to cultivate but indifferent soil. Nor could they even plant on their own land what they pleased. Meadows had to remain meadows ; ploughed lands must be ploughed over again. If the peasant had been allowed to put his wheat-field down in grass, the clergy would have lost their tithe of grain ; if he had turned his pasture lot into a field of wheat, he would have diminished the seigneur's right of pasturage. His land was under the obligation of supporting fruit trees which belonged to the convent or the seigneur, who sold the fruit every year. The farmer had no right to cut down these trees, and if they died he was expected to plant others in their stead. The shade they made, the trampling of the crops when the fruit was gathered, the impediments they put in the way of ploughing, were all very hurtful to the small proprietor. Then, too, the nobles had the right to hunt over the lands of their peasantry, to gallop over the peasant's crops, to ravage his fields ; and the peasant who killed one partridge or one hare even, on his own land, was in danger of the galleys. The seigneur and the monastery had also special rights of pasturage ; that is to say, their flocks might go out to graze on waste lands an hour earlier than those of the people in the village. The cows and sheep of the peasants, therefore, only got their leavings. Again, the farm of the seigneur or the monastery had the right to maintain pigeons. These pigeons flocked over the fields. The peasant had to sow twice as much seed as he need otherwise have done, if he hoped for any harvest. Furthermore, every head of a family had to pay his lord every year fifteen measures of oats, ten fowls, and twenty- four eggs. He also owed him three days' labor for himself, three for each of his sons, three for each laborer he hired, and three for each horse or cart. He was bound to mow for him his grounds around the chateau, to make his hay and carry it to the barn at the first stroke of the great A PEASANTS VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION. Ill chateau bell, or else he had to pay three sous fine for each time he failed in doing so. He was bound to haul all stones or wood needed to keep the chateau in repair. The lord was expected to give him only a meal of bread and garlic each day he worked for him. This is what is meant by la corvee, a word that has now passed into the French language to express what is intoler- able labor. If I were to go on to tell you how the seigneur had his oven, where all bread had to be baked, and his press, where all his peasants had to make their wine, and pay him for the use of them ; if I were further to tell you how the execu- tioner had a right to the hide of every beast that died of itself ; and were I to describe all the troubles and exactions attendant on the collection of these rights, and the tithes, and so forth and so on, I should never have done. There was a poll tax besides, and a tax on furniture. After Lorraine was united to France, the king claimed the twelfth part of all produce for the expenses of his gov- ernment ; but he claimed it from the lands of the peasants alone, the lands of the nobles and the clergy paid no taxes. Then the monopoly of salt and of tobacco was in the hands of " farmers," and the price was made excessive to the people ; and there was the gabe/le, or the salt tax, which was peculiarly oppressive. All this might have been endured had the seigneurs and the abbes and the priors spent any of the money they received from us in cutting canals, draining the marshes, improving the roads, building schoolhouses, or doing any- thing else for the public good. But when we saw such a man as the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, a high dignitary of the Church, leading the life he did at Saverne, making a mock of honest men, allowing his lackeys to beat poor people on the highway to make them get out of the way of his car- riage ; or when we saw the noble gardens, the vast pleasure- grounds, the statues, and the fountains, created by our nobles at their country seats, in imitation of Versailles, it seemed enough to break our hearts, for all the wealth expended on ii2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: such luxuries came from our toil, and the whole system was supported by the military service of peasants' sons. When these men once enlisted in a regiment, they forgot the sorrows of their village. They forgot their own mothers and sisters ; they recognized no ties but those that bound them to their officers, nobles who had bought them, and at whose orders they would have massacred every living soul in their own village, saying that it was for the honor of the flag, pour Fhonneur du drapeau. And yet not one of these men could ever rise from the ranks and become an officer ! The born serf could never wear an epaulette. When a man lost a limb in the service or was otherwise disabled, all he got was a permit to go and beg through the country. The smart ones would lounge round the tavern doors and do their best to enlist drunken men, and so themselves secure the bounty ; the more reckless and adventurous took to highway robbery. Gendarmes had to be sent against them. Sometimes two or three companies were sent. I saw a dozen robbers hung on one day at Phalsbourg ; nearly all of them were old soldiers licensed to beg after the Seven Years' War. They had lost the skill to labor, they had not a farthing of pension, and were all arrested and condemned for robbing a roadside tav- ern near Saverne. So now you understand what was meant by the Old Regime. The nobles and the convents had //, and the laboring people had nothing. Things are all altered now, thank Heaven ! The peasants have their share of the good things of this world, and of course I too have my little portion. Everybody around here knows Pere Michel's farm, his beautiful Swiss cows the color of cafe an lait, and his six yoke of work-oxen. I have no right to complain. The Revolution has done much for me. My grandson Jacques is in Paris, at the Ecole Polytechnique. He is in the first class there. My grand- daughters are well married. My namesake, my youngest and favorite grandchild, talks of being a doctor. All this I owe to the Revolution. Had I been a grandfather before 1 789, I shouM have had nothing. I should have labored all my life for the seigneur and the monastery. As I sit here in A PEAS A ATS VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION. 113 my big armchair, with my old dog at my feet, and glance out at my apple-trees covered with white blossoms, or listen to the cheerful sounds from my own farm-yard, I think of the wretched cabin where my poor father and mother lived, and my brothers and sisters in 1780, with its four bare crumbling walls, its windows stuffed with straw, its thatch rotted by rain and snow, a kind -of black mouldy lair, where we were all stifled in the smoke ; where we shivered with cold and hun- ger. And when I think how my poor parents toiled in- cessantly just to give us a few beans to keep the life in us ; when I remember how ragged we were, how haggard, and how care-worn, I shudder ; and when I am alone tears come into my eyes. No, indeed ! you can't make me believe that poor. peo- ple were happy before the Revolution. I recollect what people call " the good old times," and yet in those days old men talked to us of times a great deal worse, that time of the Thirty Years' War, when peasants were strung up to the trees like fruit ; and after war came pestilence, till you might travel leagues without seeing a single living soul. Imagine in those days a poor laborer like my father with a wife and six children, without a sou, without a foot of land, without a goat, without a fowl, with nothing but the toil of his hands on which to live. There was no hope any- where for him, or for his children. No better fate than his was open to his family ; it was the natural order of things. Some people came into the world nobles, and had a right to everything ; others were born serfs, and must expect to re- main in poverty from generation to generation. Yet, in spite of these things, when the spring came, and the sun shone into our cabin after the long dark months ; when it showed us the cobwebs between the beams, the little hearth in the corner, and the ladder to the loft ; when we grew warm, and crickets sang without, and all the trees grew green, we felt it, after all, to be a pleasant thing to be alive. We children lay on our backs upon the grass clasping our bare feet in our little hands ; we whistled, we laughed, and looked up in the sky, or tumbled in the dust, and were happy. 8 H4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. But the worst trouble of all was that peasants, almost with- out exception, were in debt to some money-lender. I recol- lect, as soon as I can remember anything, hearing my father say when he had sold some of his baskets, or a dozen or two of his brooms : 4< Here is the money for salt, and here for beans and for rice, but I have not a sou over. Oh, mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! I had hoped to have a little over to go to Monsieur Robin ! " What my father and mother suffered from this debt can- not be described. They lay awake to worry over it ; the thought of it never left them ; they grew old under the bur- den of it. The debt had been contracted to buy a goat. The goat had died. It had been paid for ten times over in interest, but the principal had never been repaid. Their only hope lay in the thought that if one of their sons drew a blank in the conscription, they might sell him for a substi- tute. People must indeed have been poverty-stricken be- fore they could find hope in the sale of their sons. We boys thought it only natural that our father and mother should sell us. We always considered ourselves as belonging to them, like cattle. In those days, when I had to run home alone on dark nights after staying too long at my uncle's, where I was em- ployed as a farm boy in his stable, I used to carry with me a lighted torch to scare the wolves ; and sometimes, long after I had crept into my bed of leaves in the loft, beside my brothers, I would hear sounds in the distance, by which I knew that wolves were howling round some stable, jumping up eight or ten feet to get in at some opening, and falling back upon the snow. Then there would be some short, sharp yelps, and then the whole pack would rush down the village street, like a whirlwind. They had seized some poor watch- dog, and were carrying him off to the rocks to tear him in pieces. One afternoon I found my uncle with a basket before him containing roots cut into small pieces. A pedler, who was one of his friends, had brought them to him from beyond the Rhine, saying that they came out of Hanover, that they A PEASANT'S VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION. 115 would produce plants so good to eat and in such great quan- tities that our people would have plenty of food all the year round. He recommended us to plant them, saying that if they came into use there would be no more famine in the land, and that they would be a veritable blessing to every one. These were potatoes. There was great opposition to them at first in our country. They came from Hanover; they were heretic roots. It was reported that they produced lep- rosy ; and for one season nobody would buy them or eat them. But, happily for us, before the time for planting them the next year, a gazette reached us which said that a good fellow, one Parmentier, had planted some of these roots in the neighborhood of Paris, that he had sent somdPto the king, who had eaten of them ; and then everybody wanted to plant potatoes, in consequence of which all that my uncle had on hand sold very profitably. 