Palaces and prisons

A beautiful woman—if a coarse nature ever can give beauty to faultless features—sat in one of those charming little saloons which made the Grand Trianon the gayest and most popu...

The object that had arrested Doctor Gosner’s attention was a group of ladies sauntering beneath the trees of the Park. One, who seemed the superior of the rest, walked a little...

All at once Madame Du Berry sprang to her feet; her audacious courage assumed all its force. She would not believe the fearful thing that man had said with so much pain.

“Ah! how fortunate! I might have been compelled to wait, but for this. He seems in good-humor, too; but I am trembling yet. Mon Dieu, how I tremble! That awful shock has shaken...

On the second day after this scene in the favorite’s bower room, Zamara came unsummoned into the presence of his mistress, and laid a ring, with its green scarabee in her hand....

A narrow street in the heart of Paris; houses on each side, towering up so high that the sunshine never reached the earth upon which they stood; and those who lived in the lower...

“My husband was a born subject of the empress. He was a learned man—nay, he had higher powers than mere learning can give. In some things he was great.”

Jacques was going toward the door, when it was flung open, and a man entered—a large, powerful man, dressed carelessly, but with something of courtliness; for his clothes were o...

Mirabeau and Monsieur Jacques went to a neighboring chamber and sat down together; for, strange as the contrast was between them, they were foster-brothers, and a stronger tie t...

“No,” said Monsieur Jacques, humbly enough, “love is so far apart from me, and so natural to you; but what man ever knows what destiny has in store for him. I saw her so sweet,...

“This will keep them from want a long time,” he thought, gloating over the money as if it had been food, for which he was in fact famishing; for the bread he had given those poo...

All night long, Madame Gosner lay awake, thinking of what she had suffered, and of what she had heard. She was a woman of powerful mind and corresponding physique; all her facul...

The two women, suffering as they were from the pangs of hunger, scarcely looked at each other, but sat rapidly feasting their eyes on the food yet untasted, with a wild, eager c...

The very next evening after Marguerite had entered on her new duties, she was hard at work in Dame Doudel’s apartment, where she found delight in arranging the garlands and bouq...

“There is silver for your flowers, and I thank you for bringing the first choice here. So you are Doudel’s daughter; I wonder he never gave me a sight of you before. A faithful...

The thoughts of her father, in that awful dungeon, took entire possession of that young girl; all other things became as nothing to her. Her new occupation, her old friends, onl...

The king drew back as if a viper had sprung out from the iron he was filing, when the workman who had entered his presence so strangely made this direct appeal. Anger, astonishm...

All that morning a young girl sat in the parlor of a little public house in the town of Versailles, waiting with such impatience as can only be felt by anxious youth, for the ap...

“What is this? Who is it that is begging and praying to see her majesty? My young friend here, with the mournful eyes? Why not? If I had a daughter now, she should follow me int...

Marguerite followed Dame Tillery into the cottage. A confused sound of voices, and low bursts of laughter met them at the threshold, and with this was mingled the tinkling sound...

Marguerite sprang from her place at the window, and taking a long porcelain dish from the table, brought it to the churn, and kneeling on the door, held it up to be filled.

That instant a young girl, pale as death, sprang before the queen, her white lips apart, her eyes burning with heroism and terror. With both arms she flung up the folds of her s...

An old man sat in the saloon of a hotel in Paris, awaiting an interview which had been delayed beyond the appointed time, a fact that seemed to give him no little annoyance. He...

Mirabeau looked at his father in amazement a moment, then he turned upon his heel and walked the room with quick, heavy strides, gnawing his under lip and working his fingers wi...

“Well, well, go on with your story,” said the count, while suppressed laughter still trembled on his lips. “I, for one, am ready to believe anything, even that Marie Antoinette,...

Marguerite spent the morning after her adventure at the Swiss cottage, in the front chamber, to which Dame Tillery had been ready to conduct her on the previous day. The good da...

Marguerite was still at the Swan, waiting with great anxiety for the appearance of Jacques, for the landlady of the hotel had so often repeated and improved upon the exploits of...

One thing was certain, Dame Tillery never remained many minutes together without finding something to say. Just now her mind was occupied by two important subjects: This visit t...

