Alexandre Dumas

“ After thanking Billet and Pitou, he turned to the crowd in the cell. As if he recovered all his command in a twinkling, he said:
"Then the long looked-for day has come! I thank you, all my friends, and I thank the Eternal Spirit which watches over the liberty of peoples."
He held out his hands, but they shrank from touching them, so lofty was his glance, and his voice so dignified as of a superior man.
Leaving the dungeon, he walked out before them all, leaning on the farmer and the country boy. ”

“ The Queen was applied to for the dinner to take place in the palace. She let the guards officers have the theatre, which was boarded over to make more room, and a hall adjoining.
She shut herself up alone, save for her children and Andrea, sad and thoughtful, where the toasts and the clink of glasses should not disturb her.
At the palace gates a crowd peeped in and sniffed the air, puffing the fumes of roasts and wines, from the large dinner table. It was imprudent to let the hungry inhale the vapor of good cheer and the morose hear songs and cheers of hope and joy. ”

“ Approaching the Queen who was rash enough to look up in her triumph and let her eyes be caught, he said:
"You are wrong to judge fellow-creatures so harshly. You denounce Cagliostro as a quack when you had a proof of his real science; when you were the Archduchess of Austria and first came to France. When I saw you at Taverney, did not that wonder-worker whom you decry show to your Majesty in a clear cup of water such a picture of your fate that you swooned away?"
Gilbert had not seen the forecast, but he knew from his master, no doubt, what Marie Antoinette had been shown. ”

“ Was not this lowborn lover the living symbol of what was happening at the time, a man of the people swaying the politics of a great empire, one who personified, by privilege of the evil spirit who soared over France, the insult to its nobility and the attack on royalty by the plebeians?
While shuddering, she wanted to look upon this monster who by a crime had infused his base blood into the aristocratic blue: who had caused a Revolution that he should be delivered from the castle; it was his principles which had armed Billet, Gonchon, Marat, and the others. ”

“ She saw herself, in perspective, the leader of an immense army, and rejoiced over the victory against the civilians who dared to rebel. Around her, ladies and gentlemen, wild with youth, love and confidence, cheered their brilliant hussars, heavy dragoons, terrible Switzers, and thunderous cannoniers, and laughed at the home-made spikes fastened on clothes-poles, without dreaming that on these coarse spears were to be carried the noblest heads of the realm.
"I am more afraid of a pike than a musket," murmured Princess Lamballe.
"Because it is uglier, my dear Therese," said the Queen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was on the morning of the fourteenth of July that Billet opened oratorical fire against the monument which had for five centuries weighed like an incubus on the breast of France—a rock of Sisyphus. Less confident than the Titan in her power, France had never thought to throw it off.
The Bastile was the seal of feudalism on the brow of Paris.
The King was accounted too good to order people to be beheaded; but he sent people into the Bastile. Once there a man was forgotten, isolated, sequestered, buried alive, annihilated. ”

“ But as though the recollection was a menace, Andrea opened her eyes and made an effort by which she stood up. Her first intelligent glance was fondly upon Charny, who was now upright. As if this involuntary manifestation of her mind was unworthy her Spartan soul, she turned her gaze only to meet the Queen's. She bowed at once.
"Good heavens, what is the matter?" inquired the count: "you alarm me, for you are usually so brave and strong—to be prey to such a swoon."
"Such dreadful things have happened at Paris where you were, that if men are trembling at them, women may be excused for fainting. ”

“ Go and count their dead in the gutters and know that those hearts, now ceased to beat, throbbed as nobly as a knight's when your cannon thundered against them. They sang in the showers of grapeshot while handling unfamiliar weapons, and the oldest grenadiers would not make a charge with that lightness. Lady and Queen, do not look at me with that angry eye, I beseech you. What matters to the heart whether it is clad in steel or rags? The time is come to think of this: you have no longer millions of slaves, or subjects, or mere men in France—but soldiers. ”

“ They love you who slay and mangle and cut the throats of your representatives? The Governor of the Bastile was your image. They killed that brave and faithful servitor, as they would kill you in his stead. The more easy as they know you and that you would turn the other cheek to the smiter. If you are killed, what about my children?" concluded the Queen.
"Madam," struck in Gilbert, deeming it time he intervened, "the King is so respected that I fear that his entry will be like that of Juggernaut, under whose wheels the fanatics will throw themselves to be crushed. ”

“ A frightful scene was presented to Billet and his friend. The mob crowded into the court, enraged, drunken and furious. The first soldier falling under hand was torn to pieces.
Gonchon looked on quietly, no doubt thinking that popular wrath is like a great river, doing more mischief if one tries to dam it than if letting it make its course. On the contrary, Elie and Hullin leaped in between defenders and attackers; they prayed and supplicated, vociferating the holy lie that the soldiers were promised their lives.
Billet and Pitou's arrival was reinforcement to them. ”

“ Gilbert wished to elude this ovation but he could not do so, as he was recognized as well as Billet and his comrade.
"To the City Hall!" shouted everybody, and Gilbert was taken up on the shoulders of twenty fellows. In vain did Gilbert resist, and Billet and Pitou shower punches and cuffs on their brothers-in-arms; joy and enthusiasm had made the people's hide tough. Fisticuffs, digs with the elbow or thrusts with musket butts, all seemed soft as strokings and only enhanced their glee. ”