1 1 The extract I have given shows the working of the feudal system in the days of its decay. The French Revolution swept it utterly away, not only in France, but all over Europe. We think so much of the horrors and excesses of the Revolution run to riot, cruelty, and madness, that we forget what it seemed to men in its early stages, and what we ourselves would have thought of it had we never known its sequel. E. W. L. CHAPTER III. PARIS IN 1 787.! TN the month of May, 1787, three young men of Nancy, * then the capital of the province of Lorraine, set out upon a journey. They were to visit Paris, and afterwards descend the Seine to Havre. Their objects were to see the world ad to purchase seeds and agricultural implements ; for they belonged to the middle class, and had no social pretensions or ambitions. They were frugal, although bent on pleasure ; and one of them wrote a journal, in which he recorded their observations and their joint stock of experi- ences, for the benefit of their respective families. Two years later (although no word in the journal shows that change or trouble was at hand) all France was ablaze with revolution. The record of their journey, having served its purpose, lay forgotten in the drawer of an old writing-desk, until recently a descendant of the writer drew it from its hiding-place. He gave it to the world through the " Literary Supplement of Figaro," as an interesting picture of a Paris very different from the Paris of the Third Republic or the Second Empire. The style of the young man's narrative is clear, straight-for- ward, and unsensational. Its language differs about as much from the French of modern newspapers and novels as the Paris it describes does from the heaven of the good Ameri- can, in the appearance of its streets and the every-day ideas which shaped its manners. Our three young men, Thiry, Jacquinot, and Cognet (their historian) left Nancy by diligence, May 7, 1787. Their fellow-passengers were an Englishman, and a friar of the 1 Contributed to " Appleton's Journal," December, 1880, by Mrs, E. W. Latimer. PARIS IN 1787. I I 7 order of St. Francis. The friar they found a bore, while the Englishman was intelligent and amusing. Their first stage was to Ligny, which they reached in a pouring rain. There they supped upon delicate trout, and went to bed for about three hours. Anxious, however, to get as much as possible out of their journey, they got out of bed at 3 A. M. to walk around the town of Ligny, where they found wide streets and handsome houses. We judge that at that time ideas of the seclusion of women regulated domestic architecture, for they note with surprise that one of the principal of these houses "had windows looking on the street." At Bar, Jacquinot paid a visit to the good-looking housekeeper of a certain M. Arnoud, who had a small place under government, but the rule of the establishment seems to have been, " No followers allowed," and the visit was resented as an intrusion by her master. At St. Didier, the next stage of their journey, they got an excellent dinner for twenty-five sous each. At Vitry they changed horses, and were struck by the free and easy manners of its pretty women, some of whom stood at their windows to watch them as they waited beside the diligence ; and one lady, of high consideration, as they heard, actually waved her hand to them, as their carriage rolled away. With Chalons they were not well pleased : their supper was dear and bad ; the women were ill dressed, and took no interest in travellers. " They had no notion how to put their clothes on," says our observant traveller. " They wore full-dress chignons with morning deshabille" At Chalons they left the diligence, and hired a cabriolet. The weather was very bad, and they were greatly indebted to their landlady, who laid some old cloths over the frame of their vehicle. At Se'zanne they passed the night with an uncle of Jacquinot, who took them to see "The Prodigal Son " performed by ragged actors in a barn, the stage being separated only by coarse curtains from a stable full of horses. From Sezanne they went forward on foot, hoping for good quarters at a certain abbey on their route, to the prior of Il8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION'. which Jacquinot's uncle had given them a letter of recom- mendation. The prior, however, by no means honored the draft on his hospitality. At Meaux they insisted on supping on mackerel, the first salt sea fish they had ever tasted, but. the mackerel having un leger goi'it de decomposition, Jacqui- not alone could stomach them. On the 1 5th of May, a week after they left Nancy, they found themselves at 8 A. M. before the gates of Paris. They breakfasted in a gitinguette, or canvas booth, and then sought a fellow-countryman from Lorraine who had engaged three bedrooms for them in the Rue Montmartre, opposite the courtyard of the diligence. Their trunk (they travelled with light luggage) had arrived before them ; and having changed their clothes and had their heads dressed, they proceeded to the Palais Royal. " The beauty of the build- ings," says Cognet, " the regularity and elegance of the arcades, and the magnificence of the shops hardly impressed us more than the vast number of people who flocked there at midday. It is the rendezvous of strangers, idlers, and the most noted courtesans in the capital, so beautifully dressed that one might have mistaken them for court ladies." At three o'clock they went to dine with a friend at Hue's restaurant in the Passage des Petits Peres, where they had excellent entertainment for thirty-three sous apiece. The dining-hall was large, and could seat from sixty to eighty persons at small tables. Then they went forth to walk up and down the Rue St. Honord, and to see for themselves how well its evil reputation was deserved. They were in- formed that it was not respectable for any woman in Paris to look out of her windows on the street, and wondered how their fair friend at Vitry would have felt could she have known what conclusion would be drawn from her behavior by a Parisian. Returning to the Palais Royal they went to the Beaujolais, a little theatre much the fashion at that period, where chil- dren made gestures on the stage, while others sang behind the scenes. They saw three comic operettas at this place, and at nine o'clock were out again, and enjoying in the PARIS IN 1787. 119 arcades of the Palais Royal " the coup d'ceil offered by the brilliant light, not only from street lamps hung between each arcade, but from the number of lamps and candles in the shops, which illuminated the richness of the goods displayed, in contrast with the dark walks under the chestnut-trees." The next day, the first thing they saw on going out, at ten A.M., was a great crowd of people in the Rue Neuve des Capucines, waiting with impatience for the drawing of the royal lottery. " That ceremony took place," says Cognet, " with all the pomp and publicity calculated to tranquillize an anxious public. The lieutenant-general of police, whose rank is considered equal to that of a minister, stood on a scaffolding surrounded by a group of officers. On the same scaffolding was the wheel of fortune, standing beside which was a child with a fillet over his eyes. The wheel turned, a little door opened, the child put forth his hand, took up a paper lying in the opening, and gave it to the lieutenant- general of police, who opened it, with his hands held up over his head, before the crowd. The number, then pro- claimed aloud, was exhibited on a frame in large figures to the people. When all the numbers were drawn, the noise was very great. The crowd dispersed, most of them cursing their ill luck, but all ready to test it again upon the next occasion." Thence our young men turned into the Place Vendome, one side of which was then occupied by the church and con- vent of the Capuchins. The convent gardens extended at that time to the garden of the Tuileries, from which they were separated by a narrow space, now the Rue de Rivoli. To this place four years later the National Assembly removed when the court was forced to leave Versailles and occupy the Tuileries ; but no shadow of such coming events hung over the minds of the young sight-seers as they gazed at the equestrian statue of Louis XIV., then occupying the centre of the square, or stood inside the convent church and won- dered at the simplicity of the monument to Madame de Pompadour. The Boulevard was to Paris in that day what the Bois de 1 2O THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. Boulogne and the Champs Elyse'es are in ours. This Bou- levard (for they then spoke of it in the singular) was very different from the Boulevards as we know them, the trees that were their glory then having been nearly all cut down during successive revolutions. " The Boulevard," says our author- ity, "consists of two grand avenues of four rows of trees each, under which people walk on foot, while in the middle is a wide chausse'e intended for carriages. In dry weather this road is watered twice a day. On/efe days, if there is no public divertissement to celebrate the occasion, the Bou- levard is the rendezvous of all Paris. There are generally four lines of carriages abreast for more than two leagues. The shabby fiacre rumbles alongside of the most brilliant equipages. Along this drive are the handsomest houses in Paris, and, besides two theatres, there are shows and curiosi- ties of all kinds shown very cheaply under the trees. There are also three or four cafe's, beautifully fitted up, where, from 2 P. M. to n, a band plays without intermission." The opera-house of that day excited the admiration of our provincials. It had been built in seventy-five days. It was entirely of wood, and its builders had not been willing to guarantee it for more than five years. Those years had passed, and it was still in perfect order. Its facade was on the Bou- levard St. Martin. Its curtain was de touts beautc. It re- represented Parnassus, Apollo crowning the Arts, and the Graces standing by him. The perfection of the scenery, and the mechanical appliances for moving it. the vastness of the auditorium, and the brilliancy of the ballet, especially the performance of the celebrated Mademoiselle Guimard, delighted our young men even more than the singing. They went next day to see the Halles, and were struck by the general activity that prevailed in them, and by the bru- tality and vile language of those men and women who so soon after were to become the greatest power for evil in the world. The garden of the.Tm'leries (or Thuileries, as they write it) was much as we have known it in our own day, but the pal- ace was unoccupied and dilapidated. "The trees are of PARIS IN 1787. 121 prodigious size, and their branches meet together, forming an impenetrable shade. This spot is the resort of respect- able bourgeoises, and of such ladies of quality as, having no carriages, wish to take the air without being elbowed by dis- reputable women. They are brought to the gates in sedan chairs, which are left outside with their porters. All this is ' in excellent taste, and one feels on entering the garden that it is the refuge of virtue. When we quitted the Tuileries, we crossed a desert spot called the Champs Elys6es, and soon found ourselves inside the park of the celebrated M. Beaujon." That day they had a bad dinner for thirty-six sous apiece, and complain that in fashionable places proprietors and waiters show much less regard to guests out of the provinces than to seigneurs of the capital. "To get a good dinner at these places, one has either to show a red heel, or to drive up in an equipage that stamps you as one concerned in gov- ernment finance, the jingling of money being as good as a title to those who preside there." They were struck by the activity prevailing on the quays on both sides of the Seine. These were crowded with all sorts of merchandise and provisions, and each quay was called after the product to which it was especially devoted. There was an Italian opera in those days in Paris, but the performers sang in French. The opera-house was situated on a wide open space surrounded by buildings in the course of construction. They admired the skill of the police in keeping order among the fashionable carriages, and they there saw a great many seigneurs and grandes dames. The Bois de Boulogne is described as a park nearly a league from Paris, used by the Parisians for picnics upon fete days. At that time one of the curiosities of the Bois was a ruined palace called Madrid, built by Frangois I. on his return from captivity. It had as many windows as there were days in the year, and the exterior had been covered with porcelain tiles, but the whole was going to decay. Not so the country house of the Comte d'Artois in the same neigh- borhood, whose English gardens, winding walks, and falling 122 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. waters are admirably described as imitant peniblement la nature. The Jardin Mabille of that day was called " Wauxhall," and was attended by our