A more beautiful woman than Marie Antoinette was not to be found in all Paris. Above the medium height, splendidly proportioned, and graceful in all her movements, she possessed...

The king, who was listening intently to Marguerite, looked toward his queen as the light, musical laugh rippled by him, and frowning a little, drew the young girl further down t...

Monsieur Jacques, who had stood near the door, watchful, but inactive, came forward, and, kneeling on one knee, lifted the fainting girl in his arms. She was deathly white, and...

Louis made a motion with his hand. A door was opened, and he led the queen from her presence-chamber into a small cabinet, to which he was followed by Monsieur Jacques. Here the...

The woman who had given Dame Tillery so much anxiety, sat in the chamber she had so resolutely possessed herself of, waiting for the dinner ordered an hour before. She was wonde...

“Well, what of him? He was sent to the Bastille; I remember it all. It seems to me that I intended to let him out; but the king died, and then all my power for good or harm ende...

Before the dwarf could urge the conversation further, Dame Tillery came into the room, followed by a maid-servant, who carried a tray, on which were some delicate trifles, and a...

The adroit flattery of Madame Du Berry carried Dame Tillery out of the room, quite unconscious that she had, in fact, been summarily dismissed. The moment she was gone, Zamara e...

A woman started up, still and white as a ghost, from the dim shadows that had settled around her. She would not believe the joyful news. The very sound of a voice cheerful, and...

Mirabeau refused a seat, and kept walking up and down the chamber like a wild beast in its cage. While Jacques hesitated how to tell his story best, he turned fiercely upon him.

The governor of the Bastille had retired to his own apartments within that grim old fortress. All the duties of the day had been performed. The allowance of black bread and impu...

Christopher found the governor deep in his meal, which he enjoyed with the zest of a man who has few sources of occupation or amusement, and, therefore, gives free scope to the...

The ruddy countenance of the governor lost its tone, and a cold whiteness crept over his lips. At last he turned a blanched and scared face upon the page. The great danger of hi...

At daylight the next morning, a dashing page, clothed in the livery of some great house, which no one in Versailles could satisfactorily identify, came riding up the streets of...

Zamara walked softly to Madame Du Berry’s chamber and knocked at the door. A voice bade him come in, and he disappeared. Directly he came back and beckoned to the dame, who was...

There had been no audience arranged for Dame Tillery that day. The queen wished to see her, that some proper reward might be given for the danger she had run, and, perhaps, prom...

“Your highness, before coming here I made a promise. Yonder page, who has something that he wishes to lay before your highness, besought me to let him follow my poor footsteps t...

All night long Marguerite Gosner lay by her mother’s side, with that precious paper folded close to her heart. She did not sleep, though the last two days had been full of excit...

It was a great relief to Marguerite that there was something for her to accomplish; but for that the suspense would have been terrible. As it was, Monsieur Jacques called an hou...

That little group moved forward in silence; the guards restless and preoccupied; the two females, pale with expectation, and faint from the nauseous atmosphere into which they w...

Madame Gosner moved through the door, as she uttered a threat which was treason in itself, leading Marguerite by the hand. Monsieur Jacques remained behind, though Christopher s...

Dame Tillery called her household together, maids, grooms, and helpers, and standing at a long table in one end of the most public room in her house, proclaimed to them the high...

Madame Gosner was absent from her apartments. The terrible disappointment which had fallen upon her preyed so heavily upon her mind that anything like repose was impossible. For...

Monsieur Jacques went to his room and prepared, with more trepidation than he had ever felt in his life, for the enterprise which would give him the only object he asked for on...

The disappointment which fell upon Monsieur Jacques was terrible. Still, actuated by a despairing thought that God, in his mercy, would open some way to the truth, he went vigor...

The Count De Mirabeau had just come in from an exciting debate at the club. This man seemed to have changed places with his foster-brother; for while one had, to a certain exten...

Du Berry hesitated, and sat for some moments in silence, now and then casting a doubtful glance at Mirabeau, while the color came and went under her rouge. She had lost all deli...

Madame Gosner and Marguerite were alone in their room, which had become more gloomy than ever since their disappointment. All the spare time these two women could obtain from th...

