Taking the Bastile

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE QUEEN AT BAY

While the King was learning to fight Revolution like a philosopher, and recreate himself with a spiritualistic seance, the Queen was rallying the combative around her in her rooms.

She sat at a table, with priests, courtiers, generals and her ladies surrounding her. At the doorways young officers, full of ardor and courage, rejoiced in the riots which gave them a chance to show their military gifts as at a tourney under view of their queens of beauty.

The Queen was no longer the sweet girl whom we saw in our work entitled "Balsamo the Magician," or the fair princess who went to Mesmer's Baths, with Princess Lamballe: but the haughty and imperious Queen who was neither Marie Antoinette, nor Queen of France, but the Austrian Eagless.

She looked up as Prince Lambesq arrived, dusty, splashed, his boots torn and his sabre bent so as not to be sheathed properly.

"Well, my lord," she said, "You come from Paris. What are the people doing?"

"Killing and burning."

"From madness or malice?"

"From ferocity."

"Nay, prince," she replied, after meditating: "the people are not ferocious. Hide nothing from me. Is it delirium or hate?"

"I believe it is hate at the point of delirium."

"Against me?"

"What does it matter?" said Dreux Breze, stepping forward. "The people may hate any one, saving your Majesty."

The Queen did not notice the flattery.

"The people," replied Lambesq, "are acting in hatred of – all above them."

"Good, that is the truth at last?" exclaimed the royal lady resolutely; "I feel that is so."

"I am speaking as a soldier," continued the cavalrist.

"Speak so. What is to be done?"

"Nothing."

"What?" cried she, emboldened by the protest from among the gold-laced coat and gold-hilted sword wearers, "nothing? do you, a Lorraine prince, tell this to the Queen of France when the people are killing and burning?"

A fresh murmur, this time approbative, hailed her speech. She turned, embraced all the gathering with flaring eyes, and tried to distinguish whose flamed the most brightly, thinking they would be the most loyal.

"Do nothing," repeated the prince, "for the Parisians will cool down if not irritated – they are warlike only when teased. Why give them the honors of a war and the risks of a battle? Keep tranquil, and in three days Paris will not talk about the matter."

"But the Bastile?"

"Shut the doors and trap all those who are inside."

Some laughs sounded among the groups.

"Take care, prince," said the lady; "now you are going to the other extreme, and too much encouraging me."

With a thoughtful mien, she went over to where her favorite, the Countess of Polignac, was in a brown study on a lounge. The news had frightened the lady; she smiled only when the Queen stood before her and that was a faint and sickly smile like a wilted lily.

"What do you say to this, countess?"

"Nothing," and she shook her head with unspeakable discouragement.

"Heaven help us, our dashing Diana is afraid," said the Queen, bending over her, "we want our intrepid Countess Charny here. It seems to me that we need her to cheer us up."

"The countess was going out when the King sent for her," explained an attendant.

Then only did Marie Antoinette perceive the isolation and stillness around her. The recent strange and unheard-of events had hit Versailles hard, making the hardest hearts tender, more by astonishment than fear. The sovereign understood that she must lift up these disheartened spirits.

"As nobody suggests any advice, I shall act on my own impulse," she said: "The people are not wicked but led astray." Everybody drew nearer. "They hate us because they do not know us; let us go up to them."

"To punish," interposed a voice, "for they know we are their masters, and to doubt us is a crime."

"Oh, baron," she said, recognizing Bezenval; "do you come to give us good advice?"

"I have given it."

"The King will punish, but as a kind father does."

"He loveth well who chasteneth soundly," replied the noble.

"Are you of this thinking, prince?" she asked of Lambesq. "The populace have committed assassinations – "

"Which they call retaliation," observed a sweet, fresh voice which made the Queen turn.

"Yes, but that is where their error lies, my dear Lamballe, so we shall be indulgent."

"But," resumed the princess with her bland voice, "before one talks of punishment one ought to be sure of winning the victory, methinks."

A general outcry rose against this piece of good sense from the noble lips.

"Not vanquish – with the Swiss troops – and the Germans – and the Lifeguards?"

"Do you doubt the army and the nobility?" exclaimed a young man in Bercheny Hussian uniform, "have we deserved such a slur? Bear in mind, royal lady, that the King can put in battle array forty thousand men, throw them into Paris by the four sides and destroy the town. Forty thousand proven soldiers are worth half a million of Parisian rioters."