young men with but little edification ; the orgy, however, broke up in time to send them to bed by eleven o'clock. The Cathedral of St. Denis was then in all its glory. " Cest la" exclaims our young philosopher, in words less trite before the Revolution than they are to-day, '.' le terme de la puissance de nos rots." The treasure-room contained reliquaries and chalices of inestimable value. There, too, were the crowns used at the coronation of French sovereigns, the sword of Charlemagne and his crown and sceptre. But the most wonderful thing of all was a chalice carved out of a single agate, the work of one man's lifetime, which had been left by will to the cathedral by the Abb Sugger. There, too, they saw the royal mantle of purple velvet spangled with gold fleurs de Us, and lined with ermine. It weighed a hun- dred and eighty pounds. It was the custom of the place always to keep in the chancel, lying under a magnificent canopy, the coffin that contained the body of the last king during the reign of his successor. Louis XV. died of small- pox, and his body, being unfit to embalm, was buried. A catafalque, however, covered an empty coffin, and lights burned round it night and day. They observed with satis- faction that the body of Turenne " lay honored among those of kings ; " they did not know that six years later, when the dead bodies of the kings would be dragged from their resting-place, his alone would be spared that ignominy. The mania for building and decorating country places was the prevailing folly of that period. Well might Waller's warning to Englishmen a century back have been applied to courtiers bred in the school of Louis XIV. and his successor : "If you have these whims of apartments and gardens Of twice fifty acres, you '11 ne'er see five farthings ; And in you will be seen the true gentleman's fate, Ere you 've finished your house you '11 have spent your estate." PARIS IN 1787. 123 At Neuilly they saw the flower-garden of M. de Saint- James, who had squandered four millions of francs upon his country place. Money had been frittered on cockney absurdities of all kinds. Grottoes had been lined with fish-bones ; cas- cades had been shrouded by glass ; and one grotto was bril- liantly lighted by reflections thrown upon yellow glass balls recalling the cave with trees of jewelled fruit entered by Aladdin. These marvels, and the really beautiful conser- vatories and pineries, must have been destroyed during the Revolution. The friends attended the one hundredth representation of Beaumarchais's " Figar " at the Francais. The performance began at five o'clock, and there was a great struggle to get in at the doors. The theatre had seven tiers of boxes, crowded by a delighted audience, and the pit had seats, as they remarked, and was filled by people of fashion. The difficulty of getting out again was great, for before the theatre there was a piece of waste ground full of open drains and numerous excavations. Notre Dame at that period was the richest cathedral in the kingdom. Over its entrances were life-size statues of twenty- eight kings of France, all afterwards destroyed at the Revo- lution. The high altar, soon to be desecrated by a fille de ropera in the guise of the Goddess of Reason, was of porphyry, and the chapels were full of noble statuary and precious marbles. On the 25th of May Jacquinot came of age, and his com- panions celebrated the event by a most sumptuous breakfast, costing them two francs and a half apiece. They visited the Church of the Maturins, where they saw an altar-cloth that Cognet describes as " marvellous, the only thing of the kind that exists. Brocatelle de sole (Tor et argent." The Gobelins was just as we have all seen it, no changes in that establishment having been effected by the Revolution. They dined outside the barriere for eighteen sous apiece, " as well as we could have done within the walls for twice that sum," and they spent the afternoon in seeing one of the saddest sights that ever disgraced humanity. The 124 THE FREA'CH REVOLUTION. Salpetriere was a place of confinement for all kinds of un- fortunate women. The establishment in 1787 contained seven thousand of them, and was presided over by twelve Sisters of the order of Ste. Claire. Among the women of loose character they saw Madame de la Motte, the infamous heroine of the " Diamond Necklace," who, escaping soon after during the Revolution, is said, under the assumed name of Comtesse Guacher, to have become partner in the evangelization of Russia with Madame de Krudener, the friend of the Emperor Alexander. Although classed with the Magdalens on the register of the establishment, Madame de la Motte had a room to herself, and was not obliged to wear their dress, a robe of coarse woollen, fashioned like a sack. The young men bribed their guide to let them see her. " She has the deportment and manners of a lady of quality," says Cognet. "She seemed very much sur- prised by our visit ; but as it probably was a change to her, she did not resent it, and entered into conversation with us. She was dressed like a lady in deshabill/, and was busy flut- ing something when we entered." The other women slept five in a bed. The kitchens were neat and commodious. Seven coppers made soup for the seven thousand women, half an ox to each copper, which seems a miserable allowance. They were all occupied, generally with needlework, and among them were several women who were there by choice. The hospital and nursery departments were likewise visited ; but the Sisters with all their care "could not prevent the air- of these places from being intolerable. The most dreadful sight we saw, however," says Cognet, " was that of the poor creatures deprived of reason." Some of his details are too shocking for repetition. Those liable to fits of fury were kept chained in kennels, and an iron barrier cut them off from personal communication even with the keepers of the establishment. Their lairs were cleaned out twice a day with rakes, and their food was thrust in to them. Among these wretched creatures was a beautiful young girl, who had loved a young nobleman who had betrayed her. " If PARIS IN 1787. 125 it had not been for the fetters round her beautiful bare arms, we could not have believed that she was subject to attacks of violent mania. Her melancholy beseeching looks proved that in lucid intervals she realized the horrors of her situation." She hid herself in her kennel at their approach, but afterwards came out, and made gestures to Thiry. When they came back she was in a paroxysm of despair, and was tearing her flesh and clothes. Many had only an old quilt for a covering. No traveller could visit Paris without going to Versailles. On Whitsunday our young Lorrainers went thither with a great crowd. Their first sight was the procession of those who wore the grand cordon of St. Louis. All noblemen so decorated left the king's apartment at midday, and went in procession to the chapel, followed by the princes of the blood, the queen, her ladies, and the king himself. The dauphin, whom the queen held by the hand, was not the sufferer of the Temple, but his elder brother, who died two years after this Whitsunday, June 4, 1789. "Our queen's features are not perfect," remarks Cognet ; "but she seems more beautiful than any lady at court because of the nobility of her expression and the splendor of her carriage. Even when dressed in very humble garments, it would be easy to guess that she was born to a throne. Her great dignity does not impair her grace. She has an enchanting smile and a peculiar turn of her head. The king's countenance shows his great kindliness, and his glance, though it is timid (dfyourvu (Faifdctce), is full of majesty. The dauphin," Cognet also remarks, " is a very pretty boy, but he seems sad and sickly. Though hardly five years old, he behaved admirably at mass, and only once made a little friendly gesture to his cousin, the Due d'Angouleme, when the grand cordon was conferred on him." The richness of the court costumes amazed the young provincials. The queen and the princesses were literally covered with jewels. The Du- chesse de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe were pointed out to them as the queen's intimate friends. All present were not required to wear swords, but every one who 126 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. did so was admitted to the palace on that occasion. " The only fault that we could see in the apartments," adds Cognet, " was perhaps a too lavish profusion of gold." The grand fountains played, and the young men were interested in the menagerie, particularly in the rhinoceros. One wonders what became of him in the Revolution ! " Versailles," says our young writer, and his observation is as true now as it was then, " seems still to be pervaded by Louis XIV." The Louvre at that time was in process of reconstruction, and the part finished was full of artists' studios and workshops of all kinds, granted rent free to persons who had influence to secure them. On the Sunday after Whitsuntide they left Paris for St. Cloud in a flatboat, containing three hundred persons. On reaching their destination, where the fountains did not play till five o'clock, they made their way on foot across country to Versailles, and visited the Trianon. At the Petit Trianon, " the queen's plaything," they saw her English garden, her farm, her farm buildings, a ruin, a plain, a forest, and. a mountain, all artificial, and on a tiny scale. " The queen comes here frequently," says her young subject, " to get rid of the burthen of her greatness. She loves to be alone here for hours at a time. The house is in no sense a palace. The walls are covered with straw- work, alternating with worsted embroidery ; the floors are spread with matting imitating marqueterie. In the garden there are none but wild flowers. There is no etiquette observed at the Petit Trianon ; none of the distinctions du tabouret prevail there. As we were leaving the bathing rooms, we were apprised of the arrival of Marie Antoinette ; and as we had not time to escape through the gate, our guide hurried us into the dairy. The queen approached, accompanied by one of her court ladies ; but she dismissed her presently, and came alone directly toward us. She wore a simple dress of clear white cambric, a fichu, and a head-dress of lace ; and in this quiet dress she seemed even more queenly than in the court costume in which we had last seen her. Her way of walking is peculiar. She PARIS IN 1787. 127 glides forward with inexpressible grace, and her head was thrown back more proudly when she thought herself alone than when she was in the midst of pomp and people. Our queen passed close to the place where we were hid, and we all three had an impulse to step forth and kneel before her. We were divided between the wish that she should see us and the fear that she might do so. As soon as her Majesty had passed, our guide made us leave the garden. As it was four o'clock, we took a carriage which soon brought us to St. Cloud." At this time the first fire department was being organized in Paris. One of the sights they went to see was La Sa- maritaine, a dilapidated piece of machinery that had been constructed for forcing water from the Seine to the Tuileries in case of fire. They remarked at the time that the recent discovery of fire engines (pompes a feu) would supersede this old machine. This prophecy was fulfilled for them as they returned home from St. Cloud. As they came in sight of the Tuileries, they saw part of the Pavilion de Flore on fire ; and while interesting themselves in the pompes, which were mounted upon boats in the Seine, Jacquinot was pressed into the service, and compelled to work hard for eight or ten hours. The Tuileries seems to have been always thought particularly liable to conflagration. Thiry had been greatly depressed for more than a week past, and, declining an expedition to Marly, took to his bed. His illness, however, proved to be homesickness. He was pining for his family ; and having made up his mind to return to Nancy by the next diligence, he grew perfectly well again. His companions saw him off, and then went to the beautiful country seat of the Prince de Conde (the unfortunate Due d'Enghien's grandfather) at Chantilly. The place was extraor- dinarily beautiful, and was everywhere decorated with illustra- tions of La Fontaine's " Fables " in sculpture. Chantilly