But was De Charny a stranger and Gilbert, was he a stranger?
No; did not those two men, on the contrary, appear to be elected by Providence, the one to be the safeguard of the queen, the other to protect the king?
De Charny replied at once to the queen and to Gilbert; he recovered all his self-control, for he had made the sacrifice of his pride.
“Madame,” said he, “Monsieur Gilbert is right; it is necessary that the king should be informed of this occurrence. The king is still beloved; the king will present himself to these women. He will harangue them; he will disarm them.”
“But,” observed the queen, “who will undertake to give this information to the king? The road between this and Meudon is no doubt already intercepted, and it would be a dangerous enterprise.”
“The king is in the forest of Meudon?”
“Yes; and it is probable the roads—”
“Your Majesty will deign to consider me as a military man,” said De Charny, unostentatiously; “a soldier, and one whose duty it is to expose his life—”
And having said these words, he did not wait for a reply; he listened not to the sigh which escaped the queen, but ran rapidly down the staircase, jumped upon one of the guards’ horses, and hastened towards Meudon, accompanied by two cavaliers.
He had scarcely disappeared, and had replied by a sign to a farewell gesture which Andrée addressed to him from the window, when a distant noise, which resembled the roaring of the waves in a storm, made the queen listen anxiously. This noise appeared to proceed from the farthest trees on the Paris road, which, from the apartment in which the queen was, could be seen towering above the fog at some distance from the last houses of Versailles.
The horizon soon became as threatening to the eye as it had been to the ear; a hail-shower began to checker the dark gray haze.
And yet notwithstanding the threatening state of the heavens, crowds of persons were entering Versailles.
Messengers arrived continually at the palace.
Every messenger brought intelligence of numerous columns being on their way from Paris; and every one thought of the joys and the easy triumphs of the preceding days,—some of them feeling at heart a regret that was akin to remorse, others an instinctive terror.
The soldiers were anxious, and, looking at one another, slowly took up their arms. Like drunken people, who demoralized by the visible uneasiness of their soldiers and the murmurs of the crowd, with difficulty breathed in this atmosphere, impregnated as it was with misfortunes which were about to be attributed to them.
On their side, the body-guards—somewhere about three hundred men—coldly mounted their horses, and with that hesitation which seizes men of the sword when they feel they have to deal with enemies whose mode of attack is unknown to them.
What could they do against women, who had set out threatening and with arms, but who had arrived disarmed, and who could no longer raise even their hands, so enervated were they with fatigue, so emaciated were they by hunger?
And yet, at all hazards, they formed themselves into line, drew their sabres, and waited.
At last the women made their appearance; they had come by two roads. Halfway between Paris and Versailles, they had separated, one party coming by St. Cloud, the other by Sèvres.
Before they separated, eight loaves had been divided among them; it was all that could be found at Sèvres.
Thirty-two pounds of bread for seven thousand persons!
On arriving at Versailles, they could scarcely drag themselves along. More than three fourths of them had scattered their weapons along the road. Maillard had induced the remaining fourth to leave their arms in the first houses they came to in Versailles.
Then, on entering into the town:—
“Come, now,” said he, “that they may not doubt that we are friends to royalty, let us sing, ‘Vive Henri Quatre!'”
And in a dying tone, and with voices that had not strength enough to ask for bread, they chanted the royal national air.
The astonishment was therefore great at the palace when, instead of shouts and threats, they heard them singing the loyal air; when, above all, they saw the female choristers staggering (for hunger has somewhat the effect of drunkenness) and these wretched women leaning their haggard, pale, and livid faces, begrimed with dirt, down which the rain and perspiration were streaming, against the gilded railings,—faces which appeared to be more than doubled by the number of hands which grasped those railings for support.