The Queen then turned to the Commissioners.
"What is it, Messieurs?" she asked. "Is there danger?"
"I don't know," answered Legros bluntly.
Dangeau threw her a reassuring glance.
"It is a street riot, I think," he said calmly. "It is probably of no consequence; and in any case, Madame, we are here to protect you, with our lives if necessary. You may be perfectly assured of that."
The Queen thanked him with an earnest look and resumed her seat. The noise outside decreased, and presently the routine of the day fell heavily about them once more.
If Dangeau were disturbed in mind his face showed nothing, and if he found the day of an interminable length he did not say so. When the evening brought him relief, he found the Council in considerable excitement. The prisons had been raided, "hundreds killed," said one. "Bah! only one or two, nothing to speak of," maintained another.
Edmond Cléry looked agitated.
"It is only the beginning," he whispered, as he passed his friend. He was on duty with the prisoners, so further conversation was impossible; but Dangeau's sleep in the Council-room was not much sounder than that of the night before in the Queen's ante-chamber.
CHAPTER V
A CARNIVAL OF BLOOD
September the third dawned heavy with murky clouds, out of which climbed a sun all red, like a ball of fire. The mists of the autumn morning caught the tinge, but no omens could add to the tense foreboding which wrapt the city. It needed no signs in the sky to prophesy a day of terror.
At La Force a crowded court-yard held those of the prisoners who had escaped the previous day's massacre. They had been driven from their cells at dawn, and, after an hour or two of strained anticipation, had gathered into their accustomed coteries. Mme. de Lamballe, who had heard the mob howling for her blood, sat placidly beautiful. Now and then she spoke to a friend, but for the most part she kept her eyes on the tiny copy of The Imitation of Christ which was found in her blood-stained clothes later on in that frightful day. Others, less devout, or less alarmed, were gossipping, chattering, even laughing, or playing cards, as if La Force were Versailles, and the hands on the clock of Time had never moved for the last four years.
Mme. de Maillé was gone. Her hacked corpse still lay in its pool of blood, her dead eyes stared unburied at the lowering sky; but Mme. de Montargis sat in her old place, her attendant Vicomte at her side. If her face was pale the rouge hid it, and at least her smile was as ready, her voice as careless, as ever. Bault, the gaoler, stared as he passed her.
"These aristocrats!" he muttered; "any honest woman would be half-dead of fright after yesterday, and what to-day will bring, Heaven knows! I myself, mille diables! I myself, I shake, my hand trembles, I am in the devil's own sweat—and there she sits, that light woman, and laughs!"
As he passed into his own room, his wife caught him by the arm——
"Jean, Jean, mon Dieu, Jean! They are coming back!" He strained his ears, listening, gripping his wife, as she gripped him.
"It is true," he murmured hoarsely.
A sullen, heavy drone burdened the air. It was like the sound of the rising tide on a day of storm—far off, but nearer, every moment nearer, nearer, until it drowned the thumping of the frightened pulses which beat so loudly at his ears. A buzz as of infernal bees—its component parts, laughter of hell, audible lust of cruelty, just retribution clamorous, and the cry of innocent blood shed long ago. All this, blent with the howl of the beast who scents blood, made up a sound so awful, that it was small wonder that the sweat dripped heavily from the brow of Bault, the gaoler, or that his wife clung to his arm, praying him to think of their children.
To his honour be it said that he risked his life, and more than his life, to save some two hundred of his prisoners, but for the rest—their doom was sealed.
It had been written long ago, in letters of cumulative anguish, when the father of Mme. de Montargis had torn that shrieking peasant bride from her husband's side on their marriage-day, when her grandfather hanged at his gates the starving wretches who clamoured over-loudly for release from the gabelle—hardly a noble family in France but had some such record at their backs, signs in an alphabet that was to spell "The Terror." At the hands of the fathers was sown the seed of hate, and the doom of the reaping came fast upon their children.
King Mob was at his revels, but he must needs play a ghastly comedy with the victims. There should be a trial for each, a really side-splitting affair. "A table, Bault," and up with the judges, three of them, wrapped in a drunken dignity, a chair apiece, a bonnet rouge on each august head; and prisoner after prisoner hurried up, and interrogated. A look was enough for some, a word too much for others. Here and there a lucky answer drew applause, and won a life, but for the most part came the sentence, "A l'Abbaye,"—and straightway off went the condemned to the inviolable cloisters of death.
Mme. de Montargis came up trippingly upon the Vicomte de Sélincourt's arm. Their names were enough—both stank in the nostrils of the crowd. There was a shout of "Austrians, Austrian spies! take them away, take them out!"
"To the Abbaye," bawled the reverend judges, and Madame made them a little curtsey. This was better than she expected.
"I thank you, Messieurs," she murmured; and then to the Vicomte: "Mon ami, we are in luck. The Abbaye can hardly be more incommodious than La Force."
"Quelle comédie!" responded Sélincourt, with a shrug, and with that the door before them opened.
Let us give them the credit of their qualities. That open door gave straight into hell—an inferno of tossing pikes which dripped with blood, dripped to a pavement red and slippery as a shambles, whilst a hoarse, wild-beast roar, full of oaths, and lust, and savage violence, broke upon their ears.
If Mme. de Montargis hesitated, it was for the hundredth part of a second only. Then she raised her scent-ball carelessly to her nostrils, and the hand that held it did not shake.
"Tiens, mon ami," she said, "your comedy becomes tragedy. I never thought it my rôle, but it seems le bon Dieu thinks otherwise"; and with that she stepped daintily out on to the reeking cobble-stones. One is glad to think that the first pike-thrust was well aimed, and that it was an unconscious form that went down to the mire and blood below.
The beautiful Lamballe was just behind. They say she knew she was going to her death. There is a tale of a dream—God! what a dream!—an augury, what not? Heaven knows no great degree of prescience was required. She turned very pale, her eyes on her book until the last moment, when she slipped it into her pocket, with one of those unconscious movements dictated by a brain too numb to work otherwise than by habit. She met the horror with dilated eyes—eyes that glazed to a faint before death struck her. Nature was merciful, and death a boon, for over her corpse began a carnival of lust and blood so hideous that imagination staggers at it, and history veils it in shuddering generalities. No need to dwell upon its details.
What concerns us is that, having her head upon a pike, and the mutilated body trailing by the heels, the whole mad mob set off to the Temple, to show Marie Antoinette her friend, and to serve the Queen as they had served the