they thought as charming as Versailles was dull and magnificent. Among other things, they saw in the armory the swords of Jeanne d'Arc, and of Henri IV. On the nth of June they wrote a letter to say that they 1 2 8 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTWN. should soon be home, sent off their trunk by diligence, engaged their places for the following week, and spent the day in executing commissions. They had some difficulty in getting their trunk through the custom-house, which then examined every article that left Paris, but this being accom- plished they prepared for a fresh jaunt to see the ocean. They started on foot through Marly and St. Germain, and at Poissy took a flatboat galiote on the Seine. This vessel had no seats, no cabin, and no protection from the weather, so that they suffered terribly from a blazing sun, but it was a cheap mode of travelling ; eight hours of it cost them each thirty sous. They hired two rough Nor- man ponies at Roulle, and rode twenty-one miles on them to Rouen, paying another thirty sous apiece for the animals. They saw the sights of Rouen, the same as in our own day, and continued their journey by flatboats and on hired horses to Honfleur, the harbor of which was then full of vessels from the Baltic, but it was being rapidly filled up by sand. On the i5th they saw Havre and the sea for the first time, and bathed in salt water at once. They aje turbot, lobster, and various shellfish, and went on board a man o' war corvette, and admired the merchant shipping. They went to the theatre as a matter of course, and, in short, made the most of their one day's stay at Havre. They were very much interested in all they saw, but thought Havre a very dear city to live in. They had the good taste to admire the scenery along the banks of the Seine on their journey back to Rouen, and Cognet informs us that at that time the city contained a hqndred thousand inhabitants. They visited the market-place where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned, drank Norman cider, and went to the theatre, where they made two in an audience of ten, the manager having quar- relled with the public. Partly on foot, and partly in a flat- boat, they made their return journey from Rouen to Paris. The last stage of their journey, on a wet night, in an intoler- able crowd upon the bare deck of the boat, was very uncom- fortable. They were interested, however, in an escaped nun they had on board, who made no secret of her adventures. PARIS IN 1787. 129 " She was a girl of no personal charms, who had been put into a convent against her will. She got out by climbing up some trellis-work beside a wall, until she reached the top, when she slipped down into the road. There is little doubt she will continue to slip more," adds Cognet, " as she goes further." They stayed three more days in Paris, and then (June 22) in the society of a Jesuit father, "good company and no bigot," a spur-maker and his son, the Sieur Bouthoux, a bookseller of Nancy, two Englishmen who could not speak French, and a tobacco agent from Lune'ville, they started for Nancy. The journey was uneventful, without any acci- dent to the passengers, though the diligence, in going down a steep hill without brakes, at one stage ran over its two postilions, who were left behind under charge of charitable persons, while the Englishmen mounted the horses, and carried the diligence through to the next post-town. Thiry had come out one stage to meet them. They all breakfasted together at Toul, and there the young men took leave of their fellow-travellers, for the route of the diligence did not lie through Nancy. In a few hours they were safe at home, " enjoying," as Cognet concludes, " each of us on his own part the pleasure that others felt in our safe return, after seven weeks' absence." CHAPTER IV. COURT LIFE AT VERSAILLES ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. [From the pen of a nineteenth-century reporter. 1 ] T)ERMIT me, good reader, to borrow the services of -* Asmodeus, and, without being either a philosopher, a humorist, or an historian, to take you into Paris the Paris of 1789 in the character of a modern reporter. The first thing that will strike us is the height of the houses, the narrowness of the streets, and the dimness of the shops. There are fewer gable roofs than I expected, and more vehi- cles of various kinds than I had supposed. The buildings and monuments that I recognize appear strange to me, be- cause of the great difference in their surroundings ; and in the streets is a throng noisily, boisterously, brutally gay, giving to old Paris an air of activity and movement' for which I was not prepared. I look steadily at the costumes of the crowd. They are not what I expected. I had imagined I should see in the streets of Paris personages like the actors in comic opera. Not a bit of it ! There are very few bright colors worn on the streets, very little velvet, and still less silk. Stout blue, brown, and black cloth is worn by the men. Workingmen wear trousers, and are dressed like the peasants of western France in our own day. Where are the great nobles, all embroidered in gold? A moment ago I caught sight of a man dressed in pink silk, but he was a street singer in the guise of a marquis. Where are the real marquises? Oh, I forgot. They are all at Versailles. We will go to Versailles, then, and begin with the court circle. When Louis XIV. died, Louis XV., not daring to keep up the same state as his majestic great-grandfather, took up 1 From the " Supplement Litteraire du Figaro," translated by me and published Feb. 23, 1889, in "Littell's Living Age." E. W. L. ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. 131 his quarters in the left wing of the chateau, which was divided into small suites of apartments ; and in these same small apartments lives Louis XVI. His royal spouse prefers the Trianon. But we will begin, in our capacity of invisible reporter, with Louis himself. He was born at Versailles, Aug. 23, 1754; so that he is now, in 1789, thirty-five years old. He is very stout, but he is also very muscular, and more quick in his movements than his people give him credit for. His forehead recedes, his nose is short, his chin fat, and his complexion slightly florid. His eyes are commonly without much expression, but when excited his glance can be stern and severe, which is a great contrast to the usual kindly expression of his physiognomy. The king has the manners of a gentleman, but not those of a prince. His movements are brusque and awkward. Physically and morally, his defect is indecision. Like all weak men, he has occasionally sudden spurts of violent temper. His morals are so pure that his virtues are sneered at by his licentious nobles, while they have failed to attract the good opinion of his people. He adores his queen, and cannot bear to hear her slandered, though sometimes his affection seems to turn to bitterness. He can occasionally be as jealous as a bourgeois, yet he trusts her in everything. One day he said, " M. Turgot and I are the only two men in France who really love the people." He does love his people, beyond doubt ; but he distrusts them, though he has as yet no conception of their latent capacity for revolution. At this moment, as we look at him, he is going through a terrible struggle with financial and politi- cal difficulties. His relief comes when he can give him- self up with his whole soul to his much-talked-of labors in locksmithing and watch-making. Indeed, there is not in all Paris a more skilful workman. His appetite is formidable ; we will say more about it by and by. It is only when he works like a journeyman and feeds like Gargantua that he seems gay; his soul is ordinarily heavy within him. 132 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. He cannot forget all the cruel little intrigues which have already darkened the splendors of his reign, and are indeed a sort of prelude to the terrible misfortunes about to fall on his family. Such things as the affair of the diamond neck- lace, the scandal of the " Marriage of Figaro," played at court, the queen taking a principal part herself, in spite of his prohibition, the gossip about Marie Antoinette's having been married seven years before she became a mother, worry and agitate him. He is sad, very sad ; and what is now mere anxiety will before long turn to horror. Marie Antoinette, born Archduchess of Austria, is now thirty-four. Supremely elegant, brought up in the most aristocratic court of Europe, she has all the faults and all the charms of the aristocracy of the eighteenth century. Proud and yet frivolous, jealous of the prerogatives of her station and yet impatient of the restraints of etiquette, she shocks the nobility by her want of dignity and the bourgeoisie by the lightness of her behavior. Is she beautiful ? Not precisely. But she belongs to that class of women who, in the language of our own day, are called "captivating." Her profile is aquiline, possibly a little too much so ; her eyes are very bright ; her mouth charming ; her complexion brilliant ; her manners easy, free, and sometimes a shade wanting in queenliness. She is a mark for the most rascally insinuations, particu- larly on the part of some members of her husband's 'family. An evil motive is imputed to her most innocent fancies ; as, for example, that of dressing like a shepherdess when she lives in her pretty little cottage at the Trianon. Thousands of songs are sung about her in the streets. Some will con- tinue celebrated, and need not be here mentioned; some are obscene, and not to be repeated ; but here is one that I have never heard before, nor probably you, reader, -j- which I heard a man humming at Versailles, almost within earshot of the Trianon : " La berg&re de Trianon, Quand on dit oui, ne dit pas non ; Elle est sensible, mais volage ; LOUIS XVI. ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. 133 Elle accommode a sa fa9on Le bon gar9on, le gros gar9on, Qui 1'osa prendre en mariage." " The shepherd maid of Trianon, If you say out, will not say non ; Tender but changeable, 't is said her Arts can manage (how 's not known) The good fat fellow on the throne Who has dared to wed her." If such things are sung within earshot of the court, what am I likely to hear in the city? The Comte de Provence, the king's next brother, was born in 1755. He has a high forehead, denoting intelligence ; his eyes are bright and piercing, his mouth scornful, his manners easy, but haughty at the same time. Since his elder brother ascended the throne, he bears the title of Monsieur. He dabbles a good deal in politics, and is in open opposition to the influence of the queen and her coterie. He surrounds himself with men of letters, has caustic wit, and is skilful at mystifications, is fond of quoting Latin, cares little for women, and is a singular mixture of excessive aristocratic exclusiveness and of progressive ten- dencies. He understands England and admires parliament- ary and constitutional government, makes fun of " Gothic " proclivities, and paves the way for the rising power of the bourgeoisie ; but yet he is prince of the blood, down to his very finger-nails. What a contrast the Comte d'Artois presents to his two brothers ! He is Charles Philippe of France now, but forty- two years later will have been Charles X. and be for the second time an exile at Holyrood. He is a tall young man, slender, elegant, and active, a handsome fellow, gallant to the verge of libertinism, without much education, but with natural talent. Being an accomplished rider, he has during the last year or two brought racing into fashion, for there are races in Paris in 1 789. He owns a stable and trainers and jockeys, whom he calls des jaquets. See, yonder comes a boy four years old, fair, gentle, ex- 134 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. quisitely graceful. He is the son of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, the poor boy who will endure such sufferings in the Temple. There he will live for months without uttering a word ; now he chatters like a little man. Indeed, some of his sayings show the spirit of the eighteenth century. He first made the remark attributed nowadays to many children, " If God sends rain to make the corn grow, why does He let it fall upon the pavement?" His sister, the future Duchesse d'Angouleme, is playing with him, but without much vivacity. Her disposition is not melancholy yet, but she is dominated by a precocious feeling of dignity. The king rises at seven, says his prayers, and then proceeds to dress. He then goes to mass, receives his ministers and ambassadors, dines, takes a walk, works at his watch- making, and joins the queen at the Trianon ; holds public and private audiences, eats his supper, and goes to bed. He rarely changes his dress during the day, unless he has t<^ leave the chateau. To-day he is wearing a coat of gray silk, ornamented with silver. His small-clothes are of the same material, his waistcoat is white satin, embroidered in silk with roses and green leaves, with silver spangles and silver buttons, like those on the coat, but smaller. He wears a three-cornered hat, trimmed with a silver cord, and carries a long cane with a gold knob. His shoe-buckles are silver, and his lace ruffles are point (TAlen^on. At one o'clock I see him at his dinner. The steward of the household has shown me the menu, and, what is more, he has let me see the prices. Beef stewed in its own juice. Blanquette of chicken, with truffles. Rice soup. Squabs a la D'Huxelles. Onion and chicken soup. Ham and spinach. Pates de foie gras. Turkey a la Perigueux. 