The young lieutenant, emboldened to be the mouthpiece of his brother officers, stopped short on seeing how far his enthusiasm had carried him. But the Queen had caught enough to feel the scope of his outburst.

"Do you know the state of affairs, sir?" she inquired.

"I was in the riots yesterday," was his confused reply.

"Then, do not fear to speak. Let us have details."

The lieutenant stepped out, though he colored up.

"My Lords of Bezenval and Lambesq know them better than I," he said.

"Continue, young sir; it pleases me to hear them from you. Under whose orders are these forty thousand men?"

"The superiors are the two gentlemen I named; under whom rule Prince Conde, Narbonne-Fritzlar and Salkenaym. The park of artillery on Montmartre could lay that district in ashes in six hours. At its signal to fire, Vincennes would answer. From four quarters as many corps of ten thousand troops could march in, and Paris would not hold out twenty-four hours."

"This is plain speaking at least, and a clear plan. What do you say to this, Prince Lambesq?"

"That the young gentleman is a perfect general!"

"At least, he is a soldier who does not despair," said the Queen, seeing the lieutenant turn pale with anger.

"Thank your Majesty," replied the latter. "I do not know what your Majesty will decide, but I beg her to count me with the other forty thousand men, including the captains, as ready to die for her."

With these words he courteously saluted the general, who had almost insulted him. This courtesy struck the Queen more than the pledge of devotedness.

"Your name, sir?" said she.

"Viscount Charny," he responded.

"Charny," repeated Marie Antoinette, blushing in spite of herself; "any relation to Count Charny?"

"I am his brother, lady," bowing more lowly than before.

"I might have known that you were one of my most faithful servitors," said she, recovering from her tremor and looking round with confidence, "by the first words you spoke. I thank you, viscount; how comes this to be the first time I have the pleasure of seeing you at court?"

"My eldest brother, head of the family, ordered me to stay with the army, and I have only been in Versailles twice during seven years on the regimental roll-call."

She let a long look dwell on his face.

"You resemble your brother," she remarked. "I shall scold him for having waited for you to present yourself at court."

Electrified by this greeting to their young spokesman, the officers exaggerated their devotion to the royal cause and from each knot burst expressions of heroism able to conquer the whole of France.

These cries flattered Marie Antoinette's secret aspirations, and she meant to profit by them. She saw herself, in perspective, the leader of an immense army, and rejoiced over the victory against the civilians who dared to rebel. Around her, ladies and gentlemen, wild with youth, love and confidence, cheered their brilliant hussars, heavy dragoons, terrible Switzers, and thunderous cannoniers, and laughed at the home-made spikes fastened on clothes-poles, without dreaming that on these coarse spears were to be carried the noblest heads of the realm.

"I am more afraid of a pike than a musket," murmured Princess Lamballe.

"Because it is uglier, my dear Therese," said the Queen. "But you need not be alarmed. Our Parisian pikemen are not worth the famous spearmen of Moat, and the good Swiss of this day carry guns much superior to the spears of their forefathers. Thank God, they can fire true with them!"

"I answer for that," said Bezenval.

Lady Polignac's disheartenment had no effect beyond saddening her royal mistress. The enthusiasm increased among the rest of the gathering, but was damped when the King, coming in abruptly, called for his supper!

The simple word chilled the assemblage. She hoped that he did it to show how cool he was; but in fact, the son of Saint Louis was hungry. That was all.

The King was served on a small table in the Queen's sitting-room. While she was trying to revive the fire, he devoured. The officers did not think this gastronomical exercise worthy of a hero, and looked on as little respectful as they dared to be. The Queen blushed, and her fretfulness was displayed in all her movements. Her fine, nervy, and aristocratic nature could not understand the rule of matter over mind. She went up to him, asking what orders he had to give.

"Oh, orders," he said, with his mouth full: "Will you not be our Egeria in the pinch?"

"My lord, Numa was a peaceful King. But at present we think a belligerent one is wanted, and if your Majesty wants to model himself on an antique pattern, be Romulus if not Tarquin."

"Are these gentlemen all bellicose, too?" he asked with a tranquillity almost beatific.

But his eyes were bloodshot with the animation of the meal and they thought it was courage.

"Yes, Sire, war?" they chorussed.

