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The History Of The Next French Revolution, a fiction by William Makepeace Thackeray |
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CHAPTER IX. LOUIS XVII |
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_ The tremendous cannonading, however, had a singular effect upon the inhabitants of the great public hospital of Charenton, in which it may be remembered Louis XVII. had been, as in mockery, confined. His majesty of demeanor, his calm deportment, the reasonableness of his pretensions, had not failed to strike with awe and respect his four thousand comrades of captivity. The Emperor of China, the Princess of the Moon, Julius Caesar, Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, the Pope of Rome, the Cacique of Mexico, and several singular and illustrious personages who happened to be confined there, all held a council with Louis XVII.; and all agreed that now or never was the time to support his legitimate pretensions to the Crown of France. As the cannons roared around them, they howled with furious delight in response. They took counsel together: Dr. Pinel and the infamous jailers, who, under the name of keepers, held them in horrible captivity, were pounced upon and overcome in a twinkling. The strait-waistcoats were taken off from the wretched captives languishing in the dungeons; the guardians were invested in these shameful garments, and with triumphant laughter plunged under the Douches. The gates of the prison were flung open, and they marched forth in the blackness of the storm! ***** On the third day, the cannonading was observed to decrease; only a gun went off fitfully now and then. ***** On the fourth day, the Parisians said to one another, "Tiens! ils sont fatigues, les cannoniers des forts!"--and why? Because there was no more powder?--Ay, truly, there WAS no more powder. There was no more powder, no more guns, no more gunners, no more forts, no more nothing. THE FORTS HAD BLOWN EACH OTHER UP. The battle-roar ceased. The battle-clouds rolled off. The silver moon, the twinkling stars, looked blandly down from the serene azure,--and all was peace--stillness--the stillness of death. Holy, holy silence! Yes: the battle of Paris was over. And where were the combatants? All gone--not one left!--And where was Louis Philippe? The venerable Prince was a captive in the Tuileries; the Irish Brigade was encamped around it: they had reached the palace a little too late; it was already occupied by the partisans of his Majesty Louis XVII. That respectable monarch and his followers better knew the way to the Tuileries than the ignorant sons of Erin. They burst through the feeble barriers of the guards; they rushed triumphant into the kingly halls of the palace; they seated the seventeenth Louis on the throne of his ancestors; and the Parisians read in the Journal des Debats, of the fifth of November; an important article, which proclaimed that the civil war was concluded:-- "The troubles which distracted the greatest empire in the world are at an end. Europe, which marked with sorrow the disturbances which agitated the bosom of the Queen of Nations, the great leader of Civilization, may now rest in peace. That monarch whom we have long been sighing for; whose image has lain hidden, and yet oh! how passionately worshipped, in every French heart, is with us once more. Blessings be on him; blessings--a thousand blessings upon the happy country which is at length restored to his beneficent, his legitimate, his reasonable sway! "His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVII. yesterday arrived at his palace of the Tulleries, accompanied by his august allies. His Royal Highness the Duke of Orleans has resigned his post as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and will return speedily to take up his abode at the Palais Royal. It is a great mercy that the children of his Royal Highness, who happened to be in the late forts round Paris, (before the bombardment which has so happily ended in their destruction,) had returned to their father before the commencement of the cannonading. They will continue, as heretofore, to be the most loyal supporters of order and the throne. "None can read without tears in their eyes our august monarch's proclamation. "'Louis, by &c.-- "'My children! After nine hundred and ninety-nine years of captivity, I am restored to you. The cycle of events predicted by the ancient Magi, and the planetary convolutions mentioned in the lost Sibylline books, have fulfilled their respective idiosyncrasies, and ended (as always in the depths of my dungeons I confidently expected) in the triumph of the good Angel, and the utter discomfiture of the abominable Blue Dragon. "'When the bombarding began, and the powers of darkness commenced their hellish gunpowder evolutions, I was close by--in my palace of Charenton, three hundred and thirty-three thousand miles off, in the ring of Saturn--I witnessed your misery. My heart was affected by it, and I said, "Is the multiplication-table a fiction? are the signs of the Zodiac mere astronomers' prattle?" "'I clapped chains, shrieking and darkness, on my physician, Dr. Pinel. The keepers I shall cause to be roasted alive. I summoned my allies round about me. The high contracting Powers came to my bidding: monarchs from all parts of the earth; sovereigns from the Moon and other illumined orbits; the white necromancers, and the pale imprisoned genii. I whispered the mystic sign, and the doors flew open. We entered Paris in triumph, by the Charenton bridge. Our luggage was not examined at the Octroi. The bottle-green ones were scared at our shouts, and retreated, howling: they knew us, and trembled. "'My faithful Peers and Deputies will rally around me. I have a friend in Turkey--the Grand Vizier of the Mussulmans: he was a Protestant once--Lord Brougham by name. I have sent to him to legislate for us: he is wise in the law, and astrology, and all sciences; he shall aid my Ministers in their councils. I have written to him by the post. There shall be no more infamous mad-houses in France, where poor souls shiver in strait-waistcoats. "'I recognized Louis Philippe, my good cousin. He was in his counting-house, counting out his money, as the old prophecy warned me. He gave me up the keys of his gold; I shall know well how to use it. Taught by adversity, I am not a spendthrift, neither am I a miser. I will endow the land with noble institutions instead of diabolical forts. I will have no more cannon founded. They are a curse and shall be melted--the iron ones into railroads; the bronze ones into statues of beautiful saints, angels, and wise men; the copper ones into money, to be distributed among my poor. I was poor once, and I love them. "'There shall be no more poverty; no more wars; no more avarice; no more passports; no more custom-houses; no more lying: no more physic. "'My Chambers will put the seal to these reforms. I will it. I am the king. (Signed) 'Louis.'" "Some alarm was created yesterday by the arrival of a body of the English Foot-Guard under the Duke of Jenkins; they were at first about to sack the city, but on hearing that the banner of the lilies was once more raised in France, the Duke hastened to the Tuileries, and offered his allegiance to his Majesty. It was accepted: and the Plush Guard has been established in place of the Swiss, who waited on former sovereigns." "The Irish Brigade quartered in the Tuileries are to enter our service. Their commander states that they took every one of the forts round Paris, and having blown them up, were proceeding to release Louis XVII., when they found that august monarch, happily, free. News of their glorious victory has been conveyed to Dublin, to his Majesty the King of the Irish. It will be a new laurel to add to his green crown!" And thus have we brought to a conclusion our history of the great French Revolution of 1884. It records the actions of great and various characters; the deeds of various valor; it narrates wonderful reverses of fortune; it affords the moralist scope for his philosophy; perhaps it gives amusement to the merely idle reader. Nor must the latter imagine, because there is not a precise moral affixed to the story, that its tendency is otherwise than good. He is a poor reader, for whom his author is obliged to supply a moral application. It is well in spelling-books and for children; it is needless for the reflecting spirit. The drama of Punch himself is not moral: but that drama has had audiences all over the world. Happy he, who in our dark times can cause a smile! Let us laugh then, and gladden in the sunshine, though it be but as the ray upon the pool, that flickers only over the cold black depths below! [THE END] _ |
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