The king had heard the shot, but had seen nothing.
He leaned towards Gilbert, and smiling, said:—
“They are burning gunpowder yonder, to do me honor.”
“Yes, Sire,” replied Gilbert.
But he was careful not to mention to his Majesty the nature of the ovation which they were offering to aim.
In his own mind, however, he acknowledged that the queen had some reason for the apprehensions she had expressed, since, but for him standing immediately before, and closing the carriage-door, as it were, hermetically, that ball, which had glanced off from his steel button, would have gone straight to the king’s breast.
And now from what hand had proceeded this so well-aimed shot?
No one then wished to inquire, so that it will never now be known.
Billot, pale from what he had just seen, his eyes incessantly attracted to the rent made in Gilbert’s coat, waistcoat, and frill, excited Pitou to shout as loudly as he could, “Long live the Father of the French!”
The event of the day was so great that this episode was quickly forgotten.
At last Louis XVI. arrived in front of the Hôtel de Ville, after having been saluted on the Pont Neuf by a discharge of cannon, which, at all events, were not loaded with ball.
Upon the facade of the Hôtel de Ville was an inscription, in large letters, black in the daylight, but which, when it was dark, were to form a brilliant transparency. This inscription was the result of the ingenious lucubrations of the municipal authorities.
The inscription was as follows:—
TO LOUIS XVI., FATHER OF THE FRENCH, AND KING OF A FREE PEOPLE.
Another antithesis, much more important than the one contained in Monsieur Bailly’s speech, and which elicited shouts of admiration from all the Parisians assembled in the square.
The inscription attracted the attention of Billot.
But as Billot could not read, he made Pitou read the inscription to him.
Billot made him read it a second time, as if he had not understood it perfectly at first.
Then, when Pitou had repeated the phrase, without varying in a single word:—
“Is it that?” cried he,—”is it that?”
“Undoubtedly,” replied Pitou.
“The municipality has written that the king is a king of a free people?”
“Yes, Father Billot.”
“Well, then,” exclaimed Billot, “since the nation is free, it has the right to offer its cockade to the king.”
And with one bound, rushing before the king, who was then alighting from his carriage at the front steps of the Hôtel de Ville:—
“Sire,” said he, “you saw on the Pont Neuf that the Henry IV. in bronze wore the national cockade.”
“Well?” cried the king.
“Well, Sire, if Henry IV. wears the national cockade, you can wear it too.”
“Certainly,” said Louis XVI. much embarrassed; “and if I had one—”
“Well,” cried Billot, in a louder tone, and raising his hand, “in the name of the people I offer you this one in the place of yours; accept it.”
Bailly intervened.
The king was pale. He began to see the progressive encroachment. He looked at Bailly as if to ask his opinion.
“Sire,” said the latter, “it is the distinctive sign of every Frenchman.”
“In that case I accept it,” said the king, taking the cockade from Billot’s hands.
And putting aside his own white cockade, he placed the tricolored one in his hat.
An immense triumphant hurrah was echoed from the great crowd upon the square.
Gilbert turned away his head, much grieved.
He considered that the people were encroaching too rapidly, and that the king did not resist sufficiently.
“Long live the king!” cried Billot, who thus gave the signal for a second round of applause.
“The king is dead,” murmured Gilbert; “there is no longer a king in France.”
An arch of steel had been formed, by a thousand swords held up, from the place at which the king had alighted from his carriage, to the door of the hall in which the municipal authorities were waiting to receive him.
He passed beneath this arch, and disappeared in the gloomy passages of the Hôtel de Ville.
“That is not a triumphal arch,” said Gilbert, “but the Caudine Forks.”