“ It needed no longer to make the wild boy a learned man: revolutionary eras are the forcing-beds of mind. Clear as your glance is, your Majesty does not see that the youth is a man of thirty; it is wrong to be astonished that little Gilbert, simple and uncouth, should have become a learned philosopher in the breath of two revolutions."
"Simple? perhaps we will recur to that on another occasion," said the Queen vindictively: "but let us have to do with the learned philosopher, the improved and perfect man whom I have under my eyes." ”

“ The frenziedly joyful cheers announced the first advantage to Launay. Nobody noticed that a man had been mangled under the bridge.
Then, as if at the depth of a cavern, the four guns, pointed out to Billet by the governor, were shot off with a dreadful crash and all the outer yard was swept clear. The iron hurricane cleft a long swath of blood through the mass; on the path lay ten or twelve dead and double as many wounded.
Billet had stood on the guardhouse roof to reach the chain well up; he slid down where he found Pitou, who had reached the spot he knew not how. ”

“ Indeed, how suppose that a noble and elevated creature should be vexed over a trifle? What has a lovely woman to be worried about? what, the powerful lady?
Charny knew that Andrea had been the bosom friend of the Queen, and wondered why their love had cooled and the confidante stood away. He had to look to her and the idol lost so much of the eye-adulation as Andrea gained. By her unfairness and anger Marie Antoinette told Charny that he must feel less a lover for her. He sought for the cause, and naturally whither the Queen was frowning. ”

“ So mad was the concourse that they to whom Valence Charny presented the black cockade, tore off their white ones and they who were wearing the tricolors trampled them under foot.
The exultation became so high that the august guests had pains to return to their rooms without trampling on those who prostrated themselves in their passageway.
All this might have been overlooked as the freak of an orgie, but after the Royal Family departed, the guests turned the banquet hall into a town taken by assault. The soldiers whooped and as the bugles blew the charge—against what enemy? the absent nation! ”

“ At his tender age, to be accustomed to fires, murders, gibbets, riots, night attacks; to see queens insulted and kings badgered; and when he is cool like you and steel like a sword-blade, do you expect he will love and respect you?"
"No; I do not want him to see any such sights, which is why I have sent him down to Villers Cotterets along with Ange Pitou though I almost regret it at present." ”

“ It is true that he had four cannon and a garrison of old soldiers and Swiss—with only one unarmed man confronting him. For Billet had handed his fowling-piece to Ange on entering the stronghold.
He understood that a weapon might get him into trouble beyond the barrier.
With a glance he remarked everything; the governor's calm and menacing attitude; the Swiss ranked in the guardhouses; the Veterans on the platforms, and the silent bustle of the artillerists loading up their caissons with ammunition.
The sentinels had their muskets on their shoulders and their officers carried drawn swords. ”

“ A dreadful conviction for the woman who loved with passion, and insupportable for one who loved with pride, as the Queen did Charny.
Being a man, all that George understood was that the Queen was unfairly jealous of his wife. Nothing pains a heart incapable of false play so much as to be suspected of it. Nothing so points attention on the person unjustly accused of inspiring an attachment than jealousy. ”

“ The woman had reflected in an instant. Whatever the relation between the Queen, who was suspected of having paramours, and the King, perhaps not so gullible as he looked, Marie Antoinette might draw from her royal consort the particulars of the mesmeric trance in which Gilbert had thrown the Lady of Charny. Better her relation than the King's.
With the energy of lunacy, she ran from one door to another, fastened them all, and when assured that nobody could hear or see, she flung herself on her knees before her mistress. ”

“ At that instant Major Losme fell, struck down by a hatchet; in their hatred the people confounded the persecutor of the prisoners with the merciful warden.
"Let us begone," said the physician, "for I begin to be ashamed that such murderers let me out."
"Do not say that, doctor," reproved Billet, "those who stormed the Bastile are not the cutthroats yonder."
As they descended the steps which he had mounted to try to help Flesselles, the throng which had flowed through the doorway, was hurled forth. In the midst of the battling gathering one man was struggling. ”

“ Do you know that as many women as men dashed across the Bastile draw-bridges, and that if its stones are coming down now, the picks are wielded by female hands? Oh, my lady, you must include the women, and the children who cast the bullets, sharpen the swords and hurl paving-stones from the roofs. The bullet cast by a boy will kill your best general from afar; the sword he sharpened will hamstring your finest war-horse; the blind pebble from this David's sling will put out the eye of your Dragoon Samson and your Lifeguards Goliath. ”

“ The countess is not a Queen; she has a right to be afraid for those she loves."
"Oh, madam," rejoined Charny, perceiving jealousy in the slur, "I am sure that the countess feels more fear for her sovereign than for herself."
"Still, why do we find you in the swoon in the next room?" inquired the royal lady.
"I cannot tell, for I am ignorant, but in this life of fatigue and terror, led these three days, a woman's fainting is natural enough, meseems."
"True," said the Queen, knowing that Andrea could not be driven out of her defenses. ”