CHAPTER LXVI.

ON TO VERSAILLES.

Madame Gosner had done the true work of her lifetime when she saw her husband set free from the Bastille. Then if all the sweet womanhood of her nature had not been embittered by the radical fury of the times, her own reward would have been assured. But, instead of a wife suffering and toiling for a beloved husband’s freedom, this woman had become an avenger—a patriot—that most loathsome thing, a female demagogue. It was painful but not strange that the husband for whom she had toiled, suffered, and almost died, should have failed to recognize in this woman the sweet young wife he had left in that vineyard home.

Marguerite was to him now what the wife had been then. His tortured memory could neither associate this amazon with his wife, or the lovely girl with the child he had left with her. He knew that each represented the other, but could not feel it. To him Marguerite was the Therese of his memory; the little child haunted him like a dream, nothing more. As for the woman, he was afraid of her. In her enthusiasm she had become his persecutor. It was she who forced him into crowds, and turned the fierce eyes of a clamorous mob upon him. It was she who called down a storm of curses on the sovereigns of France whenever his white hair was seen. It was she who filled their humble apartments day and night with red-capped men and hideous women, who swarmed around the sensitive old man like birds of prey. So oppressive and terrible did this become at last, that the old man crept from his home with cautious stealth, and sometimes remained away for hours, no human creature knowing where he went. More than once he remained out for days, and search the streets as they might, no one could find him.

Madame Gosner was baffled and defeated in her wild ambition. Neither her husband or daughter entered into her projects or her hatred of the royal family. The life this perverted woman led bore with equal force upon her daughter Marguerite, who gladly escaped from the confusion in her own home, to the sad quiet of Dame Doudel’s apartments. This kind old benefactress gave her in all tenderness the love and protection which springs so naturally out of mutual sorrow.

But the time came at last when both Marguerite and her helpless father were forced to appear among the insurgents.

Months had swept by swiftly, as time goes when nations plunge onward to rebellion. Paris was once more in open revolt. Her people, with one of those popular impulses that shake the foundations of a government, had resolved to besiege the Assembly in its halls and the king in his palace.

The Court and the Assembly were at Versailles, wrangling together. The people all this time had been busy hunting down the king. Now they were marching upon him in one huge mob which left the lanes and streets of Paris empty, and its vast market places silent as tombs. The rain was pouring down in torrents, the mud was ankle deep; yet that vast concourse of people kept steadily on, wheeling cannon through the mud—throwing out banners to be soaked by the rain, shouting, grumbling, hurling curses on the king, the queen, and the court.

In the midst of the rioters Madame Gosner was conspicuous, riding a heavy cart horse and carrying a spear in her hand. Close by her on a smaller and more gentle animal rode the prisoner of the Bastille, with a red cap upon his head, which hung limp and dripping over his white locks.

Whenever this man appeared, shouts long and loud, followed him, at which his brow would contract gloomily and his eye gleam underneath them. In the crowd, mounted on horseback like her mother, but with no emblems of rebellion, came Marguerite, pale, dejected, and forced sorely against her will into the heart of the mob, as her father had been.

About midway between Paris and Versailles, the crowd halted at a village where it was thought bread for the hungry crowd might be obtained. In the confusion which followed this movement, the old prisoner tore off his red cap, flung it into the mud, and in its place drew the hood of a friar’s cloak, which some priest had cast over him when the rain came down most violently—then he turned his horse and pushed his way out of the crowd unnoticed. In half an hour he left that vast crowd behind him and made the best of his way to Paris, which was still and deserted like a city of the dead.

In the suburbs, the old man dismounted and turned his horse loose. He was weary and very feeble; the mud clung to his feet, and the rain poured upon him with cruel steadiness; but he moved on, and at last turned into the ruined court of the Bastille, crossed the draw-bridge, and went out of sight among the unshapely heap of stones beyond it.

When the army of women went back to Paris, Madame Gosner was among those who conducted the royal captives to the very entrance of the Tuileries. Now her triumph seemed almost complete, her enemies were trampled almost into the dust. Her name was received with shouts wherever she turned. She forgot the husband who had disappeared in the crowd, and the child whom she had with despotic force urged into an act of open rebellion. The madness of ambition was upon her. She had begun now to rival Theroigne and the coarsest of her sex in a struggle for popularity. So she went into the thickest of the mob, while Marguerite sought her home with a heavy heart, hoping with terrible misgivings that she might find her father there.

The rooms were empty. No human soul was there to meet or comfort her. No sign of the hunted man met her in the building.

Where could she go? In what place had that helpless man hid himself? Two nights he had already been absent; had he perished in the street, or wandered off into some village of the open country?

All at once a thought struck the girl. The Bastille had some weird fascination which carried that lonely man back to his dungeon, as birds return to the cages from which they have been set free, feeling the broad, blue dome of the sky too vast for the trial of their worn and crippled wings. This thought was scarcely more rapid than the action that followed it.