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Marie Antoinette Romances, Vol 4: Taking the Bastile

<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> THE FIRST BLOOD. Night was thickening as the two travelers reached La Villette, a suburb of Paris. A great flame rose before them. Billet pointed out the ruddy glare. "They are troops camping out," said Pitou; "Can't you see that, and they have lighted campfires. Here are some, so that there may naturally be more over yonder." [Pg 50] Indeed, on attentively looking on the right, Father Billet saw black detachments marching noiselessly in the shadow of St. Denis Plain, horse and foot. Their weapons glimmered in the pale starry light. Accustomed to see in the dark from his night roaming in the woods, Pitou pointed out to his master cannon mired to the hubs in the swampy fields. "Ho, ho," muttered Billet: "something new is going on here. Look at the sparks yonder. Make haste, my lad." "Yes, it is a house a-fire. See the sparks fly," added the younger man. Maggie stopped; the rider jumped off upon the pavement and going up to a group of soldiers in blue and yellow uniforms, bivouacking under the roadside trees, asked: "Comrades, can you tell me what is the matter in Paris?" The soldiers merely replied with some German oaths. "What the deuce do they say?" queried Billet of his brother peasant. "All I can tell is that it is not Latin," replied the youth, trembling greatly. "I was a fool to apply to the Kaiserlicks (Kaiserlich, Imperial Austrian grenadiers)?" muttered Billet, in his curiosity still standing in the middle of the road. "Bass on mit your vay," said an officer, stepping up; "Und bass bretty tam queeck, doo!" "Excuse me, captain," said the farmer, "but I want to go into Paris." "Vat next?" "As I see you are between me and the turnpike bars, I feared I would not be let go by." "Yah, you gan by go." Remounting, Billet indeed got on. But it was only to run in among the Bercheny Hussars, swarming in La Villette. This time, as they were his own countrymen, he got along better. "Please, what is the news from Paris?" he asked. "Why, it's your crazy Parisians, who want their Necker, and fire their guns off at us, as if we had anything to do with the matter." So replied a hussar. [Pg 51] "What Necker? have they lost him?" questioned Billet. "Certainly, the King has turned him out of office." "That great man turned out?" said the farmer with the stupor of a priest who hears of a sacrilege." "More than that, he is on the way to Brussels at present." "Then it is a joke we shall hear some laughing over," cried Billet in a terrible voice, without thinking of the danger he ran in preaching insurrection amid twelve or fifteen thousand royalist sabres. Remounting Maggie, he drove her with cruel digs of the heel up to the bars. As he advanced he saw the fire more plainly; a long column rose from the spot to the sky. It was the barrier that was burning. A howling and furious mob with women intermixed, yelling and capering as usual more excitedly than the men, fed the flames with pieces of the bars, the clerk's office and the custom-house officers' property. On the road, Hungarian and German regiments looked on at the devastation, with their muskets grounded, without blinking. Billet did not let the rampart of flame stop him: but urged Maggie through smoke and fire. She bravely burst through the incandescent barrier; but on the other side was a compact crowd stretching from the outer town to the heart of the city, some singing, some shouting: "To arms!" Billet looked what he was, a good farmer coming to town on his business. Perhaps he roared "Make way there!" too roughly, but Pitou tempered it with so polite a "Make way, if you please!" that one appeal corrected the other. Nobody had any interest in staying Billet in attending to his business and they let him go through. Maggie had recovered her strength from the fire having singed her hide and all this unusual clamor worried her. Billet was obliged to hold her in now, in the fear of crushing the idlers classed before the town gate and the others who were as curiously running from the gates to the bars. Somehow or other they pushed on, till they reached the boulevard, where they were forced to stop. [Pg 52] A procession was marching from the Bastile to the Royal Furniture Stores, the two stone knots binding the enclosure of Paris to its girth. This broad column followed a funeral barrow on which were placed two busts, one covered with crape, the other with flowers; the one in mourning was Necker's, the Prime Minister and eminently the Treasurer, dismissed but not disgraced; the flower-crowned bust was the Duke of Orleans', who had openly taken the Swiss financier's part. Billet, asking, learned that this was popular homage to