'Chicken pates. Three fat pullets; one larded. Mutton chops. Eighteen larks. Stewed rabbit. One young duck from Rouen. Chicken wings and trimmings. One chicken from Caux. Salmi of red partridges. Six partridges. Spring chickens a rAllemande. Three woodcocks. Veal kidneys glaces. ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. 135 The cost of all this amounts to two hundred and eighty francs. Living seeqps to have been more abundant and far cheaper then than in our own day. Such a repast served in 1889 by a leading Paris restaurateur would not cost less than one thousand francs, without wine. The court balls are charming; they dance gavottes and minuets, and sometimes even a dance called the chaconne, derived from the ballet of the opera, for stately dances are going out of fashion. The queen, being a native of Austria, has introduced the waltz and several Hungarian dances, to the great scandal of old members of the Old Regime. In other respects, the court at the chateau can hardly be said to amuse itself. It is preoccupied with politics. The great social interest is at the Trianon. The Little Trianon is a sort of earthly paradise in mini- ature. A great deal of unnecessary fuss has been made about this graceful fancy of the queen's, which, as royal fancies go, is not expensive. It is a vision of Watteau realized by a rich and charming woman. It is opera comiqu'e incarnate ; it is foolishly and divinely fascinating. The little palace is the most perfect expression of the eighteenth century. It has a little theatre and a temple to Cupid. A belvedere is on the summit of a hillock in the park, and near it are the farm buildings, the dairy, the school, and the temple to Love. Ah, what a charming spot ! Here the queen walks and rests, drinks milk, eats curds, makes cream-cheeses, wears pink or blue percale, and a straw hat trimmed with blue-bells or cornflowers. Her dearest friends are there her company. There is the Princesse de Lamballe, and the Princesse de Polignac, and her favorites among the gentlemen, Comte Adhemar, Comte Patastron, and M. de Vaudreuil. All conform, with the best grace in the world, to this elegant caprice of the queen, who, weary of gayety, masked balls, sleighing parties, and other court amusements, has now taken a fancy to play the shepherdess, after the pat- tern of those in Florian. All her guests wear village cos- tumes : the royal princes and princesses take their share in these elegant and innocent diversions. The king is the 136 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. village miller. He may be seen carrying on his back heavy sacks of grain and flour. His strength is herculean. The queen is milkmaid, and serves out her milk to the good villagers of the neighborhood. Monsieur that is the Comte de Provence is the school- master, and teaches little boys from the neighboring vil- lages. He is particularly delighted with this travesty ; and as he has always had a taste for letters and a dash of the pedagogue in his disposition, he plays his part with wonder- ful success. One day, a boy, too young to have learned respect for royalty, flung a paper pellet across the room, which hit the prince in the face. His Highness rose, and seized the delinquent by the ears. "Ah, Monseigneur," cried the boy, " you are only making believe to teach school, have mercy, and only make believe to whip me ! " The evenings at the Trianon are very gay, and are unre- strained by ceremony. They play on the harpsichord, they sing Carat's songs, they talk a little scandal, not much, however. Sometimes stories are told of gayety or gallantry, but they would have seemed insipidly virtuous to the Queen of Navarre. Madrigals are also written to Queen Marie Antoinette. " I seek in verse to celebrate the beauty I adore, I think of it rethink of it, in vain ; My happy heart with thought of it with joy so runneth o'er My mind cannot find words to weave the strain." Sometimes they even presume to write epigrams on cruel ladies. Here is a specimen : " You have sworn me love eternal Often, lady fair ; And the vows you swore, as often Sailed away on air. I know it too well, loveliest; And, if the air were slow, You 'd agitate your gilded fan And make them faster go." Before they separate for the night after these pleasures, ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. 137 they wind up let me whisper it, lest it encourage evil tastes in the Paris of 1889 with onion soup ! 1 ON THE QUEEN OF FRANCE ASKING FOR VERSES ON HER DEFECTS. By M. DE BOUFFLERS. Would you know what Rumor lays To the charge of Antoinette? That she 's often light it says, Fickle, mad, and a coquette. And is it so ? Ah, yes ! but know So nice the line that fancy draws, Her very slights Create delights, And Cato's self would smile applause. If for business or for pleasure The hour by herself be set, One, 't is said, may wait her leisure ; 'T is a trifle to forget. And is it so? Ah, yes ! but know That when one next beholds her face, All wrongs adieu, Delights renew, And time flies on with double pace. That /and me fill all discourse And .reruns on ouppomoly ) al of the Commune." THE KING. 207 Jacques Roux answered brutally, " We did not come here to do your errands, but to escort you to the scaffold." "Very true," said Louis, gently. He then turned to Citizen Baudrais, a commissioner set over the guard at the Temple, and asked him to take charge of the will. Baudrais accepted the trust, and received the paper. At this moment, perceiving that all present wore their hats, the king asked for his, which Cle'ry brought him. It was a three-cornered hat, the only serviceable one he had. He put it on, and then, speaking to the persons present, he begged them to show kindness to his family, and added : " I also commend to the care of the Commune Clery, my valet de chambre* who has always faithfully served me. My wish is that he should pass into the service of the queen of my wife," he said, correcting himself. Nobody answered. Santerre then said, " Monsieur, it is almost time we should be going." Louis withdrew for the last time into his oratory, to collect himself. In a few minutes he came out again. Again pressed by Santerre to set out, he stamped with his right foot on the floor, and said, " Marchons ! " The procession then moved. At the top of the staircase Louis perceived Mathey, the concierge of the Tower, and said to him, " I was a little too sharp with you the day before yesterday. Forgive me, Mathey." The man turned his head aside without an answer and slipped away. Louis walked across the first courtyard, then he turned round, and gave a farewell glance at the Tower of the Temple. In the outer court a carriage was waiting, a green car- riage, and two gendarmes held the door open. The carriage belonged to Claviere, the minister of public contri- butions. It was provided at the last moment, because the Commune was averse to Louis's being taken to the Place de "2O8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. la Revolution in the carriage of the mayor, which had been the order of the Executive Council. As the king approached, one of the gendarmes jumped into the carriage and seated himself on the front seat. Louis got in next, then the Abbe Edgevvorth. Both took the back seats. The other gendarme then took the fourth place. He was Lieutenant Labrasse. More than ten thousand men under arms were massed around the Temple, forming a double line. The procession, preceded by drums beating, and trumpets sounding, moved on. It was a little past eight. As the carriage turned out of the Temple gate, a few women's voices cried, "Pardon! Grace!" The rain had ceased, but a dense, chill fog hung over the city. The procession gained the line of the Boulevards by the Rue du Temple. Cannon, rolling heavily over the slippery streets, went before and behind, escorted by ten thousand men. It was a melancholy spectacle. Everywhere on the cross streets, and on any open space, were National Guards under arms. The crowd was silent. Every precaution had been taken. Nothing positive was known by the authorities, but it was rumored that the royalists would attempt to save the king. The Abbe Edgeworth had been informed of such a project. Possibly Louis still hoped that the devotion of some few of those once faithful to him would save him from impending death upon the scaffold. And indeed these expectations seemed likely to be realized. The procession had just reached the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, when, near the Porte St. Denis, a man forced his way through the crowd, followed by three others, younger than himself. All four brandished their swords, and cried : "A nous, frangais ! A nous ! All those who wish to save their king ! " There was no echo to this cry. No one in the crowd responded. The friends on whom the rescuers had counted had not reached the rendezvous. The little party, seeing THE KING. 209 itself deserted, tried to profit by the confusion caused by its rush to escape, but one of the corps de reserve, apprised by a vidette, fell upon them. They separated. Two managed to escape. These were the Baron de Batz and his secretary Devaux. The two others, closely pursued, rushed up the Rue de Clery. They were followed, captured in a house, and cut to pieces. The drums and trumpets concealed the noise made by this attempt. Those in the carriage with Louis knew nothing of it, and drove on along the Boulevard du Temple, the Boulevard St. Martin, and the Boulevard St. Honord. Louis at first tried to talk to the Abbe Edgeworth, but the noise was so great that he could neither hear nor be heard. Then the abbd offered him his breviary, in which he read such psalms as the priest pointed out to him. The horses went at a walk, and their progress was so slow that it took nearly two hours to traverse the two miles which separated the Temple from the place of execution. It was past ten when the carriage stopped on the Place de la Revolution. " We have arrived, if I am not mistaken," whispered Louis in his confessor's ear. The executioners approached the carriage. There were five of them, Charles Henri Sanson, their chief, his two brothers, Charlemagne and Louis Martin, and their two assistants, Gros and Barrd. Sanson stood ready for his dreadful task. It was his duty, but in his heart he grieved for it. 1 He even hoped that something might occur which would prevent the procession from arriving at the scaffold, or that the victim might be torn from him by a popular rising. He did not know what might happen, and he, his brothers, and the assistants carried concealed weapons. Under their loose jackets they all had daggers and pistols, and their pockets were filled with cartridges. As time passed and no procession appeared, Sanson 1 See Balzac's short story founded on fact, " Une Episode sous la Terreur." 