The women of France had, perhaps, more excuse for revolt than those of any other country. Misery, hardship and injustice, drove them into a storm of politics with terrible viole...

One night the streets of Paris were darkened by crowds of silent, stern men whose eager faces looked sinister in the lamplight, as they turned invariably toward the Place do Grè...

As an ocean broken and heaving with the underswell of a continued tempest, rushes upon some rock-bound coast, the people of Paris poured themselves upon the Bastille, wave upon...

A strange thing happened as the insurgents poured across that draw-bridge and entered the vast gloom of the prison they had conquered. Silence, like that of death, fell on them...

Well might Marguerite Gosner cry to her God for help; for with the force of a whirlwind she was swept back toward the draw-bridge and in danger of being trampled to death. Her p...

They were together at last, that weary old man, his wife and child. That crowd of women had brought him to the door of his home, and set him down on its threshold. When he saw t...

The Queen of France nearly lost her courage when news reached her of the storming of the Bastille, but she kept bravely up in presence of the court, and only indulged in sad for...

The old man who had so terrified Marie Antoinette, followed her with piteous entreaties, until she reached the private door, which had been carefully left open for her. He even...

The stranger laid his hand in gentle compassion on the old man’s arm. There was something so sweet and kind in his lunacy, that he could not resist the pitying impulse which pos...

Madame Gosner had done the true work of her lifetime when she saw her husband set free from the Bastille. Then if all the sweet womanhood of her nature had not been embittered b...

Louison Brisot had been foremost among the women who brought the king and the queen almost prisoners from Versailles to the Tuileries. Flushed with her triumph, weary with excit...

While his eyes were shrouded, and his head bowed low in utter dejection, a young girl darkened the moonlight which streamed into the dungeon, and settled down by the old man wit...

Months passed, and each day widened the gulf that yawned between the people of France and their king. Marie Antoinette began to lose courage. More than once Monsieur Jacques had...

The Queen of France reached the summer-house just as the sun was pouring a flood of crimson and gold into the violet shadows that lay among the trees which sheltered the little...

Marie Antoinette stopped suddenly. The passion in her voice, and the quick flash of her eyes were fast undoing the sweet impression she had made upon this singular man. She saw...

A woman followed Count Mirabeau when he went to St. Cloud—a young woman, some three or four-and-twenty years of age, but looking older from the stormy passions that had swept ac...

The old prisoner still haunted his cell in the ruined Bastille, which he had barricaded with loose stones, and made so difficult of access, that no one but himself and Marguerit...

They stood together now on the same platform, and the moonbeams fell upon them with all its spiritualizing brightness. A face more sweetly grand was never bowed over one more be...

It was three nights after Mirabeau’s visit to St. Cloud, and Louison Brisot had not yet seen him. She waited with burning impatience, hour after hour, until a keen desire to rep...

Louison Brisot, with all her secretiveness and self-control, felt her heart burn, and her cheeks grow hot, when Mirabeau insulted her solicitude with a rude answer. She arose an...

When St. Just and Marguerite left the ruins of the Bastille, a man came out of a half destroyed building near which they had stood, and followed them at a distance. His step was...

“I deserve no thanks, dame, so give me none. I but hurled half a dozen ruffians back as they seized upon that poor girl, but was altogether too late, so far as your husband was...

Louison Brisot went from the presence of Mirabeau with a tumult of contending passions at war in her bosom. Ardent, vindictive, and egotistical, she guarded herself with a power...

With no hesitation or fear, Louison turned toward the Chaussée d’Anton. The thoroughfares were full of people, men and women, conversing together in knots, and fraternizing with...

One by one, Louison made these people out, even before she heard their voices. In the first she saw her great political rival, Theroigne de Mericourt, of Liege, one of the most...

Then evening wore on, and Mirabeau’s guests came out of the awkwardness of a sumptuous masquerade, where they had been aping the life they professed to despise, and their coarse...

“Unless it is for his interest,” said the woman, laughing maliciously, as her threatening eyes read the little, aged face that had grown dark and wrinkled, like a withered prune...

Dame Doudel held a letter in her hand. “It is from my sister Tillery,” she said. “Just as usual, she wants you. As if there was no person in the world but herself.”

