Le chevalier de Maison-Rouge

ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1897.

Copyright, 1890, 1894, By Little, Brown, and Company.

University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The "Chevalier de Maison-Rouge," though it deals with events subsequent to those covered by the earlier stories of the Marie Antoinette cycle, was written at an earlier date. In it we are introduced to a new set of personages, and see no more of the characters whose fortunes furnish the fictitious as distinguished from the historical interest of the earlier stories.

The months which elapsed between the execution of the King and the appearance in the Place de la Révolution of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette were thickly strewn with tragedy, particularly after the final conflict between the Gironde and the Mountain, and the decisive victory of the latter, resulting in the undisputed supremacy of the band of men in whom we now see the personification of the Reign of Terror.

Those portions of the narrative which describe the life of the queen at the Temple, and subsequently in the Conciergerie, are founded strictly upon fact. Of the treatment accorded to the little Dauphin by Simon, who is given much prominence in the story, it need only be said that it falls far short of the truth as it is to be found in numberless memoirs and documents. There is nothing in all history more touching and heart-rending than the fate of this innocent child, who was literally done to death by sheer brutality in less than two years; nor is there any one of the excesses committed by the extreme revolutionists which has done more to cause posterity to fail to realize the vast benefits which mankind owes to the Revolution, in the face of the unnamable horrors which were perpetrated in its name.

The noble answer of Marie Antoinette to the unnatural charges brought against her by Hébert (not Simon) was actually made at her trial.

There is no direct historical authority for the various attempts herein detailed to effect the escape of the Queen, although rumors of such were circulating unceasingly. The titular hero of the book is not an historical personage, nor are Maurice Lindey and Lorin; but the latter are faithful representatives of a by no means small class of sincere and devoted republicans who turned aside with shrinking horror from the atrocities of the Terror.

The mutual heroism of Maurice and Lorin in the final catastrophe reminds us of the similar conduct of Gaston in the "Regent's Daughter" when he fails to reach Nantes with the reprieve until the head of one of his comrades had fallen. Nor can one avoid a thought of Sydney Carton laying down his life for Charles Darnay, in Charles Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," wherein the horrors of the Terror are so vividly pictured.

One must go far to seek for a more touching and pathetic love-episode than that of Maurice and Geneviève, whose sinning, if sinning it was, was forced upon them by the cold and unscrupulous Dixmer in the pursuit of his one unchangeable idea.

On the 16th of October, 1793, the daughter of the Cæsars lost her life through the instrumentality of the machine which we saw Cagliostro exhibit to her in a glass of water at the Château de Taverney more than twenty years before. Then she was in the bloom of youth and beauty, a young queen coming to reign over a people who had just begun to realize their wrongs and their power. To-day she is a woman of thirty-eight, prematurely aged, but bearing about her still the noble dignity of her ancient race, and proving anew, as Charles I. had proved, and as her own husband had proved, that the near approach of death brings forth the noblest qualities in those of royal lineage.

We cannot better end this brief note than by quoting the characteristic but powerful apostrophe of Carlyle in his essay upon the "Diamond Necklace."

"Beautiful Highborn, thou wert so foully hurled low! For if thy being came to thee out of old Hapsburg dynasties, came it not also (like my own) out of Heaven? Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. Oh, is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long months and years of slow-wasting ignominy: of thy birth, soft-cradled in imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of Heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendor: and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine and Fouquier-Tinville's judgment bar was but the merciful end? Look there, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is gray with care: the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, which her own hand has mended, attire the Queen of the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop; a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads: the air deaf with their triumph yell! The living-dead must shudder with yet one other pang: her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face which she hides with her hands. There is, then, no heart to say, God pity thee? O think not of these: think of HIM whom thou worshippest, the Crucified,--who also treading the wine-press alone, fronted sorrow still deeper: and triumphed over it, and made it holy: and built of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the wretched! Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light,--where thy children shall not dwell. The head is on the block: the axe rushes--Dumb lies the World: that wild-yelling World and all its madness is behind thee."

LIST OF CHARACTERS.

Period, 1793.

Marie Antoinette, } The Dauphin, } prisoners at the Temple. Madame Royale, } The Princess Elizabeth, } Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, } M. Dixmer, } engaged in an attempt to Geneviève, his wife, } rescue the Queen. Sophie Tison, } Lieutenant Maurice Lindey, a patriot, in love with Geneviève. Maximilien-Jean Lorin, his friend. Santerre, Commandant of the Parisian National Guard. Simon, a cobbler. President Harmand, of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser. M. Giraud, the city architect. Chauveau Lagarde, counsel for the Queen. Jean Paul Marot, } Robespierre, } Danton, } Chénier, } Montagnards. Hébert, } Fabre d'Églantine, } Collot d'Herbois, } Robert Lindet, } MM. Vergniaud, Féraud, Brissot, Louvet, }Girondins. Pétion, Valazé, Lanjuinais, Barbaroux, } MM. Roland, Servien, Clavières, } of the French Ministry, Le Brun, and Monge, } August, 1793. Generals Dumouriez, Miacrinski, } officers commanding the Steingel, Neuilly, Valence, } French armies on the Dampierre, and Miranda, } frontiers. Henriot, Commandant-General of the National Guard. Citizen Devaux, of the National Guard. Citizens Tonlan, Lepître, Agricola, } of the Municipal and Mercevault, } Guard. Grammont, Adjutant-Major. Tison, employed at the Temple Prison. Madame Tison, his wife. Arthémise, ex-dancer at the opera. Abbé Girard. Dame Jacinthe, his servant. Turgy, an old waiter of Louis XVI., attending the royal family at the Temple. Muguet, femme-de-chambre of Dixmer. Madame Plumeau, hostess of an alehouse near the Temple. Agesilaus, servant to Maurice Lindey. Aristide, concierge at Maurice's house. Gracchus, a turnkey at the Conciergerie. Richard, jailer at the Conciergerie. Madame Richard, his wife. Duchesse, } Gilbert, } Gendarmes at the Conciergerie. Sanson, the executioner.

CONTENTS.