2 1 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION". began to hope that he would be spared this execution ; but soon a hoarse murmur rose from the Rue de la Revolution (now, as formerly, the Rue Royale), and the carriage contain- ing the victim appeared. There was nothing left for Sanson but to do his terrible duty. One of his assistants opened the carriage-door. Louis, before he got out, laid his hand on the knee of the Abbe Edgeworth, saying in a firm voice to the two gendarmes who were in the carriage, "Gentlemen, I commend this gentleman to your care. See that after my death no insult is offered to him. I charge you to look after him." They were silent. Louis repeated his words. " Yes, yes. We will take care of him. Let us manage it," -said one of them. Louis then got out of the carriage. It was at that moment exactly twenty minutes past ten. The scaffold was on a platform which had been erected upon the pedestal of the former statue of Louis XV., and faced the chateau of the Tuileries. It was surrounded by a railing, and mounted by six very steep steps. A wide space around it had been kept clear, and this space was bordered by cannon. Inside of the space there were from sixty to one hun- dred drummers ; dragoons on horseback, with close-clipped horse-tails on their helmets, formed a half-circle. On' the Place were massed battalions from the Sections of Gravilliers, Arcis, and the Lombards. The Fe'de're's of Aix and Mar- seilles were at the entrance of the Champs Elyse'es. Du- gazon, the actor, on horseback like Santerre, whose aide-de- camp he was, was near them. He acted in so pretentious a manner that the crowd fancied he was playing an important part in the king's execution. Louis, meantime, was standing at the foot of the scaffold. Without speaking he took off his coat, untied the queue that confined his hair, took off his cravat, and opened his shirt, so as to uncover his neck and shoulders. Then he knelt down to receive the final benediction of his confessor. THE KING. 211 As he rose the executioners approached him with ropes in their hands. l< What are you going to do ? " he said. " We must bind you," replied one of them, Martin Sanson. " Bind me ! No ! I will never consent to that. Do what is ordered you, but you shall not bind me. You must give that up." Martin, however, tried to bind him. Charlemagne came to his assistance. It was clear that if opposed they would use force. A struggle was on the point of taking place, when Sanson gave the Abb Edgeworth a look. The abbe', greatly moved, then said, " Sire, in this new outrage see a last resemblance between your Majesty and that Son of God who Himself will be' your reward." This intervention ended the painful scene. Louis sub- mitted. " But, indeed," he said to the abb, " nothing but our Lord's example could have induced me to submit to such an insult." Then he turned to the executioners, saying: " Do what you will. I will drink the cup to the very dregs." The two assistants tied his hands behind his back and cut his hair. The steps of the scaffold were hard to mount. The fog and the sleet had made them slippery, and Louis had not the support of his hands, but he leaned on the Abbe' Edge- worth as he mounted. It was twenty-two minutes past ten. As soon as he reached the platform, Louis, whose face was flushed, stepped quickly round the scaffold, and, leaning on the railing on the left side, which faced the Garde Meuble, he cried : " Be silent, drummers ! I wish to speak." The drummers obeyed. The noise ceased. Then, in a voice so strong that it was heard all round the scaffold and even as far as the garden of the Tuileries, Louis cried, " I die perfectly innocent of all the imaginary crimes that have been laid to my charge. I forgive all those who are 212 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION". the cause of my misfortunes. I trust that my blood may assure the happiness of France. . . ." While he was speaking there was perceptible agitation among the National Guards placed near the scaffold ; some of them, thinking that the preliminaries of the execution had already lasted too long, were anxious to stop his speech ; others insisted that he should be allowed to go on. Even the opinion of the executioners was divided. The moment was critical. Santerre promptly put an end to it. At the first words spoken by Louis he rode up to the scaffold, and, lifting his sword, cried out, "I brought you here to die, not to harangue ! " Then to the executioners, " Do your duty." At the same moment he signed with his sword to the drummers to go on. They obeyed him. Their drumming drowned the words of Louis. No doubt he may have cherished a secret hope that he might move the spectators, for his face expressed great disappointment. A man named Bonvard, an actor in the The'atre de la Re'publique, who was placed near the scaffold with his battalion, said after- wards that when the drums began to beat, the king grew "as yellow as a quince." He said also that Louis, still standing by the railing of the scaffold, seemed for a moment to be waiting till the drums should cease, and that he made some slight resistance when the executioners came up behind to seize him. Be that as it may, the scene lasted only a few moments. Louis, hopeless of being heard, yielded, and let the execu- tioners do what they would with him. They bound him and placed him on the plank. A loud cry was heard. The knife fell, and the head rolled into the basket. One of the assistants, the youngest one, a man named Gros, seized it by the hair, and, walking twice round the scaffold, showed it to the people. It was twenty-four minutes past ten o'clock. The crowd responded with cries of " Vive la Nation ! " " Vive la Republique ! " The Abb Edgeworth de Firmont, who during the king's THE KING. 213 last moments had remained upon his knees repeating the prayers for the dying, then rose, descended from the plat- form, passed through the ranks of the dragoons, which opened to let him through, and as rapidly as possible sought refuge in the house of M. de Malesherbes. There had been some talk of firing cannon on the Pont Neuf as soon as the head of " Louis le Dernier " should have been severed ; but the plan was given up on pretense that the head of a king when it fell ought not to be of more consequence than the head of any other malefactor. Shouts, repeated from one crowd to another, spread the news. The great mass of the spectators in the Place de la Re 1 vo- lution and its neighborhood showed signs of joy. Men cried : " Vive la Liberte' ! Vive la Re'publique ! Vive rEgalitd ! Perish all tyrants ! " They sang hymns to Liberty ; they embraced one another ; they shook hands ; they danced round the guillotine, and on the square, and on the bridge, once called the Pont Louis Seize (now the Pont de la Concorde). Those nearest to the scaffold pressed under it, or climbed the steps. They dipped their pikes, their bayonets, and sabres in the blood. Others tried to soak it up on their handkerchiefs. A man got upon the guillotine, pulled up his sleeve, filled his hand with clots of blood, and three times sprinkled the spectators, crying out as he did so : " My brothers, we have been threatened that the blood of Louis Capet would fall upon our own heads. Thus let it fall ! Louis Capet has often dipped his hands in our blood. Republicans ! the blood of a king brings you good fortune ! " In vain a more sober citizen remonstrated : " My friends, what are we doing ? All that is passing here will be reported. Men will depict us in foreign countries as a savage people thirsting for blood." They answered him : " Yes ! thirsting for the blood of despots ! Tell it, if you will, to all the world ! . . . We should have been far better off this day, if on this spot where a statue was erected to Louis XV. our fathers had erected his scaffold ! " 2 1 4 THE FREXCH RE VOL UTION. Around the guillotine there was still commotion. The hat and coat of the king were torn in shreds, and men quarrelled over the fragments. One of the executioner's assistants was selling the hair of the victim. A young man who wanted, not a few hairs only, but the ribbon that had tied the king's queue, paid him a louis. Another who looked like a foreigner an Englishman gave fifteen francs to a boy, and begged him to dip a very handsome white handkerchief in such blood as remained on the scaffold. A sans-culotte took some on his finger and put it to his lips. " It tastes devilishly salt ! " he cried. The Fe'deres dipped bits of paper in it, stuck them on their pikes, and went off shouting, " See the blood of a tyrant ! " The dead body of the king was quickly taken away. A long wicker basket had been prepared, and the moment the execution was over the body was flung into it, and a cart carried it to the graveyard of La Madeleine (where the Chapelle Expiatoire was afterwards erected). This grave- yard had been given up in 1720, but it was reopened in 1770 for the interment of the poor creatures who had been crushed to death at the fete given on that very spot at the marriage of Louis (then dauphin) with Marie Antoinette. A hundred dragoons on horseback escorted the body. A grave had been dug, twelve feet deep and six feet wide. Two priests were standing by it without surplices and with- out tapers. They put the body in the grave uncoffined, with two full baskets of quicklime, and filled it up without any further ceremonies. The cart, as it drove back, let the wicker basket fall. The crowd rushed at it and renewed the scenes around the scaffold. Some rubbed the bottom with rags, others with handkerchiefs, and some with bits of paper. One man dipped two dice in the blood. Whilst all this was going on, the Conseil Ge'ne'ral of the Commune was in permanent session. From the moment that the procession left the Temple, messengers, about every six minutes, arrived to report what was going on and at what place they had left Louis. A few of the members THE KING. 215 of the Council were much moved. It is said that the savage Hebert shed tears. One of his neighbors was surprised at this. " The tyrant," he said, " was very fond of my dog, and often patted him. 1 I was thinking of that." The Council was presided over by the ci-devant marquis, Duroure. When it received notice that the execution had taken place, Duroure burst out laughing, and flinging up his arms shouted, " My friends, the affair is over ! the affair is over ! Every- thing went off admirably ! " A few moments afterwards Santerre came in, accompanied by the Commissioners of the Commune ; and Jacques Roux gave a viva voce account of the events in which he had participated. The sitting of the Convention took place as usual. It began at eight in the morning, and ended at half-past four. Vergniaud, the Girondist leader, that day presided. Whether it was that the members of the Assembly felt repugnance to speak of the execution then going on as the result of their own votes, or whether they were under the influence of apprehension as to its personal consequences on themselves, they spoke of nothing but the murder of one of their own number, Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, which had taken place the day before. He had voted for the king's death, and had been stabbed by a royalist in a cafe. A deputy related the particulars of his death, dwelling emphatically on what he considered a significant mean- ing in his last words : J'ai froid. Other deputies mounted the tribune and declared that their lives had also been threatened by assassins. They did not say who had threatened them, but they were evidently impressed with the necessity of taking exceptional precautions. Barrere proposed that domiciliary visits should be made, to seek out and arrest any royalists who might be hiding themselves in Paris. The Assembly contented 1 If this was so, it was probably during the long hours of the king's trial ; or Hebert and his dog may have visited the Temple. E. W. L. 2 1 6 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. itself, however, with decreeing six years' imprisonment in chains for any one who did not denounce an emigre living under his roof. The Assembly then received a touching request from an old servant of Louis XVI.'s father. The Abbe' Leduc asked permission to carry to Sens and there lay in the tomb of his own family the mortal remains of his old master's son. The Convention refused to accede to his request. As for Robespierre, he remained at home all day. The evening before he had requested Duplay, the cabinet-maker, in whose house he occupied a little room, to close carefully the door that opened on the Rue St. Honore. This was done accordingly on the morning of January 21. Ele'onore, Duplay's daughter, supposed to be engaged to Robespierre, was surprised at this and asked the reason. " Your father is