1Upon our arrival, the Champ de Mars presented an aspect of the most profound tranquillity.

2A strong detachment of troops, with two or three pieces of cannon, which had been stationed there in consequence of the assassination which had taken place in the morning, seeing that nothing extraordinary took place, gradually withdrew, leaving the place to three or four hundred inoffensive strollers, and a small group of men, to whom no one paid the slightest attention, but which, like many small clouds, contained a terrific tempest.

3This group seemed to have as leaders two strange-looking individuals. One of these creatures, whose name was Verriéres, was a fantastic-looking hunchback. He had not been seen since the 5th and 6th of October, when he had made himself conspicuous at Versailles. He reappeared, however, on the night before our present date.

4The other was from the department of Auvergne, and called Fournier, the American, because he had been overseer of a negro plantation in St. Domingo.

5He held in his hand a firelock.

6The miserable creatures who were listening to the harangue of these two men were a sort of human larva, arising none knew from where.

7On entering the Champ de Mars we threw a glance around, to see if we could recognise, in the midst of these three or four hundred strollers, the four persons we came in search of. At that moment, it was all the easier to do so, as every one was following Lanterre to the altar of the country. We followed as the rest. Lanterre announced to the patriots, with a voice which suited admirably these sort of proceedings, that the petition placed there the preceding night could not be signed, as, at the moment this petition was written, it was supposed that the Assembly had not yet decided the fate of the King, but that, since then, they had recognised his innocence and inviolability in the sitting of the night before. The Jacobins, he continued, intended occupying themselves with the forming a new petition, which they would, ere long, present for signature.

8This declaration was received with murmurs.

9“Why should we await the presentation of a petition already formed? Don’t we know, as well as Messieurs Brissot, Laclos, and Robespierre, what we want?” said an enormous man, of about forty years of age, a young and beautiful woman leaning on his arm. “We can also write,” added he, with a smile; “and I might even say that we commence to think.”

10“No one hinders you. Citizen Robert,” said Lanterre, who was, probably, not annoyed at the interruption. “You, and, above all, the Citizen Keralio, whose dear little arm you have the extreme felicity of squeezing within your own, are more capable of success than any one else. In the meantime, I take possession of the one made by the Society.”

11So saying, Lanterre placed in his pocket the petition written by me, dictated by Brissot, amended by Laclos, and definitely corrected by Bonneville and Camille Desmoulins.

12“With all this, I neither see my wife nor my daughters,” exclaimed M. Duplay.

13“I have an idea,” replied I, “that, having required some refreshments, she went to some café with Félicién.”

14“We require pen, ink, and paper,” said the citizen whom Lanterre had called Robert, “which we will find at the first stationer’s.”

15“Would you wish me to go and fetch it for you?” said a red-headed individual, with a strong German accent.

16“But,” said a strange voice, “do you think you can spare time to go such a distance? How would it be, in the meantime, if the Queen required your services?”

17“The Queen!—the Queen!” demanded the people from all sides, and at the same time fixing their eyes on the man with the red hair.

18“Yes. Why, the Citizen Weder is the valet-de-chambre of the Queen, and has come here, probably, to see what was going on, so that he might be enabled to carry it to her Majesty. If I make a mistake, and you are not the Citizen Weder, say what your name is.”

19“My name is Chaumette, a medical student, of No. 9, Rue Mazarine. Let every one do as I have done, and make known his name, then we shall be acquainted with who are our friends, and who are our enemies.”

20“Yes, yes, let every one say who he is,” said a man of about eight-and-twenty, whose black beard seemed to have added to the sternness of his features. “My name is Brune, a typographical worker; and, if futurity could be seen into,” he might have added, “a future Marshal of France.”

21“And if you want a printer for your petition, here am I, Momoro, the printer of liberty!”

22“And I, Hébert, journalist, Rue Mirabeau.”

23Then succeeded such tumultuous uproar of men shrieking their names with all their force, that one could scarcely distinguish those of Renouard, Lagarde, Moreau, Henriot, Laschereau, and David.

24When this tempestuous noise ceased, the man named Weder had disappeared.

25“M. Robert,” said I to him who had offered to frame the text of the petition, “I have some business in yonder café, where I fancy I can distinguish some of my friends, whence I will proceed to the nearest stationer’s, and bring you back everything that is necessary for writing purposes.” Then I added to M. Duplay, “Follow me with your eyes, sir; and if, as I believe, those are the ladies we are in search of, I will make you a sign with my pocket-handkerchief.”

26As I had fancied, it was Madame Duplay and her daughters. I told them where I had left M. Duplay, and asked them to go and meet him at the altar of the country. I then proceeded to the stationer’s, and bought two or three sheets of paper, knowing very well that if even there was only one sheet required for the petition itself, there would be one hundred or one hundred and fifty signatures. I also bought a bottle of ink and a packet of pens already cut.

27When returning, I met with M. Duplay and his family. This gentleman, fearing some serious disorder, was taking his family home by the nearest road—that is to say, by the Invalides. Before separating with him, though, I promised that if anything grave took place, I would return with a full account to the house.

28I now hastened to the altar, where I was impatiently awaited.

