XXVII. THE NIGHT OF AUGUST NINTH TO TENTH.

The night was serene, the sky clear and sown with stars. The calmness of nature contrasted with the revolutionary passions that had been unchained. On account of the heat, all the windows of the Tuileries had been left open, and from a distance the palace could be seen illuminated as if for a fête. It had just struck midnight. The Revolution was executing the programme of the Cordeliers' section. The tocsin was sounding all over the city. Everybody named the church whose bell he thought he recognized. The people of the faubourgs were out of bed in their houses. The drums mingled with the tocsin. The revolutionists beat the general alarm, and the royalists the call to arms.

No one was asleep at the Tuileries. There was no further question of etiquette. The night reception in the royal bedchamber was omitted for the first time. Certain old servitors, faithful guardians of tradition, in vain recalled that it was not permissible to sit down in the sovereign's apartments. The courtiers of the last hour seated themselves in armchairs, on tables and consoles. Louis XVI. stayed sometimes in his chamber and sometimes in his Great Cabinet, also called the Council Hall, where the assembled ministers received constant tidings of what was happening without. The pious monarch had summoned his confessor, Abbé Hébert, and shutting himself up with this venerable priest, he besought from Heaven the resignation and courage he needed to pass through the final crisis. Madame Elisabeth showed the faithful Madame Campan the carnelian pin which fastened her fichu. These words, surrounding the stalk of a lily, were engraved on it: "Forget offences, pardon injuries."—"I fear much," said the virtuous Princess, "that this maxim has little influence over our enemies, but it must be none the less dear to us." Louis XVI. did not wear his padded vest. "I consented to do so on the 14th of July," said he, "because on that day I was merely going to a ceremony where an assassin's dagger might be apprehended. But on a day when my party may be forced to fight with the revolutionists, I should think it cowardly to preserve my life by such means."

Marie Antoinette was grave and tranquil in her heroism. There was nothing affected about her, nothing theatrical, neither passion, despair, nor the spirit of revenge. According to the expressions of Roederer, who never left her, "she was a woman, a mother, a wife in peril; she feared, she hoped, she grieved, and she took heart again." She was also a queen, and the daughter of Maria Theresa. Her anxiety and grief were restrained or concealed by her respect for her rank, her dignity, and her name. When she reappeared amidst the courtiers in the Council Hall, after having dissolved in tears in Thierry's room, the redness of her cheeks and eyes had disappeared. The courtiers said to each other: "What serenity! what courage!"

The struggle might still seem doubtful. Something like two hundred noblemen who had spontaneously repaired to the King, seven hundred and fifty Swiss, and nine hundred mounted gendarmes posted at the approaches of the Tuileries were the last resources of the commander-in-chief of the French army. The Swiss, who through some one's extreme imprudence had not cartridges enough, were posted in the apartments, the chapel, and at the entry of the Royal Court. Baron de Salis, as the oldest captain of the regiment, commanded at the stairways. A reserve of three hundred men, under Captain Durler, was stationed in the Swiss Court, before the Pavilion of Marsan. The National Guards belonging to the sections Petits-Pères and the Filles-Saint-Thomas showed themselves well disposed toward the King; but it was different with the other companies. As to the mounted gendarmes, Louis XVI. could not count on them, and before the riot ended they were to join the insurgents in spite of all the efforts made by their royalist officers. The artillerists of the National Guard, charged with serving the cannons placed in the courts and before the palace doors to defend the entry, were to act in the same manner.

Like the Swiss, the two hundred noblemen, martyrs to the old French ideas of honor, had resolved to be loyal unto death. With their silk coats and drawing-room swords, they seemed as if they had come to a fête instead of a combat. The servants of the chateau joined them. Some of them had pistols and blunderbusses. Some, for lack of other weapons, had taken the tongs from the chimneys. They jested with each other over their accoutrements. No, no; there was nothing laughable in these champions of misfortune. They represented the past, with its ancient fidelity to the altar and the throne. A great poet who had the spirit of divination, Heinrich Heine, wrote on November 12, 1840, as if he foresaw February 24, 1848: "The middle classes will possibly make less resistance than the aristocracy would do in a similar case. Even in its most pitiable weakness, its enervation by immorality and its degeneration through flattery, the old nobility was still alive to a certain point of honor unknown to our middle classes, who have become prosperous by industry, but who will perish by it also. Another 10th of August is predicted for these middle classes; but I doubt whether the industrial Knights of the throne of July will prove themselves as heroic as the powdered marquises of the old régime who, in silk coats and flimsy dress swords, opposed the people who invaded the Tuileries." The greater part of these noblemen, volunteers for the last conflict, were old men with white hair. There were also children among them. M. Mortimer-Ternaux, author of the Histoire de la Terreur, has remarked: "Was not this a time to exclaim with Racine:—

"'See what avengers arm themselves for the quarrel?'

