Authors, French -- 19th century -- Biography; Autobiographies; Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885
At the spot where the King’s head fell, a long rivulet of blood streamed
down the planks of the scaffold to the pavement. When the execution was
over, Samson threw to the people the King’s coat, which was of white
molleton, and in an instant it disappeared, torn by a thousand hands.
At the moment when the head of Louis XVI. fell, the Abbé Edgeworth was
still near the King. The blood spirted upon him. He hastily donned a
brown overcoat, descended from the scaffold and was lost in the crowd.
The first row of spectators opened before him with a sort of wonder
mingled with respect; but after he had gone a few steps, the attention
of everybody was still so concentrated upon the centre of the Place
where the event had just been accomplished, that nobody took any further
notice of Abbé Edgeworth.
The poor priest, enveloped in his thick coat which concealed the blood
with which he was covered, fled in bewilderment, walking as one in a
dream and scarcely knowing where he was going. However, with that sort
of instinct which preserves somnambulists he crossed the river, took the
Rue du Bac, then the Rue du Regard and thus managed to reach the house
of Mme. de Lézardière, near the Barrière du Maine.
Arrived there he divested himself of his soiled clothing and remained
for several hours, in a state of collapse, without being able to collect
a thought or utter a word.
Some Royalists who rejoined him, and who had witnessed the execution,
surrounded the Abbé Edgeworth and reminded him of the adieu he had
addressed to the King: “Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!” These
words, however, memorable though they were, had left no trace on the
mind of him who had uttered them. “We heard them,” said the witnesses of
the catastrophe, still moved and thrilled. “It is possible,” he replied,
“but I do not remember having said such a thing.”
Abbé Edgeworth lived a long life without ever being able to remember
whether he really did pronounce these words.
Mme. de Lézardière, who had been seriously ill for more than a month,
was unable to support the shock of the death of Louis XVI. She died on
the very night of January 21.
II. ARRIVAL OF NAPOLEON IN PARIS. March 20, 1815.
History and contemporaneous memoirs have truncated, or badly related, or
even omitted altogether, certain details of the arrival of the Emperor
in Paris on March 20, 1815. But living witnesses are to be met with who
saw them and who rectify or complete them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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