The crowd settled back, chaffering for fish, sorting out vegetables, and running up accounts, while the business of the day went on, and Louison Brisot made an ignominious retre...

The girl lifted her eyes to the face of her questioner. It was the man who had twice told her of his love in the ruins of the Bastille—who had helped her wreathe those pretty ga...

One day just as Louison was about to break loose from her self-imposed solitude, Zamara, the dwarf, crept into her lodgings, and placed a letter in her hand. She knew the handwr...

Scarcely had the dwarf been gone an hour, when a loud voice was heard in the passage. The door of her little room swung open, and Dame Tillery, landlady of The Swan, came sailin...

Slowly and sadly Marie Antoinette walked up and down one of the most secluded avenues in the Park at St. Cloud. Not yet forty years of age, in fact, lacking some years of that,...

Marie Antoinette walked rapidly toward the chateau, revolving the subject of Mirabeau’s letter in her mind. The advice he gave was bitter as wormwood to her; and had she stood f...

An hour after this, Marguerite sat beside Dame Tillery in the little donkey cart which had brought them from Versailles. She carried a letter in her bosom directed to Count Mira...

“At last! at last!” exclaimed Louison Brisot, springing forward like a panther, and seizing the dwarf, Zamara, by the shoulder as he came through the door of her apartment. “I b...

It was getting late, but Louison cared nothing for that, the exactions of society had long since been thrown away in her wild life. She hastily arranged her dress and went into...

A little man sat alone in his lodgings where he led an existence of austere economy, such as many of the most noisy patriots only affected. This man was sincere in his simple mo...

“Ah! you have thought better of it—I knew that it would be so,” said Mirabeau, receiving the woman he had parted with in such bitter anger, with a broad, frank smile. “Why will...

THE man went out somewhat astonished, but resolute to obey the orders he had received. Then Mirabeau leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath. He was a perfect dissembler...

Robespierre had made his first attack in a bitter article hawked that morning through the streets of Paris; and the cry rose loud and long, like the howl of wild beasts scenting...

Once more Mirabeau was triumphant. The malice of his enemies had lifted him still higher in the estimation of the people who gloried more than ever in their idol. Louison shared...

On the fourteenth of July, 1790, the city of Paris resolved to commemorate the taking of the Bastille, and all France was invited to rejoice with those who had laid this mighty...

Marie Antoinette bore this tumultuous scene with the spirit of a martyr; nay, her own waning hopes had been exhilarated even by this rude homage, and she was willing to deceive...

One person in that vast crowd had marked the scene well, and crept close enough to hear much that was said when Marie Antoinette gave her scarabee ring to the old prisoner. This...

Still many persons lingered, singly and in groups, around the vast amphitheatre, from which the green turf was half trodden away. Among them were two old women and the young gir...

St. Just and Marguerite were so completely absorbed in each other, that they did not observe a group of gayly-dressed women, with bright ribbons streaming from their garments, w...

That night there was a wild, riotous ball at the site of the Bastille. The Cour de Government had been cleared and garnished by a thousand busy hands. Temporary draw-bridges, ar...

Zamara left the site of the Bastille, burning with rage. Every step he took deepened his bitter humiliation. Keenly sensitive about his diminutive form, he felt the cruel sarcas...

That morning the prisoner of the Bastille awoke and felt for the ring, which was like a promise of immortality to him. It was gone. He started up in wild amaze, refusing to beli...

Months went by, for a little time the wheels of the Revolution revolved with a slow but steady force. The influence of Mirabeau had made itself felt; his powerful genius held th...

When Mirabeau died, constitutional monarchy in France lost its strongest support. Slowly, but with steady persistence, Robespierre assumed the place which he could only fill wit...

Subjects exist from which the pen shrinks away shuddering. Of such is the Reign of Terror, now fully inaugurated. The royal family were close prisoners in the Temple. The few fr...

Like a wild beast, France had tasted blood and clamored loudly for more. Her keepers, Robespierre, Danton, Marat and the rest, black-hearted and red-handed as they were, found e...

Robespierre and his friends had looked on the worship of reason with unflinching contempt, but in these blasphemies lay a power that crushed out the influence they had wielded....