登陆注册
5386900000118

第118章 JUNE 20 AND AUGUST 10, 1792.(4)

While the mother was comforting her children, Louis, yielding to Acloque's entreaties, had left the room, in order to show himself to the people. Madame Elizabeth, his sister, followed him through the corridor into the great hall, passing through the seething crowd, which soon separated her from the king. Pushed about on all sides, Madame Elizabeth could not follow, and was now alone in the throng, accompanied only by her equerry, M. Saint-Pardoux. Armed men pressed up against the princess, and horrid cries surged around her.

"There is the Austrian woman!" and at once all pikes, all weapons were directed against the princess.

"For God's sake!" cried M. de Saint Pardoux, "what do you want to do? This is not the queen!"

"Why do you undeceive them?" asked Madame Elizabeth, "their error might save the queen!"

And while she put back one of the bayonets directed against her breast, she said, gently: "Take care, sir, you might wound somebody, and I am convinced that you would be sorry."

The people were amazed at this, and respectfully made way for her to come up with the king. He stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by a crowd threatening him with wild curses. One of these desperadoes pressed close up to the king, while the others were shouting that they must strangle the whole royal family, and, pulling a bottle and a glass out of his pocket, he filled the latter, gave it to the king, and ordered him to drink to the welfare of the nation.

The king quietly took the glass. "The nation must know that I love it," said he, "for I have made many sacrifices for it. From the bottom of my heart I drink to its welfare," and, in spite of the warning cries of his friends, he put the glass to his lips and emptied it.

The crowd was beside itself with delight, and their cries were answered from without by the demand of the bloodthirsty rabble--"How soon are you going to throw out the heads of the king and the queen?"

Marie Antoinette had meanwhile succeeded in pacifying the dauphin.

She raised herself up, and when she saw that the king had gone out, she started toward the door.

Her faithful friends stopped the way; they reminded her that she was not simply a queen, that she was a mother, too. They conjured her with tears to give ear to prudence--not to rush in vain into danger, and imperil the king still more.

"No one shall hinder me from doing what is my duty," cried the queen. "Leave the doorway free."

But her friends would not yield; they defied even the wrath of the queen. At that moment, some of the National Guards came in through another door, and pacified Marie Antoinette, assuring her that the life of the king was not threatened.

In the mean while the shouting came nearer and nearer, the cries resounded from the guard-room, the doors were torn open, and the people surged in, in immense waves, like the sea lashed into fury by the storm. The National Guards rolled a table before the queen and her children, and placed themselves at the two sides to defend them.

Only a bit of wood now separated the queen from her enemies, who brandished their weapons at her. But Marie Antoinette had now regained her whole composure. She stood erect; at her right hand, her daughter, who nestled up to her mother--at her left, the dauphin, who, with wide-open eyes and looks of astonishment, gazed at the people bursting in. Behind the queen were Princesses Lamballe and Tarente, and Madame Tourzel.

A man, with dishevelled hair and bare bosom, gave the queen a handful of rods, bearing the inion, "For Marie Antoinette!"

Another showed her a guillotine, a third a gallows, with the inion, "Tremble, tyrant! thy hour has come!" Another held up before her, on the point of a pike, a human heart dripping with blood, and cried: "Thus shall they all bleed--the hearts of tyrants and aristocrats!"

The queen did not let her eyes fall, her fixed look rested upon the shrieking and howling multitude; but when this man, with the bleeding heart, approached her, her eyelids trembled--a deathly paleness spread over her cheeks, for she recognized him--Simon the cobbler--and a fearful presentiment told her that this man, who had always been for her the incarnation of hatred, is now, when her life is threatened, to be the source of her chief peril.

From the distance surged in the cries: "Long live Santerre! Long live the Faubourg Saint Antoine! Long live the sans-culottes!"

And at the head of a crowd of half-naked fellows, the brewer Santerre, arrayed in the fantastic costume of a robber of the Abruzzo Mountains, with a dagger and pistol in his girdle, dashed into the room, his broad-brimmed hat, with three red plumes, aslant upon his brown hair, that streamed down on both sides of his savage countenance, like the mane of a lion.

The queen lifted the dauphin up, set him upon the table, and whispered softly to him, he must not cry, he must not grieve, and the child smiled and kissed his mother's hands. Just then a drunken woman rushed up to the table, threw a red cap down upon it, and ordered the queen, on pain of death, to put it on.

Marie Antoinette threw both her arms around the dauphin, kissed his auburn hair, and turned calmly to General de Wittgenhofen, who stood near her.

