Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise by Yonge (summer reads txt) 📕

(It was afterwards said that the man was a pick-lock, but we always suspected that the Coadjutor had made the worst of him by way of enhancing a good story.)

Just as the absolution was finished, some more of the mob came up, and one threw a stone which hit the Archbishop on the cheek, and another pointed a musket at him. ‘Unhappy man,’ he cried, ‘if your father saw you!’ This seemed to touch the man; he cried: ‘Vive le Coadjuteur!’ And so easily were the people swayed, that they all began to applaud him to the skies, and he led them off to the market-place.

‘We thought ourselves rid of them,’ said my mother, ‘we began to breathe again, and I was coming home, but, bah! No such thing! They are all coming back, thirty or forty thousand of them, only without their weapons. At least the gentlemen said so, but I am sure they had them hidden. Up comes M. Le Coadjuteur again, the Marshal de Meileraye leading him by the hand up the Queen, and saying: ‘Here, Madame, is one to whom I owe my life, but to whom your Majesty owes the safety of the State, nay, perhaps of the palace.‘’

The Queen smiled, seeing through it all, said my mother, and the Coadjutor broke in: ‘The matter is not myself, Madame, it is Paris, now disarmed and submissive, at your Majesty’s feet.’

‘It is very guilty, and far from submissive,’ said the Queen angrily; ‘pray, if it were so furious, how can it have been so rapidly tamed?’ And then M. de Meilleraye must needs break in furiously: ‘Madame, an honest man cannot dissemble the state of things. If Broussel is not set at liberty, tomorrow there will not be one stone upon another at Paris.’

But the Queen was firm, and put them both down, only saying: ‘Go and rest, Monsieur, you have worked hard.’

‘Was that all the thanks he had?’ exclaimed Annora.

‘Of course it was, child. The Queen and Cardinal knew very well that the tumult was his work; or at least immensely exaggerated by him, just to terrify her into releasing that factious old mischief-maker! Why, he went off I know not where, haranguing them from the top of his carriage!’

‘Ah! that was where we saw him,’ said Nan. ‘Madame, indeed there was nothing exaggerated in the tumult. It was frightful. They made ten times the noise our honest folk do in England, and did ten times less. If they had been English, M. Broussel would be safe at home now!’

‘No the tumult was not over-painted, that I can testify,’ said my brother.

But when my mother came to hear how he and Annora had witnessed the scene from the windows of M. Darpent’s house, her indignation knew no bounds. I never saw her so angry with Eustace as she now was, that he should have taken his sister into the house of one of these councillors; a bourgeois house was bad enough, but that it should have been actually one of the disaffected, and that the Darpent carriage should have been seen at our door, filled her with horror. It was enough to ruin us all for ever with the Court.

‘What have we to do with the Court?’ cried my sister, and this, of course, only added fuel to the flame, till at last my mother came to declaring that she should never trust her daughter with my brother again, for he was not fit to take care of her.

But we were all surprised by Eustace, when he bade my mother good-night, quietly bending his dark curled head, ad saying: ‘My mother, I ask your pardon, I am sorry I offended you.’

‘My son, my dear son,’ she cried, embracing him. ‘Never think of it more, only if we never go home, I cannot have your sister made a mere bourgeoise.’

‘How could you, brother!’ cried Annora, waiting outside the door. ‘Now you have owned yourself in the wrong!’

‘I have not said so, Nan,’ he answered. ‘I have simply said I was sorry to have offended my mother, and that is true; I could not sleep under her displeasure.’

‘But you do not care about ruining yourself with this perfidious foreign Court.’

‘Not a rush, so long as I do not bring Meg and her son into danger.’

Things were quiet that night, but every one knew that it was only a lull in the storm.

I set off to morning mass with my son and little Armantine as usual, thinking all would be quiet so early in our part of the city, but before the service was over there was the dull roar of the populace in a fury to be heard in the distance, and Nicole met me at the church door entreating me to get home as quickly as possible.

To my dismay there was a large heavy chain across the end of the street, not such as to stop foot passengers, but barring the way against carriages, and the street was fast filling with shopkeepers, apprentices, market-women, and all sorts of people. The children clung to my hands, half frightened and half eager. Suddenly we saw a carriage stopped by the chain, and the people crowding round it. Out of it sprang two gentlemen and a lady, and began hurrying forward like people hunted. I drew the children back into the church porch, and was shocked to see that those who were then fleeing in haste and terror were the Chancellor, M. Seguier, with his brother, the Bishop of Meaux, and his daughter the beautiful young Duchess de Sully. I tried to attract their attention and draw them into the church as a place of safety, but they were in too much haste and terror to perceive me, and a man began shouting after them:

‘To arms, friends, to arms! There’s the enemy. Kill him! and we shall have vengeance for all we suffer!’

The mob rushed after, shouting horribly. Armantine began to cry, and I took her in my arms, while Nicole held my son.

The whole crowd rushed past us, never heeding us, as we stood above them, and as we were only thirty yards from home I hoped soon to reach it, though I hesitated, as the screeches, yells, and howls were still to be heard lower down the street, and fresh parties of men, women, and children kept rushing down to join the throng. If it should surge back again before we could get home, what would become of us?

Suddenly Gaspard cried out: ‘My uncle!’ And there was indeed my brother. ‘Good heavens!’ he cried, ‘you there, sister! They told me you were gone to church, but I could hardly believe it! Come home before the mob comes back.’

I asked anxiously for the Chancellor, and heard he had escaped into the Hotel de Luynes, which was three doors beyond ours. He had set out at six in the morning for the palace, it was believed to take orders for breaking up the Parliament. His daughter, thinking there might be danger, chose to go with him, and so did his brother the Bishop; but the instant he was known to be entangled in the streets, the mob rose on him, the chains were put up, he had to leave his carriage and flee on foot to the Hotel de Luynes, where his brother-in-law lived. There the door was open, but no one