"Gentlemen, you please me greatly by showing that I may rely upon you in case of need. But I have a Council and an appetite. The former advises me what to do, the other what I have done, to do."

And he chuckled while he handed the "Officer of the King's Mouth" the picked bones and chewed rejecta of his repast on the gold-fringed napkin.

A murmur of choler and stupor ran through the ranks of the nobles who were eager to shed their blood for the monarch. The Queen turned aside and stamped her foot. Prince Lambesq came up to her, saying:

"Your Majesty sees that the King thinks like me that to wait is the best course. It is prudence, and though not my strong card the best to keep in hand for the final rubber in the game we play."

"Yes, my lord, it is a highly necessary virtue," replied she, biting her lip till the blood came.

She was roused from her torpor by the sweet voice of Countess Jules Polignar who came up with her sister-in-law Diana, to propose that, as she and her party were hated by the people as the favorites of the Queen, they should be allowed to go out of the kingdom. At first the Queen would not hear of the sacrifice, but she saw that fear was at the bottom of it, and that the King's aunt Adelaide, had suggested it.

"You are right," she answered; "you run dangers from the rage of a people who are uncurbed. I cannot accept the devotion which prompts you to stay. I wish, I order you to depart."

She was choking with emotions mastering her in spite of her heroism, when the King's voice suddenly sounded in her ear. He was at the dessert.

"Madam," he said, "some one is in your rooms to see you, I am told."

"Sire," she answered, abjuring all thoughts but of royal dignity, "you have orders to give. Here are Lords Lambesq, Bezenval and the Marshal Duke Broglie. What orders for your generals?"

"What do you think of this matter, duke?" he inquired hesitatingly of old Broglie.

"Sire, if you retire your troops, the Parisians will say they daunted them: if you let them stand they will have to defeat them."

Lambesq shook his head, but Bezenval and the Queen applauded.

"Command the forward march," went on the duke.

"Very well, since you all wish it, let it be march!" said the King.

"But at this moment a note was passed to the Queen who read:

"Do not be in a hurry! I await an audience." It was Count Charny's writing.

"Is my lord Charny waiting?" she asked of the messenger.

"Yes; dusty and, I believe, bloody with hard riding."

"Please to await me a moment," said the Queen to Broglie and the others, as she hurried into her private apartments.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE QUEEN'S FAVORITE

On entering her boudoir, the Queen beheld the writer of the missive.

Count George Oliver Charny was a tall man of thirty-five, with a strong countenance warning one of his determination. His bluish grey eyes, quick and piercing as the eagle's, his straight nose, and his marked chin, all gave his physiognomy a martial expression, enhanced by the dashing elegance with which he wore his uniform of Lieutenant in the Royal Lifeguards.

His hands were still quivering under the torn lace ruffles: his sword had been so bent as to fit the sheath badly.

He was pacing the room, a prey to a thousand disquieting thoughts.

"My Lord Charny," cried Marie Antoinette, going straight up to him. "You, here?"

Seeing that he bowed respectfully, according to the regulations, however, she dismissed her servant, who shut the door.

Hardly giving it the time to close, the lady grasped the nobleman's hand with force, and said:

"Why have you come here, count?"

"Because I believe it my duty."

"No; your duty was to flee from Versailles; to do as agreed. To obey me; to act like all my friends – who are afraid of my ill fortune. Your duty is to sacrifice nothing for me; to keep away from me."

"Who keeps away from you?"

"The wise. Whence come you?"

"From Paris, boiling with excitement, intoxicated and bathed in blood."

The Queen covered her face with her hands.

"Alas, not one, not even you, brings me good news from that quarter."

"In such a time ask but one thing of the messengers: truth."

"You have an upright soul, my friend, a brave heart. Do not tell me the truth, at present, for mercy's sake. You arrive when my heart is breaking; for the first time my friends overwhelm me with this truthfulness always used by you. It is impossible for me to trifle with it any longer: it flashes out in everything. In the red sky, the air filled with ominous sounds, the courtiers' faces, now pale and serious. No, count, for the first time in your life, do not tell me the truth."

"Your Majesty is ailing?"

"No, but come and sit beside me. George, your brow is burning."

"A volcano is raging there."

"Your hand is cold," for she was pressing it between hers.

"My heart has been touched by the chill of death," he replied.