"Who could have told Louis XIV., when in the midst of the splendors of his court he was present at the performance of Athalie, that the poet was predicting, through the mouth of Joad, the fate reserved for his great-grandson?" The royalist National Guards who were in the apartments considered the volunteer noblemen as companions in arms. They shook hands with each other amid cries of "Long live the King! Long live the National Guard!" But the troops outside did not share these sentiments. Jealous of the royalists assembled in the palace, they wanted to have them sent out. A regimental commander having come to make known this desire to Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette exclaimed: "Nothing can separate us from these gentlemen; they are our most faithful friends. They will share the dangers of the National Guard. They will obey us. Put them at the cannon's mouth, and they will show you how men die for their King."

Meantime what had become of Pétion, whose business it was, as mayor, to defend the palace? Summoned to the Tuileries, he arrived there at eleven in the evening. As Louis XVI. said to him: "It seems there is a great deal of commotion?"—"Yes, sire," he replied, "the excitement is great." And he enlarged upon the measures he claimed that he had taken, and his pretended haste to wait upon the King. In going out, he came face to face with M. de Mandat, who, as general-in-chief of the National Guard, was in command of all military forces. "Why," exclaimed he, "have the police refused cartridges to the National Guard when they have wasted them on the Marseillais? My men have only four charges apiece; some of them have not one. No matter; I answer for everything; my measures are taken, providing I am authorized, by an order signed by you, to repel force by force." Not daring to avow his complicity with the riot, Pétion signed the order demanded. Then he made his escape under pretext of inspecting the gardens, and fell amongst some royalist National Guards, who reprimanded him severely. He began to fear being kept at the Tuileries as a hostage, to guarantee the palace against the attempts of the populace, and went to the Assembly. It had adjourned at ten o'clock the evening before, but on account of the crisis had met again at two in the morning. The Assembly knew the gravity of the danger as well as the King did; but through a ridiculous and culpable point of honor, it affected not to recognize it, and devoted to the reading of a colonial report the moments it should have employed in saving that Constitution it had sworn to maintain. Pétion merely put in an appearance in the Hall of the Manège. But he took good care not to return to the Tuileries. At half-past three in the morning the rolling of a carriage was heard from the palace. It was that of the mayor, going back empty. He had not dared to get into it, and had only sent his coachman an order to return when he found himself in safety at the mayoralty, whither he had made his way on foot.

Meanwhile, some hundred unknown individuals, who gathered at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and surreptitiously made their way into one of the halls, had formed an insurrectionary Commune. On their own authority they appointed commissaries of sections, and dismissed the staff of the National Guard, who were very much in their way; but retained in office Manuel as procurator and Pétion as mayor. This new municipality, whose very existence was unknown at the palace, had just learned that Mandat, general-in-chief of the National Guard, had a document in his pocket by which Pétion authorized him to oppose force to force. It was necessary to get rid of this document at any cost. The municipality sent Mandat an order to come to the Hôtel-de-Ville. He knew nothing about the revolution that had just taken place there. And yet he hesitated to obey. A secret presentiment took possession of his soul. Finally, at the instance of Roederer, he decided, towards five in the morning, to leave the Tuileries and go to that Hôtel-de-Ville, which was to be so fatal to him. When he came before the municipality he was surprised to see new faces.

He was accused of having intended to disperse "the innocent and patriotic column of the people," and sentenced to be taken to the Abbey prison. It was a sentence of death. Mandat was massacred on the steps of the Hôtel-de-Ville. A pistol-shot brought him down. Pikes and sabres finished him. His body was thrown into the Seine. Such was the first exploit of the new Commune. It preluded thus the massacres of September. "Mandat's death," says Count de Vaublanc in his Memoirs, "was, beyond any doubt, the chief cause of the calamities of the day. If he had attacked the rebels as soon as they came near the palace, he could have dispersed them with ease. They took a long time to form and set off; and, being undecided and uneasy, they often halted. No troop marching from a given point in this immense city knew whether it was seconded by the rebels from other quarters, and lost much time in making sure." The second exploit of the Commune was to confine Pétion at the mayoralty under the guard of six men. A voluntary captive, this accomplice of the insurrection rejoiced at a measure which sheltered him from every danger. As M. Mortimer-Ternaux has observed: "On this fatal night, when the passion of the royalty was fulfilled, Pétion doubled the parts of Judas and Pontius Pilate. Like Judas, he went at nightfall to give the kiss of peace to Louis XVI. by assuring him of his loyalty; like the Roman governor, he proclaimed at daybreak the impotence with which he had stricken himself, and washed his hands of all that was to happen."

When the first fires of this fatal day were kindling in the sky, Marie Antoinette experienced a profound emotion. Looking with melancholy at the horizon which began to lighten: "Sister," said she to Madame Elisabeth, "come and see the sun rise." It was the sun that was to illumine the death-struggle of royalty. Sinister omen! the sun was red