Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/500

MARIE ANTOINETTE'S TALISMAN. 457 numbers a yell that rose fiercely, like the cry of wild beasts in a forest. From street to street, from alley to alley, that cry swept its way, arousing the people like a war-trumpet ; from the Place de Grove, from the steps and very roof of the Hotel de Ville it gathered force, and rolled in thunder through the crowd.

"To the Bastile! To the Bastile!"

Each strong arm dropped from its work. The Place de Grove was emptied as if a mountain torrent had swept through it. That moment all Paris seemed to hurl itself on the Bastile.

Burning with rage, fierce, wild, terrible, the people swarmed around the grim, old fortress. The draw-bridge was up; the moat, deep, stagnant, torpid as a gorged anaconda, coiled around its base, sending up a fetid odor as that serpent does when suddenly aroused. Some small houses and shanties were crowded close to the moat. In an instant the roofs of these buildings were covered with human beings, who swarmed over them until the timbers crashed beneath their weight; but it was in vain. The moat was too broad and deep- no man was vigorous enough to leap it. For a minute the crowd was held at bay; then a plunge from the lowest roof- a struggle through the green waves; another plunge, a wild, ringing shout, and a figure was seen climbing up the timbers of the drawbridge. Another followed, whom the people recognized as Monsieur Jaque, the foster-brother of Count Mirabeau, and rent the air with their shouts. Then came the sharp, ringing sound of axes, the rattle of chains, and a terrible crash of timbers-the draw-bridge had thundered down to its place. In an instant it groaned under the weight of human beings pressing over it, panting like wild beasts for a leap upon their prey.

Then an awful scene arose in the fortress. A man was seen hall- way up one of the towers, clinging to the ladder of massive ropes which coiled down its walls ; but some one of the insurgents had gone up before, and with his hatchet hewed the ropes above him. One after another the strands gave way, till only a single rope was left. A blow of the hatchet upon this, and the rope began to uncoil, swifter and swifter, whirling the poor wretch with it, until the last strand tore apart, and he fell, with a crash, to the court below, and was so broken upon the stones that no one could have told the bruised face as that of Christopher, the head keeper.

But a more pitiful scene was going on in the governor's room, which a crowd of insurgents had entered, weapon in hand. The poor man was upon his knees, pleading for the mercy he had never given, pale, abject, trembling with terrible dread. There was no riot, no noisethose men were all too bitterly in earnest for that ; the hatred in their white faces was terrible to look upon. One man held a key in his hand.

"Show us the cells, " he said, sternly, "those which are deepest underground. Before we kill you, the prisoners must be set free. "

The governor groveled to the earth, his limbs shook, his eyes stood out wildly from his head—snow itself was not whiter than his craven face.

"I cannot- I do not know where they all are. Christopher can tell.”

His words were broken; his teeth knocked together; he clung to the legs of a table near him in mad terror, lest those fierce men should drag him away by force. They did tear his hold from the senseless wood. He was lifted from one man to another, flung to the earth, spurned across the stones-at last dragged over the draw-bridge and hurled into the howling masses of the crowd.

Before his tormentors had entered the Bastile again, a cry so keen, so awfully shrill, that it cut through all other noises like an arrow, made them halt and look back with a pang of compassion; but the, next instant both the shriek and the feeling were gone, and the doors of the prison began to crash under their axes, while the maddened crowd rushed downward into the bowels of the earth, burning with passion, but awe-stricken and silent as an army of ghosts.

The first man who entered the lower corridors was Monsieur Jaque; he was followed by a woman with a face of marble, who carried a burning torch in her hand. Three times his axe circled around the head of Monsieur Jaque, and each time the iron-studded door resisted the blow. Another, and the mass of oak fell in with a crash, and a man, all trembling and whte, with eyes gleaming through the long, silver hair that fell over them, stood up in the center of the cell, holding out both hands imploringly.

When the flame of the torch fell upon his face, he uttered a sharp cry, and shielded his sight with both hands.

Then a low voice, broken and sweet with infinite tenderness, thrilled the air of the dungeon.

"My husband! Oh, Henry! will you not look upon me?"

A slow shiver ran through the prisoner, the hands fell away from his face ; he tried to speak, but had lost all power of distinct articulation. His eyes turned wistfully on the eager face bending toward him, but he shook his head and turned away.