"Poor George! I told you we had best forget. Let me no longer be the Queen, hated and threatened; but just the woman. What is the realm, the universe to me, whom one loving heart suffices?"

The count went down on one knee and kissed the hem of her dress with the reverence of the ancients for a goddess.

"Oh, count, my only friend, do you know what Countess Diana is doing?"

"Leaving the country," returned Charny.

"He guesses rightly," muttered the Queen, "how could he tell that?"

"Oh, goodness – anything can be surmised at this hour."

"But if flight is so natural, why do not you and your family take it?"

"I do not do so, in the first place, because I have pledged myself not only to your Majesty, but to myself, not to leave you during the storm. My brothers stay, as they regulate their movements by mine: and my wife remains because she loves your Majesty most sincerely, I believe."

"Yes, Andrea has a most noble heart," said the lady with visible coldness.

"That is why she will not quit Versailles," replied Charny.

"It follows that I shall always have you near me," went on the Queen, in the same glacial tone, awarded to prevent the hearer telling whether she felt disdain or jealousy.

A witness could have divined this secret, however, from their manner in this privacy.

Meeting romantically, without either knowing the other's quality, Marie Antoinette and George Charny had fallen in love with each other. The royal dame had left the passion swell to the highest point, when the King had surprised the pair in dangerous intimacy. There was only one way to save her reputation: she blurted out the first name of a lady that occurred to her, and protested that the count was at her knees sueing for this lady to be his wife, with the royal approval.

The Queen had named Andrea Taverney, her companion, and the King, his suspicions dismissed, consented that she should be withdrawn from the convent where she had taken refuge, to fulfill the pretendedly wish of Charny. Was it religion that impelled her, or love on her own side for Charny? It was love, for she eagerly accepted the proffered hand, and the wedding took place, all the more as she had had the misfortune to learn that she was used as the cover for the royal amour.

But at the churchdoor they separated and had dwelt apart ever since.

Had she been truly a wife, the experiment of Dr. Gilbert might have failed, for mesmerism succeeds best with the single.

"Your Majesty," resumed the count, "made me Lifeguards lieutenant at Versailles, and I should not have quitted my post only you ordered me to guard the Tuileries Palace, You called it a necessary exile. Your Majesty knows that the countess neither approved nor disapproved, as she was not consulted."

"True," observed the other, still cold.

"I now believe my place is here," proceeded the officer with intrepidity: "I have broken my orders and come, hoping it will not displease you. Whether Lady Charny fears the course of events and goes away or not, I remain by the Queen, unless you break my sword: then, being unable to die in your presence, I can be killed at your door or on the pavement without."

He spoke so royally and plainly these simple words straight from the heart that the sovereign fell from her high pride, behind which she had hidden a feeling more human than royal.

"Count, never utter that word, never say you will die for me, as I feel that you will do so."

"I must say so, for the time comes when those who love monarchs must die for them – I fear so."

"What gives you this fatal presentiment, my lord?"

"Alas", returned the nobleman, "at the time of the American War, I was fired like others with the fever of independence thrilling society. I also wish to take a hand in the liberation of the slaves of Great Britain, as was said in those days, and I became a Free Mason, an Invisible like the Lafayettes and Lameths, under the redoubtable Balsamo, the King-Destroyer. Do you know the aim of that secret society? the wrecking of thrones. Its motto: 'Trample down the Lilies,' expressed in Latin as 'Lilia Pedibus Destrue!' in three letters for the initiated: 'L. P. D.' I retired with honor when I learnt this, but for one who shrank, twenty took the oath. What happens to-day is merely the first act of a grand tragedy which has been rehearsed during twenty years in the darkness. I have recognized the Bounden brothers at the head of the men who govern at the City Hall, occupy the Palais Royal, and took the Bastile. Do not cheat yourself; these accomplished deeds are no accidents, but Revolution planned long beforehand."

"Do you believe this, dear friend?" sobbed Marie Antoinette.

"Do not weep, but understand," said the count.

"Understand that I, the Queen, born mistress of thousands of men, subjects created to obey, must look on at them revolting and killing my friends – No, never will I understand this."

"You must, madam: for you have become the enemy of these subjects as soon as obedience weighed upon them, and while they are lacking the strength to devour you, they are testing their teeth on your friends, whom they detest as much as you, more than you."

"Perhaps you think they are right, Master Philosopher?" sneered the Austrian.

