XIV. THE SUFFERINGS OF LOUIS XVI.

Dissatisfied with men and things, dissatisfied with others and himself, the mind and heart of Louis XVI. were the prey of moral tortures which left him no repose. He began to be ashamed of his concessions, and to repent of having accepted pusillanimous advice. Why had he not succeeded in being a king? Why had he garrisoned Paris insufficiently ever since the outbreak of the Revolution? Why had he suffered the Bastille to be taken, encouraged the emigration, and disbanded his bodyguards? Why had he not opposed the first persecutions aimed at the Church? Why had he pretended to approve acts and ideas which horrified him? Why, by resorting to deplorable equivocations which cast a shadow over his policy and his character, had he reduced his most devoted followers to doubt and despair? Such thoughts as these assailed him like so many stings of conscience. The sentiments of monarchy and of military honor awoke in him once more, and he sounded with bitterness the whole depth of the abyss into which his irresolution had plunged him. In seeing what he was, he recalled sorrowfully what he had been, and comprehended by cruel experience what feebleness could make of a Most Christian King and eldest son of the Church, an heir of Louis XIV. He thought of the many brave men, victims of his political errors, who on his account had suffered exile and ruin; of the faithful royalists menaced, because of him, with prison and death. He thought of the incessantly repeated crimes, the massacres of the Glacière, the impunity of the brigands of "headsman" Jourdan, of Brissac's incarceration. This is what it is, he said within himself, to have suffered religion to be persecuted and to have believed that, were the altar once overthrown, the throne might rest secure. He reproached himself bitterly for having sanctioned the civil organization of the clergy at the close of 1790, and thus drawn upon himself the censure of the Sovereign Pontiff. He wanted to be done with concessions, but he understood perfectly that it was too late now to resist, and that he was irrevocably lost in consequence of events undesired and unforeseen.

What was to be done? How could he sail against the stream? Where find a point of vantage? Ought he to take violent measures? If the unhappy King had been alone, perhaps he might have tried to do so. But he feared to endanger his wife and children by thus acting.

As if to push the wretched monarch to extremities, the National Assembly passed two decrees which struck him to the heart. According to the first of these, voted May 19, any ecclesiastic having refused the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, could be transported at the simple request of twenty citizens of the canton in which he resided. According to the second, voted June 8, a camp of twenty thousand federates, recruited from every canton of the realm, were to be assembled before Paris, in order, as was said in one of the preambles, "to take every hope from the enemies of the common weal who are scheming in the interior."

They had counted too much on the King's patience. He could not resolve to sanction the two decrees, and banish the ecclesiastics whose behavior he honored. Dumouriez afflicted him still further, when, in entreating him to yield, he asked why he had sanctioned, at the close of 1790, the decree obliging the clergy to take oath to the civil constitution of the clergy. "Sire," said he, "you sanctioned the decree for the priests' oath, and it is to that your veto must be applied. If I had been one of your counsellors at the time, I would, at the risk of my life, have advised you to refuse your sanction. Now my opinion is that having, as I dare to say, committed the fault of approving this decree, which has produced enormous evils, your veto, if you apply it to the second decree, which may arrest the deluge of blood ready to flow, will burden your conscience with all the crimes to which the people are tending." Never had a sovereign's conscience been a prey to similar perplexities. Louis XVI. seemed crushed beneath an irresistible fatality. The Tuileries, haunted night and day by the spectre of Charles I., assumed a dismal air. At this period a sort of stupor characterized the countenance, the gait, and even the silence of the future victim of January 21. He no longer spoke; one might say he no longer thought. He seemed prostrated, petrified.

A rumor got about that he had become almost imbecile through care and trouble, so much so that he did not recognize his son, but on seeing him approach, had asked: "What child is that?" It was added that while out walking he caught sight of the steeple of Saint Denis from the top of the hill, and cried out: "That is where I shall be on my birthday." He had been so calumniated, so misunderstood, so outraged, that not merely his crown but his existence had become an intolerable burden to him. His throne and his life alike disgusted him. He was no longer a King, but only the ghost of one.

Madame Campan thus describes him: "At this period the King fell into a discouragement amounting to physical prostration. For ten days together he never uttered a word, even in the bosom of his family, except when the game of backgammon, which he played with Madame Elisabeth after dinner, obliged him to pronounce some indispensable words. The Queen drew him out of this condition, so fatal at a critical time when every minute may necessitate action, by throwing herself at his feet and addressing him sometimes in words intended only to frighten him, and at others expressing her affection for him. She demanded, also, what he owed to his family, and went so far as to say that if they must perish, it ought to be with honor, and without waiting to be strangled one after another on the floor of their apartment."

While Louis XVI. assisted unmoved, not merely like Charles V. at his own obsequies, but at those of royalty, the blood of Maria Theresa was boiling in the veins of Marie Antoinette. The scenes she had witnessed sometimes extorted sobs and cries of anguish from her. Her pride revolted at seeing the royal mantle, crown, and sceptre dragged through the mire. She wanted to struggle to the last, to hope against all hope, to cling to the last chances of safety like a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of his ship. Who could say? She might find defenders where she least expected them. It was for this reason that she wished to meet Dumouriez, as she had met Mirabeau and Barnave. Dumouriez has preserved the details of this interview in his Memoirs.