right," replied the deputy ; " something will pass which you ought not to see." On Sunday, the night before the king's death, Marie Antoinette, in deep grief after her last interview with her husband, went up to her chamber, on the highest story of the Tower of the Temple. She flung herself, dressed, upon her bed. She passed all night shivering with cold and trembling with apprehension. Madame Elisabeth and Marie Therese occasionally dozed. The little dauphin slept. At six o'clock the next morning, the three women rose. The king had promised to see them again before he left the Temple, and they were expecting the summons. At a quarter past six their door opened. They thought the summons had come. But, no, it was a prayer-book that was wanted for the mass about to be said in the king's chamber. They gave the book, and waited. The book belonged to the wife of Tison. The windows of the Tower had been boarded up, so that they could see only the sky. They could perceive nothing of what passed outside. At seven o'clock Marie Antoinette asked leave to go down into her husband's chamber. The municipals, much em- barrassed, eluded her request, saying that the king was THE KING. 217 much occupied. She insisted again. Then one of them went to inquire if Louis XVI. would see his wife ; but he did not come back with any answer. About this time the dauphin, who was now up and dressed, understood the terrible situation. He sprang from his mother's arms and rushed to the guards, clasping their knees and crying, " Let me go, messieurs ! Let me go ! " " Where do you want to go?" " To speak to the people, to beg them not to kill my papa the king. ... In the name of God, messieurs, let me go ! " The guards pushed the boy aside. He went slowly away, but kept on crying, " Oh, papa ! papa ! " Marie Antoi- nette pressed him in her arms, him and his sister. She begged them to imitate their father's courage and never to think of avenging his death. She wanted them to eat some breakfast, but they refused. Then they heard the noise of drums and horses in the courtyard, but did not know what it might mean. Marie Antoinette, however, seemed to guess. " It is all over," she said, weeping. " We shall never see him again." The morning was passed by all in the greatest anxiety. Suddenly they heard cries and yells, mingled with the noise of fire-arms. " Oh, the monsters ! they are glad ! " whispered Madame Elisabeth, lifting her eyes to heaven. The little prince burst into tears. Marie Therese screamed aloud ; Marie Antoinette was choked with sorrow. About one o'clock dinner was brought in. Marie Antoi- nette could not touch food. A terrible anxiety oppressed her. She wanted to know how her husband in the death- hour had borne himself, how he had died. She begged for the details. She asked leave for C16ry to come to her. This favor was refused. And the day ended for her and hers, as it had begun, in uncertainty and sorrow. All that morning Paris had worn an air of mourning. The 2 1 8 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTIOtf. murder of Lepelletier de Saint- Fargeau two days before had made the Revolutionists apprehend a royalist rising. Rumors of the domiciliary visits which had been projected called to mind those which had preceded the massacres of Sep- tember, and made others dread new dangers. But about midday, when it was found that the execution had taken place without hindrance, and that the measures taken by the authorities were limited to strengthening the armed posts and patrolling the streets, the city resumed by degrees its usual aspect. The rich shops, the booths on the Boulevards, and work- men's places of work were, however, only half open, as on days of half-holiday (petite fete). The population seemed to be divided into two very distinct parties. All who grieved over the tragical event and who dreaded its consequences stayed in their houses. The women in general were very sad. Those on the contrary who were under the influence of political passion applauded the execution and gave way to demonstrations of joy. The cafes were crowded with sans- culottes, who drank, harangued, and danced and sang. Me'n were crying pies and cakes on the very spot where the tragedy had taken place. Citizens conversed together about the events of the day. Some regretted Santerre had caused the drums to stifle Louis's last words. Others approved what he had done and then they fell to arguing. Before nightfall rumors began to circulate. It was said that Philippe Egalite had witnessed the execution of his cousin ; that he had been seen at the moment when the executioner held up the bloody head, but then had ridden off in haste on a horse that was held for him. A soldier who had been decorated with the cross of St. Louis died of grief on hearing of the execution of his king ; a bookseller named Vente, a man formerly attached to the King's Menus Plaisirs, became crazy ; a wig-maker in the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine, a known royalist, was seized with such despair that he cut his throat with a razor. Some people remarked that the number 2 1 had played a great part in the life of Louis. It was on the 2ist day of THE KING. 219 one month that he was married by proxy; on the 2ist day of another that the crowd, at an exhibition of fireworks to celebrate his nuptials, trampled each other to death on the Place where he was executed. The dauphin was born on January 21 ; the flight to Varennes was on June 21 ; Sep- tember 21, the Assembly abolished royalty; and several other times the number 21 had been connected with his misfortunes. False rumors of course soon began to spread. It was as- serted that the young princess, Marie Therese, on hearing of her father's death, had died of grief, and that Marie Antoinette had been taken from the Temple and carried to another prison. On the evening of January 21 hardly any one but sans- culottes were to be seen in the streets of Paris, and these, excited by a day of drinking and shouting, fraternized more demonstratively than ever with each other. " Other kings of Europe would," they said, " have made war upon us, at any rate ; now we shall all be more eager to beat them. The same impure blood flows in the veins of all kings ; we must purge the earth of it and them." The clubs were all open that night, but the most interesting sitting was in that of the Jacobins. After the example of the deputies in the Assembly they seemed only anxious to avoid mention of the king's death, and to discuss the murder of Lepelletier de Saint- Fargeau. Citizen Saint-Andre' made an emphatic eulogium on the deceased. A brother of Lepelletier then rose, and, by degrees, they made out a sort of legend concerning him and his death. It was remembered that he had said four months before, " Happy are the founders of the Republic, even if they pay for it with their own blood." And an historic expression was substituted for his commonplace last words, " I am cold." Then the club voted that its members, in a body, should attend his funeral. Not one word was said about the execution of the king. The theatres that night were open as usual, but the attendance, except in the pit, was very small. The newspapers said little, and that little was much the 22O THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. same in all of them. One paragraph on the subject was, however, emphatic. It was in the " J ournal de la Rdpublique," edited by Marat. " The head of the tyrant has fallen beneath the sword of jus- tice. The same stroke has severed the very roots of monarchy amongst us. I now have hopes for the Republic ! How vain were the fears with which the supporters of the dethroned despot endeavored to inspire us as to the consequences of his death, in hopes of snatching him from the scaffold! . . . The remainder of the day has been perfectly quiet. For the first time since the Federation the people seemed animated by a serene joy. One might have thought our citizens had taken part in a religious festival. Delivered from the weight of an oppression which has so long crushed the nation, and penetrated by a feeling of frater- nity, all hearts have yielded to the prospect of a happier future." It has been frequently related that the last words of the Abbd Edgeworth to the king were, " Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven ! " But one who was near the scaffold has said, " These words were circulated from mouth to mouth, but I did not hear them." And the Abbe Edgeworth himself declared that he had no recollection of having uttered them. All members of the diplomatic corps quitted Paris after the king's death, except the minister of the United States, Mr. Gotiverneur Morris. He had not given up his post, but retired to his country house about thirty miles from Paris. The day when the news reached London consternation was great. The Theatre Royal, in which two pieces were to have been played that night, commanded by George III. and Queen Charlotte, was closed ; and the Marquis de Chauvelin, ambassador of France (now become Citizen Chauvelin), was ordered to quit England immediately. He left London the next morning for Paris. The reigning King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., had married the Princess Marie Adelaide Clotilde, sister of Louis XVI. (she was called Gros Madame) ; while his two sisters, Maria Josefa and Maria Theresa, were the wives of the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois. As soon as THE KING. 221 he heard of the death of Louis, he showed marks of the greatest sorrow. Then he raised his hands to heaven and exclaimed that if his people wished to adopt French fashions he was ready to step down from his throne. Indeed, in his first moments of despondency he abdicated. His people were touched by his grief, and refused to part with him. They begged him to let them take a new oath of fidelity. He consented, and was carried back to his palace in triumph. The Emperor of Germany was visiting the Prince de Coloredo when the Due de Richelieu informed him of the death of his brother-in-law. " Sire," he said, pointing to the crape upon his arm, "the cup of crime is full, and I have received the sad commission of informing you." " Monsters ! " cried the emperor. " Has everything ceased to be sacred in their eyes? " And he burst into tears. At the courts of Madrid. Berlin, and St. Petersburg, sorrow ' and indignation were intense. Again the Due de Richelieu was the messenger who carried the sad tidings to the Empress Catherine. At Rome the news increased public indignation, though it could not increase the hostility of the government, which a few days before (January 13) had allowed the populace to murder, in open day, Citizen Bassville, secretary of the French legation, because he had displayed the tricolor of the French Republic. The Comte de Provence, the king's brother (subsequently Louis XVIII.), was at Hamm in Westphalia. The news reached him on the 28th of January. He at once assumed the title of Regent of the Kingdom, and addressed a procla- mation to Frenchmen who were exiles in foreign lands. The Prince de Conde on January 30 had a funeral ser- vice in the Black Forest for Louis XVI. An anonymous author composed this epitaph. " Here lies King Louis. His own subjects slew him, In spite of all the good he tried to do them, Who by a courage never told in story Changed his dread scaffold to a Throne of Glory. " 222 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Thus perished Louis XVI., King of France and of Navarre, aged thirty-eight years and five months lacking two days, after having reigned eighteen years and been in prison five months and eight days. When the king was dead, his ring and other remem- brances, which he had wished his family to keep for his sake, were withheld from them ; and the only personal remembrance which his sister, who was tenderly attached to him, was able to secure, was a battered old hat, which by some accident had been left in the Tower. This hat she treasured as a most valuable relic. It did not, however, long escape the prying eyes of the municipal officers, who took it away, saying that its preservation was a suspicious circumstance ! CHAPTER VI. MARIE ANTOINETTE AND ROBESPIERRE. 