29I have already mentioned the names of Robert and Mademoiselle Keralio. Notwithstanding how well posted we are at the present moment in the history of the Revolution, very few persons are acquainted with the very prominent part taken by these two persons in the proceedings of that terrible day, the 17th of July, which killed with the one blow the absolute royalty, which it ought to have raised from its low position, and the constitutional royalty, which it ought to have upheld, and which, directed against the Jacobins, whom it ought to have extinguished, gave them, on the contrary, an additional strength.

30Robert, as I have said, was an enormous man, of forty or forty-five years of age. Being a member of the Club of the Cordeliers, he vainly searched with his eyes some of his colleagues of reputation. Either by accident, or otherwise, he did not succeed in finding a single one of these. On the Saturday evening, Danton was obliged to join a meeting in the wood of Vincennes, and thence he went on to Fontenoy, where his father-in-law was a street vender of lemonade. Legendre had left about the same time, with Camille Desmoulins, and Féron. A meeting had been arranged at Fontenoy, by Danton, and all four dined there together.

31A great responsibility was, therefore, about to be placed on the shoulders of Robert; he would be obliged to represent alone, or nearly so, the entire Club of the Cordeliers. We must, however, agree that he accepted his position bravely. The Club of the Jacobins was totally out of the question, since Lanterre, in the name of the Society, had come and withdrawn the petition.

32As to the wife of Robert, Mademoiselle Keralio was a young lady—very gay, lively, talented. She was a Breton, and daughter of a Chevalier de St. Louis, called Guniement de Keralio. As inspector of the military colleges of France, he had, on paying a visit to the college at Brienne, given a favorable account of a young Corsican, named Bonaparte—he who afterwards became the Great Napoleon.

33His calling not being sufficient for the support of his family, he made translations, and wrote for several journals, among others for the Mercure, and Journal des Savants. His daughter assisted him to the best of her powers. At eighteen years of age, she wrote a novel, called “Adelaide;” then the “History of Elizabeth,” a long and serious work; afterwards she married Robert, a great friend of Camille Desmoulins, and an enemy of Lafayette, who had written a book, entitled, “Republicanism adapted to France.” Not less patriotic than her husband, Madame Robert had come with him to add her signature to the petition, declaring that France neither recognised Louis XVI nor any other King; and seeing that it had been withdrawn, she was the first to advise her husband to draw up another.

34I had no sooner arrived on the spot with my pens, ink, and paper, than she snatched them from my hands with such gracious vivacity, that I could really say nothing, but thank her. She then handed a pen to her husband, who was not very clever at composition.

35“Write, write,” said she, “what I dictate.”

36Then, amidst thunders of applause, and while consulting some with her eyes, and others with words and signs, she set to work to dictate, clearly, and with much eloquence, a petition for the dethronement of the King, which was at the same time a violent charge against royalty.

37The affair was done, and well done, in less than three-quarters of an hour.

38Robert, who had written the petition, signed it first and passed the pen to his neighbor.

39Every one wished for the pen. I had a packet, which I distributed; and as it would take too long for them to sign one after the other, so dense had the mass become, the idea struck me to distribute the three extra sheets of paper, each of which could contain two hundred signatures.

40No doubt, the assembly had heard from Weder what was going on on the Champ de Mars. The situation was grave; for if the people broke the decrees of the Assembly, it would cease being the first power of the State.

41There was not a moment to be lost. The meeting would have to be dissolved, and the petition destroyed at all risks; the more so, as every instant the mob was becoming more and more numerous; not from the side of Paris, where it was made known to all, that, by proceeding to the Champ de Mars, they would be guilty of an act of rebellion, but from the village of D’Yssy, Vaugirard, Sevres, St. Cloud, and Boulogne, where they were foretold of the reunion, and had not heard of any counter-petition. They flocked to it, as to a fête.

42The intentions were good, although nothing was easier than to accuse them of being bad. The Assembly—duped either by mistake, or profiting by the occasion—sent a message to the Mayor, announcing that a band of fifty thousand robbers were congregated in the Champ de Mars, and were about to march upon the Salle du Manège.

43They called to their protection a military body, and gave the order to Bailly to disperse the brigands by force. Bailly, who was not aware of the goings on, and who should, before all other things, obey the orders of the Assembly, forewarned Lafayette, and sounded the alarm.

44In these times, the paid guard, strongly addicted to aristocratic—or, rather, Lafayettish—principles, for it was nearly entirely composed of the conquerors of the Bastille, were always the first to answer such a call.

45This body, perfectly armed and perfectly commanded, were exasperated at the injuries they received from the Democratic journals, and particularly the Friend of the People, of Marat, in which he called them the spies of Lafayette; and one day demanded their noses to be cut off, another day their ears, and even hinted at finishing with them altogether with the assistance of the guillotine.

46They applauded vociferously, when suddenly the red flag was seen to float from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, which was a signal to all the loyal citizens of the town of their help, and never did they require help more than on this occasion.

47In the midst of these cries, the Mayor, who was pale as the day on which he marched to the scaffold, descended the Place de Grève, and placed himself at the head of a column of the National Guard. Lafayette, at the head of another column, followed the left bank of the Seine, while Bailly took the right bank.

48The red flag was unhooked, and followed the column, headed by the Mayor.