How times had changed! Secrecy was almost necessary if one sought the honor of speaking with the Queen of France. Even to salute her was to expose one's self to the suspicion of belonging to the pretended Austrian committee which was the perpetual object of popular invective. When Louis XVI. told Dumouriez that the Queen desired a private interview with him, the minister was not at all well pleased. He thought it a useless step which might be misinterpreted by all parties. However, he must needs obey. He had received an order to go down to the Queen an hour before the meeting of the Council. That it might be the sooner over, he took the precaution of going half an hour late to this perilous rendezvous. He had been presented to Marie Antoinette on the day of his nomination as minister. She had then addressed him several words, asking him to serve the King well, and he had replied with a respectful phrase. Since then he had not seen her. When he entered her room, he found the Queen alone, very much flushed, and pacing to and fro in an agitation which promised a lively interview. She approached him with an air of majestic irritation: "Sir!" she exclaimed, "you are all-powerful at this moment, but it is by the favor of the people, who soon break their idols. Your existence depends upon your conduct." Dumouriez insisted on the necessity of scrupulously respecting the Constitution, which Marie Antoinette was unwilling to do. "It will not last," she said, raising her voice; "take care of yourself!"—"Madame," replied the minister, "I am past fifty; I have encountered many perils during my life, and in entering the ministry, I thoroughly understood that responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers."—"Nothing was wanting but to calumniate me," cried the Queen, tears flowing from her eyes; "you seem to think me capable of having you assassinated." Agitated as greatly as the sovereign, "God preserve me," said Dumouriez, "from offering you so grievous an offence! Your Majesty's character is great and noble. You have given proofs of it which I admire and which have attached me to you." Marie Antoinette grew calmer. "Believe me, Madame," went on the minister; "I have no interest in deceiving you, and I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you do.... This is not, as you seem to think, a popular and transitory movement. It is the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses. The conflagration is stirred up by great parties, and there are scoundrels and fools in all of them. I behold nothing in the Revolution but the King and the nation as a whole; all that tends to separate them leads to their mutual ruin; I am doing all I can to reunite them, and it is your part to aid me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, say so, and I will at once offer my resignation to the King, and go into a corner to bewail the fate of my country and your own." The interview ended amicably. The Queen and the minister talked over the different factions. Dumouriez spoke to Marie Antoinette of the faults and crimes of each; he tried to convince her that she was misled by those who surrounded her, and the Queen appeared to be convinced. When he was obliged to call her attention to the clock, as the hour for the Council had arrived, she dismissed him most affably.

If we may credit Madame Campan, who has also given an account of this interview, the impression Marie Antoinette received from it was scarcely a good one. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I found the Queen extremely troubled. She said she no longer knew where she stood; whether the Jacobin chiefs were making overtures to her through Dumouriez, or Dumouriez, abandoning the Jacobins, was acting on his own account; that she had given him an audience; that, when alone with her, he had fallen at her feet and said that although he had pulled the red bonnet down to his ears, yet he was not and could not be a Jacobin; that the Revolution had been allowed to fall into the hands of a rabble of disorganizers who, seeking only for pillage, were capable of everything, and could furnish the Assembly with a formidable army, ready to undermine the support of a throne already too much shaken. While speaking with extreme warmth, he had seized the Queen's hand, and, kissing it with transport, cried, 'Permit yourself to be saved!' The Queen said to me that the protestations of a traitor could not be believed, and that his entire conduct was so well known that undoubtedly the wisest thing would be not to trust him."

Meantime, the danger constantly increased. Even the gates of the Tuileries were no longer fastened. Hawkers of vile pamphlets and sanguinary satires on the Queen cried their infamous wares under the very windows of the palace; and the National Assembly, sitting close beside, and hearing them—the National Assembly, terrorized by Jacobins and pikemen—dared not even censure such baseness. On June 4, a deputy named Ribes, till then unknown, cited from the tribune the titles of the following articles in Fréron's journal, l'Orateur du Peuple: "The crowned porcupine, a constitutional animal who behaves unconstitutionally."—"Crimes of M. Capet since the Revolution."—"Decree to be passed forbidding the Queen to sleep with the King."—"The royal tigress, separated from her worthy spouse, to serve as a hostage." "Rouse up!" cried the indignant deputy. "There is still time. Join with me in proclaiming war on traitors and justice for the seditious, and the country is safe!" Ribes preached in the desert. The Assembly shrugged their shoulders and treated him as a fool.

June 11, another deputy, M. Delsaux, said from the tribune: "Last evening, at half-past seven, passing through the Tuileries, I saw an orator standing on a chair and speaking with great vehemence. Mixing with the crowd, I heard him read a libel strongly inciting to the King's assassination. This libel is called, 'The Fall of the Idol of the French,' and these sentences occur in it: 'This monster employs his power and his treasures to hinder our regeneration. A new Charles IX., he wishes to bring desolation and death to France. Go, cruel wretch; thy crimes shall have an end. Damiens was less guilty. He was punished by most horrible tortures for having desired to deliver France from a monster. And thou, whose offences are twenty-five million times greater, art left unpunished! But tremble, tyrant; there is a Scævola amongst us.'"

The Assembly listened, but took no measures. No further restraint was placed either on moral or material disorder. Anarchy showed a nameless epileptic ferocity. Never had the press been more furious or licentious. It was a torrent of mud and gall and blood. The limits of invective and insult were driven further back. "You see that I am annoyed," said the Queen to Dumouriez in Louis XVI.'s presence; "I dare not go to the window looking into the garden. Last evening, needing a breath of air, I showed myself at the window facing the courtyard. A gunner belonging to the guard apostrophized me in an insulting way, and added: 'What pleasure it would give me to have your head on the end of my bayonet!' In that frightful garden a man standing on a chair reads out horrors against us on one side, and on the other may be seen a soldier or a priest whom they are dragging through a pond, and crushing with blows and insults. Meantime, others are flying balloons or quietly strolling about. Ah! what a place! what a people!"