The Fireworks.
ANDREE AND her brother had scarcely settled themselves in their new position when the first rockets pierced the clouds, and a prodigious shout arose from the crowd, thenceforward alive only to the spectacle which was exhibiting in the center of the place.
The commencement of the fireworks was magnificent, and in every respect worthy of the high reputation of Ruggieri. The decorations of the temple were progressively lighted up, and soon presented one sheet of flame. The air rang with plaudits; but these plaudits were soon succeeded by frantic cheers, when the gaping mouths of the dolphins and the urns of the rivers began to spout forth streams of fire of different colors, which crossed and intermingled with each other.
Andree, transported with astonishment at this sight, which has not its equal in the world — that of a population of seven hundred thousand souls, frantic with delight in front of a palace in flames — did not even attempt to conceal her feelings.
At three paces distant from her, hidden by the herculean shoulders of a porter who held his child aloft over his head, stood Gilbert, gazing at Andree for her own sake, and at the fireworks because she was looking at them. Gilbert’s view of Andree was in profile; every rocket lighted up that lovely face, and made him tremble with delight. It seemed to him that the whole crowd shared in his admiration of the heavenly creature whom he adored. Andree had never before seen Paris, or a crowd, or the splendors of a public rejoicing; and her mind was stunned by the multiplicity of novel sensations which beset it at once.
On a sudden, a bright light burst forth and darted in a diagonal line toward the river. It was a bomb, which exploded with a crash, scattering the various colored fires which Andree admired.
“Look, Philip, how beautiful that is!” said she.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed her brother, without making her any reply, “how ill that last rocket was directed! It must certainly have deviated from its course; for, instead of describing a parabola, it went off almost horizontally.”
Philip had scarcely finished this expression of an uneasiness which began to be manifested in the agitation of the crowd, when a hurricane of flame burst from the bastion upon which were placed the bouquet and the spare fireworks. A crash equal to that of a hundred peals of thunder, crossing in all directions, bellowed through the place; and, as if the fire had contained a discharge of grape-shot, it put to the rout the nearest spectators, who for a moment felt the unexpected flame scorch their faces.
“The bouquet already! the bouquet already!” cried the more distant of the crowd. “Not yet! it is too early!”
“Already?” repeated Andree. “Ah, yes; it is too early!”
“No,” said Philip, “no; it is not the bouquet, it is an accident, which in a moment will agitate this prodigious crowd, now so calm, like the ocean in a storm. Come, Andree, let us return to our carriage — come along!”
“Oh! let me stay a little longer, Philip — it is so beautiful!”
“Andree, we have not a moment to lose; follow me. It is the misfortune which I feared. Some stray rocket has set fire to the bastion. Hark! they are crushing one another yonder! Don’t you hear their cries? Those are not cries of joy, but shrieks of distress. Quick! quick! to the carriage. Gentlemen, gentlemen, allow us to pass.”
And Philip, throwing his arm round his sister’s waist, drew her toward the place where he had left his father, who, uneasy on his side, and dreading, from the noise which he heard, a danger of the nature of which he could form no conception, although he was thoroughly convinced of its existence, put his head out of the carriage door, and looked about for his children. It was already too late, and the prediction of Philip was verified. The bouquet, composed of fifteen thousand fusees, exploded, scattering about in all directions, and pursuing the spectators like those fiery darts which are flung at the bulls in the arena to provoke them to fight.
The people, at first astonished, then terrified, recoiled from the force of mere instinct with resistless impetus, communicating the same movement to the myriads of spectators in the rear, who, breathless and suffocated, pressed backward in their turn on those behind them. The scaffolding took fire; children shrieked; squalling women, almost stifled, raised them in their arms; and the police, thinking to silence the screamers and to restore order by violence, struck right and left at random.
All these combined causes made the waving sea of people which Philip spoke of fall like a water-spout on that corner of the Place where he was; and instead of rejoining the baron’s carriage, as he calculated upon doing, the youth was hurried away by the mighty and irresistible current, of which no description could convey any idea; for individual strength, increased tenfold by terror and anxiety, was again augmented a hundred-fold by the junction of the general strength.
At the moment when Philip drew Andree away, Gilbert had resigned himself to the stream which carried them along; but he had not gone above twenty paces before a band of fugitives, turning to the left into the Rue de la Madeleine, surrounded Gilbert and swept him away, foaming with rage on finding himself separated from Andree.
Andree, clinging fast to Philip’s arm, was inclosed in a group which was striving to get out of the way of a carriage dragged along by a pair of furious horses. Philip saw it approaching swiftly and threateningly; the horses’ eyes flashed fire, and they snorted foam from their nostrils. He made superhuman efforts to avoid it, but all in vain. He saw the crowd open behind him; he perceived the foaming heads of the two ungovernable animals; he saw them rear, like the two marble horses which guard the entrance of the Tuileries, and, like the slave who is striving to subdue them, letting go Andree’s arm, and pushing her as far as he could out of the way of danger, he sprang up to seize the rein of the horse that was next to him. The animal reared a second time; Andree saw her brother sink back, fall, and disappear from her sight. She shrieked, extended her arms, was hustled to and fro in the crowd, and in a moment found herself alone, tottering, borne along like a feather by the wind, and just as incapable of resisting the force that was hurrying her away.