the banker and his defender. The farmer was born in a country where the Orleans family had been venerated for a century and more. He belonged to the Philosophical sect and consequently regarded Necker not only as a great minister but an apostle of humanity. There was ample to fire him. He jumped off his horse without clearly knowing what he was about and mingled with the throng, yelling: "Long live the Duke of Orleans! Necker forever!" Once a man mixes with a mob his individual liberty disappears. He was the more easily carried on as he was at the head of the party. As they kept up the shouting, "Long live Necker—no more foreign troops—down with the outlandish cutthroats!" he added his lusty voice to the others. Any superiority is always appreciated by the masses. The shrill, weak voice of the Parisian, spoilt by wine bibbing or want of proper food, was nowhere beside the countryman's fresh, full and sonorous roar, so that without too much jostling, shoving and knocking about, Billet finally reached the litter. In another ten minutes, one of the bearers, whose enthusiasm had been too great for his strength, gave up his place to him. Billet, you will observe, had got on. Only the propagator of Gilbert's doctrines a day before, he was now one of the instruments in the triumph of Necker and the Duke of Orleans. But he had hardly arrived at his post than he thought of Pitou and the borrowed horse. What had become of them? [Pg 53] While nearing the litter, Billet looked and, through the flare of the torches accompanying the turn-out, and by the lamps illumining all the house windows, he beheld a kind of walking platform formed of half a dozen men shouting and waving their arms. In the midst it was easy to discern Pitou and his long arms. He did what he could to defend Maggie, but spite of all the horse was stormed and was carrying all who could clamber on her back and hang on to the harness and her tail. In the enlarging darkness she resembled an elephant loaded with hunters going for the tiger. Her vast neck had three or four fellows established on it, howling: "Three cheers for Orleans and Necker—down with the foreigners!" To which Pitou answered: "All right, but you will smother Maggie among ye." The intoxication was general. For an instant Billet thought of carrying help to his friend and horse but he reflected that he would probably lose the honor of bearing the litter forever if he gave it up; he bethought him also of the bargain made with Lefranc about swapping the horses, and anyhow, if the worst happened, he was rich enough to sacrifice the price of a horse on the altar of his country. Meanwhile the procession made way: turning to the left it went down Montmarte Street to Victoires Place. Reaching the Palais Royale, a great throng prevented its passing on, a number of men with green leaves stuck in their hats who were halloaing: "To arms!" Were these friends or foes? Why green cockades, green being the color of Count Artois, the King's youngest brother? After a brief parley all was explained. On hearing of Necker's removal from office, a young man had rushed out of the Foy Coffeehouse, jumped on a table in the Palais Royale Gardens, and flourishing a pistol, shouted: "To arms!" All the loungers in the public strolling grounds took up the call. [Pg 54] All the foreign regiments in the French army were gathered round the capital. It looked like an Austrian invasion, as the regimental names grated on French ears. Their utterance explained the fear in the masses. The young man named them and said that the Swiss troops, camped in the Champs Elysées, with four field pieces, were going to march into the city that night, with Prince Lambesq's Dragoons to clear the way. He proposed that the town defender should wear an emblem different from theirs and, plucking a horse-chestnut leaf, stuck it in his hat. All the beholders instantly imitated him so that the three thousand persons stripped the Palais Royale trees in a twinkling. In the morning the young man's name was unknown but it was celebrated that night; it was Camille Desmoulins. Men recognized one another in the crowd, shook hands in token of brotherhood and all joined in with the procession. At Richelieu Street corner Billet looked back and saw the disappearance of Maggie; the increase of curiosity during the halt was such that more had been added to the poor animal's burden and she had sunk under the surcharge. The farmer sighed. Then collecting his powers, he called out to Pitou three times like the ancient Romans at the funeral of their king; he fancied a voice made reply out of the bowels of the earth but it was drowned in the confused uproar, ascending to heaven partly cheers and partly threatening. Still the train proceeded. All the stores were closed; but all windows