"Alas, yes, they are right," replied the Lifeguards Lieutenant, in his bland, affectionate voice, "for when I idly rode along the street, with handsome English horses, in a gold-laced suit, and my servants wearing more gold braid than would have kept three families, your people, twenty-five thousand wretches without daily bread, asked me to my teeth what use was I, who set up as a man above his fellow-men?"

"You serve them, my lord," said the Queen, grasping the count's swordhilt, "with this blade, which your fathers used as heroes on many a celebrated battlefield. The French nobility shielded the masses in war times; they won their gold by losing their blood. Do not you ask what use you are, George, while you, a brave man, swing the sword of your fathers."

"Do not speak of the nobles' blood," returned the count, "the commoners have blood to shed also; go and see the streams of it on Bastile Square. Go and count their dead in the gutters and know that those hearts, now ceased to beat, throbbed as nobly as a knight's when your cannon thundered against them. They sang in the showers of grapeshot while handling unfamiliar weapons, and the oldest grenadiers would not make a charge with that lightness. Lady and Queen, do not look at me with that angry eye, I beseech you. What matters to the heart whether it is clad in steel or rags? The time is come to think of this: you have no longer millions of slaves, or subjects, or mere men in France – but soldiers."

"Who will fight against me?"

"Yes, for they fight for Liberty and you stand between them and that goddess."

A long silence succeeded the words, and the woman was first to break it.

"You have spoken the truth which I begged you to keep back," she said.

"Because it is before you, veiled, seen distorted, but there. You may sleep to forget it, but it sits on your bedside and it will be the phantom in your dreams as it is the reality of your waking moments."

"I know one sleep it will not trouble," said she, proudly.

"I do not fear that kind more than your Majesty – I may desire it as much," said the count.

"Oh, you think it our only refuge?"

"Yes: but we must not hurry towards it. We shall earn it by our exertions during the day of storm."

They were sitting beside each other, but a gulf divided them; their thoughts so diverged.

"A last word, count," said Marie Antoinette, "swear to me that you came back solely on my account? that Lady Charny did not write to you? I know that she was going out – to meet you? swear that you have not come back for her sake!"

At this was heard a slight tapping at the door.

It was the servant to announce that the King had finished supper. Charny frowned with wonder.

"Tell his Majesty," said the Queen without sitting apart from her favorite, "that I have news from the capital, and will impart to him. Continue," she added to Charny: "the King having supped must be given time to digest."

This interruption had not weakened the woman's jealousy as a loving one, or as a queen.

"Your Majesty asks if I came back on account of my wife?" he asked as soon as the door was closed. "Do you forget that I am a man of my word and the engagement I made?"

"It is the oath that goads me, for in immolating yourself to my happiness, you give grief to a fair and noble woman – a crime the more."

"You exaggerate. Be it enough that I keep my word. Call it not a crime what was born of chance and necessity. We have both deplored this union which shielded the Queen's good fame. I have been obliged to submit to it these four years."

"Yes, but do you believe that I do not see your sorrow and chagrin translated under the form of the deepest respect?" reproached the Queen.

"For mercy's sake, do me justice for what you see me do; for if I have not yet suffered and made others suffer enough, I might double the burden without rising to the level of the gratitude I owe you eternally."

His speech had irresistible power like all emanating from a sincere and impassioned heart.

"Yes, yes, I know all, and I am wrong. Forgive me. But if you worship some secret idol to whom you offer a mystic incense, if you cherish one adored woman – I dare not utter the words, they frighten me lest the syllables should scatter through the air and vibrate on my ear – oh, if one exists, keep her hidden from all; and do not forget that you have a fair and youthful wife, who should be publicly encompassed with cares and assiduity; she should lean on your arm and on your heart."

Charny frowned so that the pure lines of his visage were altered for a space.

"What are you seeking? that I should depart from the Countess of Charny? you are silent – that is your meaning. I am ready to obey you, but reflect that she is alone in the world. Andrea is an orphan, her father the baron having died last year, like a good old nobleman of the former time who did not wish to see the present. Her brother, the Knight of Redcastle, only appears once a-year at court to bow to your Majesty, kiss his sister, and go away without anybody knowing whither. Reflect, madam, that this lady of Charny, might be called unto God as a maiden, without the purest of the angels surprising in her mind any womanly memory."