The stunning cries, far more terrible than those of the battlefield; the neighing of horses; the frightful noise of wheels, grinding now the pavement, now the bodies of the slain, the lurid flames of the scaffolds — which were on fire; the sinister gleaming of swords drawn by some of the infuriated soldiers; and over all this ensanguined ciaos, the bronze statue, tinged by the ruddy reflections, and seeming to preside over the carnage — were more than was needed to disturb Andree’s reason, and paralyze her strength. Besides, the power of a Titan would have been impotent in such a struggle — a struggle for life and limb — of one against all. Andree uttered a piercing shriek; a soldier, opening himself a passage through the crowd, was striking the people with his sword, and the weapon flashed over her head. She clasped her hands, like a shipwrecked mariner when the last wave is passing over him, and exclaiming; “Oh, my God!” sunk to the ground. Whoever fell in that scene might give himself up for lost!
But that terrible, that despairing shriek, was heard and answered. Gilbert, carried to a distance from Andree, had by dint of struggling once more approached her. Bending beneath the same wave which had engulfed Andree, he raised himself again, made a frantic leap at the sword which had unwittingly threatened her, grasped the throat of the soldier who was going to strike, and hurled him to the ground. Beside the soldier lay a female form dressed in white; he raised her up and bore her off as though he had been a giant.
When he felt that lovely form, that corpse perhaps, pressed to his heart, a gleam of pride lighted up his countenance — his force and courage rose with the circumstances — he felt himself a hero! He flung himself and his burden into a stream of people, whose torrent would certainly have leveled a wall in their flight. Supported by this group, which lifted him up and bore him along with his lovely burden, he walked or rather rolled onward for some minutes. All at once the torrent stopped, as if broken by some opposing obstacle. Gilbert’s feet touched the ground, and not till then was he sensible of the weight of Andree. He looked up to ascertain what the obstacle might be, and perceived that he was within a few steps of the Garde-Meuble. That mass of stone had broken the mass of flesh.
During that momentary and anxious halt, he had time to look at Andree. Overcome by a sleep heavy as that of death, her heart had ceased to beat, her eyes were closed, and her face was of a violet tinge, like a white rose that is fading. Gilbert thought that she was dead. He shrieked in his turn, pressed his lips at first to her dress, to her hand, then, emboldened by her insensibility, he covered with kisses that cold face, those eyes swollen beneath their sealed lids. He blushed, wept, raved, strove to transfuse his soul into the bosom of Andree, feeling astonished that his kisses, which might have warmed a marble statue, had no effect upon that inanimate form. All at once Gilbert felt her heart beat under his hand.
“She is saved!” exclaimed he, on perceiving the swart and blood-stained mob dispersing, and hearing the imprecations, the shrieks, the sighs, the agony of the victims die ‘away in the distance. “She is saved, and it is I who have saved her!”
The poor fellow, who stood leaning with his back against the wall, and his eyes turned toward the bridge, had not looked to his right. Before the carriages, which, long detained by the crowd, but now hemmed in less closely, began once more to move, and soon came on galloping as if coachmen and horses had been seized with a general frenzy, fled twenty thousand unfortunate creatures, mutilated, wounded, bruised one against the other. Instinctively they fled close to the walls, against which the nearest of them were crushed. This mass swept away or suffocated all those who, having taken up their position near the Garde-Meuble, imagined that they had escaped the wreck. A fresh shower of blows, of living and dead bodies, rained on Gilbert. He found one of the recesses formed by the iron gates, and stationed himself there. The weight of the fugitives made the wall crack.
Gilbert, nearly stifled, felt ready to lose his hold, but with a last desperate effort, mustering all his strength, he encompassed Andrew’s body with his arms, resting his head on the bosom of the young girl. One would have supposed that he meant to suffocate her whom he was protecting.
“Farewell,” murmured he, biting rather than kissing her dress; “farewell!” And he raised his eyes to Heaven, as if directing a last supplicating glance to it for assistance. Then a strange sight met his vision.
Mounted on a post, holding with his right hand by a ringlet into the wall, while with his left hand he seemed to be rallying an army of fugitives, was a man, who, looking at the furious sea raging at his feet, sometimes dropped a word, sometimes made a gesture. At that word, at that gesture, some individual among the crowd might be seen to pause, struggle, and by a violent effort strive to reach the man. Others who had already reached him seemed to recognize the newcomers as brothers, and assisted to drag them out of the crowd, raising, supporting, and drawing them toward them.
In this manner, by acting together, this knot had like the pier of a bridge which divides and resists the water, succeeded in dividing the crowd and holding in check the flying masses.
Every moment fresh stragglers, seeming to rise out of the ground at those strange words and singular gestures, swelled the retinue of this man. Gilbert raised himself by a last effort; he felt that there was safety, for there was calmness and power. A last dying gleam from the burning scaffold, leaping up only to expire, fell upon his face. Gilbert uttered a cry of amazement; “Oh! let me die!” he murmured; “let me die, but save her!”
Then, with a sublime forgetfulness of self, raising the young girl in both his arms, he exclaimed, “Baron de Balsamo, save Mademoiselle Andree de Taverney!”
Balsamo heard that voice which cried to him, like that in the Bible, from the depths, he beheld a white figure raised above the devouring waves, he leaped from his post to the ground, crying, “This way!” His party overturned all that obstructed their course, and, seizing Andree, still supported in Gilbert’s sinking arms, he lifted her up, and, impelled by a movement of that crowd which he had ceased to repress, he bore her off without once turning to look behind.
Gilbert endeavored to utter a last word. Perhaps, after imploring the protection of this strange man for Andree, he might have solicited it for himself; but he had only strength to press his lips to the drooping arm of the young girl, and to snatch, with a wild and despairing grasp, a portion of her dress.
After that last kiss, after that final farewell, the young man had nothing left to live for; he made no further struggle, but closing his eyes, sunk dying upon a heap of dead.