were open, and thence fell encouragement on the marchers farther to frenzy them. At Vendome Square, an unforeseen obstacle checked the march. Like the logs rolling in a freshet which strike up against the piles of a bridge and rebound, the leaders recoiled from a detachment of a Royal German Regiment. These were dragoons, who, seeing the mob surge into the square from St. Honore Street, relaxed the reins of their chargers, impatient at having been curbed since five o'clock, and they dashed on the people at full speed. The bearers of the litter received the first shock, and were knocked down when it was overthrown. A Savoyard, before [Pg 55] Billet, was the first to rise. He picked up the effigy of Prince Orleans, and fixing it on the top of his walking stick, waved it above his head, crying: "Long live the Duke of Orleans!" whom he had never seen, and "Hurrah for Necker!" whom he did not know from Adam. Billet was going to do the same with Necker's bust, but he was forestalled. A young dandy in elegant attire had been watching it, the easier for him than Billet as he was not burdened with the barrow poles, and he sprang for it the moment it reached the ground. Up it went on the point of a pike, and, set close to the other, served as rallying-point for the scattered processionists. Suddenly a flash lit up the square. At the same instant bang went the report, and the bullets whistled. Something heavy struck Billet in the forehead so that he fell, believing that he was killed. But as he did not lose his senses, and felt no hurt except pain in the head, he understood that at the worst he was merely wounded. He slapped his hand to his brow and perceived it was but a bump there, though his palm was smeared with blood. The well-dressed stripling in front of the farmer had been shot in the breast; it was he who was slain and his blood that had splashed Billet. The shock the latter felt was from Necker's bust, falling from want of a holder, on the farmer's head. He uttered a shout, half rage, half horror. He sprang aloof from the youth, writhing in the death-gasp. Those around fell back in like manner, and the yell which he gave, repeated by the multitude, was prolonged in funeral echoes to the last groups in St. Honore Street. This shout was a new proof of revolt. A second volley was heard: and deep gaps in the throng showed where the projectiles had passed. What indignation inspired in Billet, and what he did in the gush of enthusiasm, was to pick up the blood-spattered bust, wave it over his head, and cheer with his fine manly voice in protest at the risk of being killed like the patriotic fop dead at his feet. [Pg 56] But instantly a large and vigorous hand came down on the farmer's shoulder and so pressed him that he had to bow to the weight. He tried to wrest himself from the grasp, but another fist, quite as strong and heavy, fell on his other shoulder. He turned, growling, to learn what kind of antagonist was this. "Pitou?" he cried. "I am your man—but stop a little and you will see why." Redoubling his efforts he brought the resisting man to his knees and flat on his face. Scarcely was this done than a second volley thundered. The Savoyard bearing the Orleans bust came down in his turn, hit by a ball in the thigh. Then they heard iron on the paving stones—the dragoons charged for the second time. One horse, furious and shaking his mane like the steed in the Apocalypse, jumped over the unhappy Savoyard, who felt the chill of a lance piercing his chest as he fell on Billet and Pitou. The whirlwind rushed to the end of the street, where it engulfed itself in terror and death! Nothing but corpses strewed the ground. All fled by the adjacent streets. The windows banged to. A lugubrious silence succeeded the cheers and the roars of rage. For an instant Billet waited, held by the prudent peasant; then, feeling that the danger went farther away, he rose on one knee while the other, like the hare in her form, pricked up his ear only without raising his head. "I believe you are right, Master," said the young man; "we have arrived while the soup is hot." "Lend me a hand." "To help you out of this?" "No: the young exquisite is dead, but the Savoyard is only in a swoon, I reckon. Help me get him on my back. We cannot leave so plucky a fellow here to be butchered by these cursed troopers." Billet used language going straight to Pitou's heart; he had no answer but to obey. He took up the warm and bleeding body and loaded it like a bag of meal on to the robust farmer's back. Seeing St. Honore Street looked clear and deserted, he took that road to the Palais Royale with his man. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 57] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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