1 A BOOK appeared in France in 1880, called the " Memoirs of Klindworth." Klindworth was a diplomatist who took an active part in public life during the early half of the present century. He was on terms of per- sonal intimacy (at least he says he was) with Talleyrand, Metternich, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Palmerston, and M. Guizot ; his book consequently abounds in new facts, such as underlie the graver pages of pure history. One of these is a detailed narrative, given to him by a certain M. Grandidier, charged by Robespierre with a secret mission to Vienna, in July, 1793. The object of this mission was to detach Austria from the coalition against France. In this extract from the pages of Klindworth, Grandidier speaks for himself. " Baron Thugut, prime minister and minister for foreign affairs in Austria at that period, received me very amicably on my return to Vienna ; and when I informed him in a pre- liminary brief interview that I had brought with me fresh instructions to continue negotiations on the basis he himself had proposed, he testified his satisfaction, and invited me to dinner the next day. I went to his official residence, there- fore, at the time appointed. We dined tete d fete, and the dinner was a very good one. Our conversation turned on France, and on the general situation of affairs. After din- ner the minister, having left me for a moment, returned with a lady who was at that time known as Madame Charles de 1 From the " Supplement Litteraire du Figaro." Translated by me and published in " Littell's Living Age," Dec. 18, 1880. E. W. L.- 224 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Poutet, but subsequently she got leave to emblazon on her carriage and her scutcheon a countess's coronet. She was an exquisitely beautiful woman; her limbs were as finely formed as those of a model, and she had the most perfect carriage of the head I ever saw. I was dazzled by the vision. The minister introduced us. She spoke French fluently with no German accent, and had, in a remarkable degree, that gift of conversation which is so rarely met with, out of France. " As she took leave she said, ' Come and see me to-mor- row at one o'clock. I want to talk to you.' Punctual to the appointment, I was shown next day into a spacious apartment in the Imperial Palace. The lady did not keep me waiting, but received me cordially, and invited me to take a seat beside her. " ' Before I begin to speak of other things,' she said, I had better tell you that presently a lady will appear and pass through this room. I beg you do not rise or take any notice of her.' " This happened very shortly. ' It is the empress,' said Madame de Poutet. ' Her curiosity to see you has brought her here. Ah ! you have no idea,' she added in a tone of irony, ' how very narrow-minded you will find us in this place. We cross ourselves when any mention is made of France, and really and truly most people imagine that each French republican carries a private guillotine in his pocket. But a truce to this nonsense : let us talk of your affairs. I know your mission, but you will never succeed so long as Queen Marie Antoinette and her daughter are not set at liberty and sent back to their family. Blood relationship, public decency, and family honor absolutely require this condition before there can be any question of understanding between Austria and France. Let me ask you a few questions. I quite understand how Monsieur de Robes- pierre may not have thought of this in the busy situation in which he finds himself, but how does it happen that this obvious view of the matter has not presented itself to you ? The situation of the queen cannot but be a barrier to all entente between us, till it is changed.' MARIE ANTOINETTE AND ROBESPIERRE. 22$ " I tried to speak, but she begged me to let her finish on this subject all she wished to say. " ' You must not imagine,' she continued, ' that any per- sonal feeling of sympathy makes me speak as I am doing. I have very little sympathy either for the queen or for her late husband. One who has been born a king should know how to mount his horse and to defend his royalty ; and the queen of a great country, especially in a time of trial and misfortune, should not lead a life of pleasant dissipation. Les peuples resemble monkeys ; they like to imitate one another. If Charles I. of England had never been beheaded, you would not have put to death Louis XVI. But the queen is alone now, without her husband ; what harm can she do you? To put women to death is as atrocious as it is stupid ; and, indeed, have you any right to bring the queen to trial, since on the death of her husband she resumed her position as Archduchess of Austria? She belongs to us.' " Madame de Poutet here paused. She seemed waiting with impatience for my answer. " ' After what you have done me the honor to say, ma- dame,' I replied, ' I regret exceedingly that our minister did not speak to me on this subject before I left France. When our interview closes there will be one of two things for me to do : either I must go back to Paris and ask for fresh instructions, or I must ask for them in writing and await them here.' " ' Very good,' she said in a decided tone, < stay here and write." 1 " After a moment's pause she added, ' After all, it does but add one brief clause to our treaty. What are your own views upon the subject? ' " ' I have no opinions about it,' I replied. ' The libera- tion of the queen is no small matter, in the state of ferment existing in the minds of men in France. On the other hand, M. de Robespierre well understands the art of government, and I know him well enough to feel that he would not hesi- tate to brave public opinion, if firmly resolved, as I think he is, to make peace with Austria.' 226 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. " l Qui vent la fin veut Us moyens ' (he who desires the end accepts the means), she said. ' Write? " My answer speedily arrived from Paris. It was short and precise : ' Granted. Come back to Paris as soon as possible, with the draft of the treaty finally drawn up, and accompanied by a commissioner with full powers, in writing, to carry out the extradition,' " I did not lose a moment in informing M. Thugut of this important news. He told me to communicate it at once to Madame de Poutet. She received me most cordially and graciously. " ( I see/ she said, 'that all will now go right between us. The queen will be restored to us with the young princess. Remember what I said to you from the beginning. That is the indispensable condition of our entente, and I will imme- diately set to work with Thugut to arrange everything. And now that we no longer need any concealments, I will tell you plainly that the cession of the Low Countries to France really costs us nothing. We are willing to get rid of that horrid nest of clericalism and rebellion. The Low Coun- tries have been for two centuries a millstone round the neck of Austria, without doing her any good in return.' " All being as I have told you," continued M. Grandidier, " the treaty was completed without difficulty. After I had had a second conversation with the minister, we both signed the draft of it July 12, 1793." " When the old man," continues Klindworth, " reached this portion of his narrative, he drew out of a bundle of papers one containing a rough copy of the proposed treaty between France and Austria, and allowed me to read it at- tentively. After I got home I tried to remember it exactly, and wrote it down. This is the substance of the paper : ARTICLE I. From this day forward, and forever, there shall be firm peace, friendship, and an inviolable good understanding between the French Republic and the Emperor of Germany, King of Hun- gary and Bohemia. Both parties, henceforward, will carefully MARIE ANTOINETTE AND ROBESPIERRE. 22/ avoid anything calculated to disturb the reciprocal harmony of their relations. ARTICLE II. The former provinces of the Low Countries are ceded by his Majesty the Emperor, forever, to the French Republic ; and shall be possessed by that Republic in all sovereignty and pro- prietary, with all the territories that belong to them. ARTICLE III. The Emperor renounces, for himself and his successors, all rights and titles that he has or may yet have on the countries situated on the left bank of the Rhine, from the frontier of Switzerland below Basle, to the confluence with the Nethe above Andernach ; comprising the tete de pout at Manheim, and the town and citadel of Mayence. The Emperor also prom- ises to employ his good offices with the Empire, that it may consent to the cession of the said territories to the French Republic. ARTICLE IV. The French Republic consents that the Emperor shall annex to his dominions the countries situated between the Tyrol and the Danube, the Lech and the Salza ; and formally promises him all assistance he may need in arms, if any third power should dispute the aforesaid acquisition, or interfere with the tranquil possession thereof. ADDITIONAL AND SECRET CLAUSE. Marie Antoinette, ci-devant Queen of France, shall be, to- gether with her daughter, escorted to the French frontier, thence to be returned to Austria, her native country." " I was anxious," continued M. Grandidier, " to return to Paris with all speed, together with the commissioner fixed on by Baron Thugut to receive the queen's person in the name of the government of the emperor. He was a canon from the Cathedral Church of Waitsen ; a man of about forty, with a kind and engaging expression. His name was Soos. He knew German, spoke Latin after the fashion of 228 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. his countrymen, and French indifferently. M. de Thugut treated me with the utmost cordiality, and told me he hoped soon to see me return with the treaty ratified. I then went to take leave of Madame de Poutet. ' You are a dreadful republican, I know,' she said gayly ; ' but, alas ! I am greatly in your debt. Salute me farewell, and bon -voyage! " The commissioner and I reached Paris about five o'clock in the morning. An hour later I went to see Robespierre. Mademoiselle Cornelia, 1 always austere and always busy, was drying clothes, and received me in the courtyard. She con- gratulated me on my return, and told me that le patron was closeted with his brother about something very important, and that she had been told to let nobody go up to them. I waited half an hour. After that the door opened, and I went in. " I was received with civility, and made my report, which was very circumstantial. I then handed to Robespierre a copy of the treaty that had the signature of the prime minister of Austria, announced the arrival of the emperor's commissioner, and gave in an account of my expenses on the journey. Everything was well received. After having read the text of the treaty carefully, and ap- proved it formally, Robespierre expressed in a few words his satisfaction, and, while I was answering him, he wrote a few lines upon a piece of paper. "'This is an order for you," he said, 'to be admitted to the Temple to-morrow morning at seven o'clock, with Thugut's envoy.' " ' Must I present him to you first } ' I said. " ' There is no need that I should see him,' he replied. 1 You can give me an account of the interview. This treaty,' he continued, ' gives me a new map of France, by which I will confound and subdue all traitors, without and within.' "Then he made me a sign with his hand, as his custom was, and so dismissed me. "The next morning, at the appointed hour, the canon and I presented ourselves at the Temple. He had put on 1 The name given to Eleonore Duplay. MARIE AN7VINETTE AND ROBESPIERRE. 229 a black coat and a white cravat for the occasion, and was furnished with two sealed autograph letters from the emperor and empress to the queen. Two municipal guards and a member of the Council of the Commune were waiting for us. By their orders the jailer opened the doors, and soon we stood in the presence of the queen. " She was seated on a low stool, busy mending a petticoat of coarse black serge. Her back was half turned towards us, and she paid at first no attention to our presence. Her clothes were in rags. Over her breast was pinned a coarse white kerchief, and her shoes were very much worn. She stooped, like an old woman. She was deathly pale, and we could see distinctly that under her little cap. her hair was as white as snow. I made a few steps towards her, and bowing respectfully I presented the messenger of the emperor. " Then glancing at me for the first time, she cast upon me a look that all the days of my life I shall never cease to remember.