"Yes, I know your Andrea is an angel on earth, and deserves to be loved. That is why I think the future will be hers when it flees from me. No, no; but I am not speaking like a queen. I forget myself, but there is a voice in my heart singing of love and happiness, while without roars war, misery and death. It is the voice of my youth which I have outlived. Forgive one, Charny, who is no longer young, and will smile, and love no more."

The unhappy woman pressed her long, thin fingers to her burning eyes and tears, regal diamonds more becoming than the finest in the Diamond Necklace, trickled between them.

"Oh, order me to quit you, but do not let me see you weep," pleaded the count, again falling on one knee.

"The dream is over," said Marie Antoinette, rising.

With a witching movement she tossed back her thick, powdered tresses, unrolling down her white and swanline neck.

"I shall afflict you no more. Let us drop such folly. Is it odd that a woman should be so weak when a queen stands in such need of comfort? Let us talk of serious matters – such as you bear from Paris."

"From Paris, madam, where I witnessed the ruin of royalty."

"This is serious with a vengeance. You call a successful revolt the ruin of royalty? Because the Bastile is taken, Lord Charny, do you say royalty is abolished? You do not reflect that the Bastile has been built but in the Fourteenth Century while royalty struck in its roots six thousand years ago all over the globe."

"I would I could deceive," said the lieutenant sadly, "and proclaim consoling news instead of saddening your Majesty. Unfortunately the instrument gives forth no other sounds than it was shaped to send."

"Stay, I will set you to a cheerier tune! though I am but a woman. You say the Parisians have revolted. In what proportion?"

"Twelve out of fifteen: the calculation is easy. The populace stand in that proportion to the classes, the other two fifteenths being the nobility and the clergy."

"But six of the rate are women, and – "

"Women and children are not the least of your foes. You are proud and courageous yourself, do not omit the women and the children. One day you may reckon them as demons."

"What do you mean, count?"

"Do you not know the part the women and children play in civil commotions? I will tell you and you will own that a woman is equal two soldiers."

"Are you mad, my lord?"

"Had you seen your sex at the taking of the Bastile," he said with a mournful smile: "hounding the men on to arm themselves, while under the fire, threatening with their naked fist your Swiss soldiers caparisoned for war, yelling maledictions over the slain in a voice which made the living bound unto death. Had you seen them boiling pitch, rolling cannon, giving the fighting men cartridges and the more timid a kiss with the cartridges! Do you know that as many women as men dashed across the Bastile draw-bridges, and that if its stones are coming down now, the picks are wielded by female hands? Oh, my lady, you must include the women, and the children who cast the bullets, sharpen the swords and hurl paving-stones from the roofs. The bullet cast by a boy will kill your best general from afar; the sword he sharpened will hamstring your finest war-horse; the blind pebble from this David's sling will put out the eye of your Dragoon Samson and your Lifeguards Goliath.

"Count the old men, too, for they who have no strength to swing the sabre, serve as buckler for the active fighters. At the taking of the Bastile old men were on hand: they stood so that the younger ones could rest their guns on their shoulder so that the balls of your Switzers might be buried in the useless old body, the rampart of the able man. Include them among your foes, for they have been relating in the chimney corner for ever so many years, what affronts their mothers endured, the poverty of the estates over which the nobles hunted, the shame of their caste humbled under feudal privileges. When the sons took up the gun, they found it loaded with the curses of the aged as well as with powder and shot. In Paris now, women and children as well as the men are cheering for liberty and independence. Count them all as eight hundred thousand warriors."

"Three hundred Spartans vanquished Xerxes' army," retorted the Queen.

"Yes, but the Spartans are nearly a million and it is your army that is Xerxes."

"Oh, I would rather be hurled from the throne," she cried, as she rose with clenched fists and face flaming with shame and ire, "I would rather your Parisians hewed me to pieces, than hear from a Charny, one of my supporters, such speech as this!"

"Charny would not so address your Majesty unless every drop of blood in his veins were worthy of his sires and given to you."

"Then let us march upon Paris and let us die together!"

"Shamefully, without any battle," said the noble. "We shall not fight but disappear entirely like Philistines. March on Paris? when, as soon as we enter within her walls, all the houses will tumble down upon us, like the Red Sea waves overwhelming Pharaoh, and you will leave a cursed name, and your children will be hunted down like wolf-cubs."