"Put the cap upon me," said she, and the women howled with pleasure, while the general, pale with rage and trembling with grief, obeyed the queen's command, and put the red cap upon that hair which trouble had already turned gray in a night.

But, after a minute, General Wittgenhofen took the red cap from the head of the queen, and laid it on the table.

From all sides resounded thus the commanding cry: "The red cap for the dauphin! The tri-color for Little Veto!" And the women tore their three-colored ribbons from their caps and threw them upon the table.

"If you love the nation," cried the women to the queen, "put the red cap on your son."

同类推荐
  • 三琴记

    三琴记

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 周生烈子

    周生烈子

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • The Warden

    The Warden

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 台海恩恸录

    台海恩恸录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 解除篇

    解除篇

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 制胜之道:古代兵法中的经营管理智慧

    制胜之道:古代兵法中的经营管理智慧

    说到兵法,很多人会以为那是军人打仗才需要的作战谋略,一般人是根本用不上的,但是在欧阳叆灵教授看来,人生就如同战场,商场的竞争如同行军打仗,而兵法可以说是解决冲突纷争的沟通艺术,更是知己知彼,以有限资源发挥最大力量的制胜哲学,重要的是,它不只是帮助我们建立避险与取胜的观念,更提供了解决问题的成功智慧。
  • 为什么是中国

    为什么是中国

    今日中国学人的历史责任就是为中华复兴提供指导思想和理论基础。我们可以看到自1840年鸦片战争之后,中国人集体陷入欧洲中心论的语境之中不能自拔。所以我们有必须重新审视一下世界史。 近五百年来兴起的资本主义其实是一场运动。只不过是这场运动伴随着工业革命和科学的特异性进步,使得金融资本膨胀成席卷世界的力量,差一点殖民和统治全球。 中国也受到严重伤害。值得庆幸的是来自外部的伤害使得中国社会内部产生了巨大的反弹力量,这力量逆转了中国社会下坠的轨迹,让中国重新回到复兴的轨道上。
  • 北京错爱

    北京错爱

    越是繁华的城市,越让人堕落!灯红酒绿间,面对空寂的攀比,奢华的诱惑,我感觉到了自己的沉淀。地球少了谁都会转,但却永远都不会为一个人转,可是我们却总是围着一个人转,不管你在何时何地,总会有那么一个人,让你无数次地想放弃,却终究是舍不得,一直在寻找归宿,哪里才是真正的归宿……
  • 隔壁大神等等我

    隔壁大神等等我

    从一开始的相识,相知,到离不开对方……某一天萧璃:你还是不是我之前认识的高冷大帅比了!
  • 培养孩子好习惯的经典故事(青少年心灵成长直通车)

    培养孩子好习惯的经典故事(青少年心灵成长直通车)

    本书包括脚底的茧、幸福是劳动,劳动最光荣、成为一只美丽的蝴蝶等经典故事。
  • 佛说大爱道般涅槃经

    佛说大爱道般涅槃经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 西戎小说散文集(山药蛋派经典文库)

    西戎小说散文集(山药蛋派经典文库)

    《西戎小说散文集》精选他的小说和散文若干篇。他的作品重点在于表现由私有制向集体所有制过渡中,农民与基层干部在思想观念、意识作风和道德风尚方面发生的变化和旧思想、旧习惯的克服过程。
  • 神脉天尊

    神脉天尊

    神秘男孩穿破虚空,来到天启大陆。一路披荆斩棘,踏破九霄,登顶巅峰,让一切臣服在自己的魔枪之下。
  • 谁绑架了波斯猫

    谁绑架了波斯猫

    本书是由董恒波编著的《神秘的亡灵日记》,是神探小鹰校园幽默推理小说系列丛书之一。《神秘的亡灵日记》的故事内容如下:波斯猫丽丽是富婆王老太的心肝宝贝,一天,丽丽突然失踪了,同时,一封信从天而降:如果你不在三天内将40320元打到指定的账号上,丽丽就会被扔进江里。原来,丽丽是被人绑架了!谁是绑架者?为什么他要的钱数是40320元?不看完这本书,你是不会猜出答案的,快来挑战一下你的侦探智商指数有多高吧!
  • 带条锦鲤打篮球

    带条锦鲤打篮球

    当余欢带着锦鲤走进nba的时候,他开始专业承包各种老将躺冠,新秀带刷服务。“老家伙,在病床上躺好,冠军戒指快递到你家。”“小子,你差两分职业生涯第一次得分上双?去篮下站着,站好别动就行了。”杜兰特:“内个,能带我躺个冠军吗?我能输出,会喊666~”余欢:“滚!你不是新秀了,等过些年你老了再说。”