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During the whole time of the proceedings the populace never ceased threatening the judges and shouting, "A la lanterne!" It was even necessary to keep numerous troops and artillery constantly ready to act in the courtyard of the Chatelet. The judges, who had just acquitted M. de Besenval in an affair nearly similar, doubtless dreaded the effects of this fury.
Under the French régime the army officers used to say they felt as if they were on board a man-of-war as long as they stayed in Canada. The modern Parisian may think the same to-day when he is told how to steer his way about the country roads by the points of the compass. The word lanterne is unknown, for the nautical fanal invariably takes its place.
The horde passed in files before the table;the sort of standards which they carried were symbols of the most atrocious barbarity. There was one representing a gibbet, to which a dirty doll was suspended; the words "Marie Antoinette a la lanterne" were written beneath it. Another was a board, to which a bullock's heart was fastened, with "Heart of Louis XVI." written round it.
After the fourteenth of July 1789, political literature became more subject to mobs and the lanterne, than ever it had been to Ministers and Bastilles; and at the tenth of August 1792, every vestige of the liberty of the press disappeared.*
The Pesident wildly rang his bell, and his voice, quivering with excitement, was heard once or twice above the din. "Clear the court! Clear the court!" But the people refused to be cleared out of court. "A la lanterne les traitres! Mort a Deroulede. A la lanterne! l'aristo!" And in the thickest of the crowd, the broad shoulders and massive head of Citizen Lenoir towered above the others.
Suddenly a distant rattle caught his subconscious ear: the rattle of wheels on rough cobble-stones. Immediately the crowd began to cheer and to shout; some sang the "Ca ira!" and others screamed: "Les aristos! a la lanterne! a mort! a mort! les aristos!" He saw it all quite plainly, for the darkness had vanished, and the vision was more vivid than even reality could have been.
I was repeatedly a witness, by the side of the Princesse de Lamballe, of the appalling scenes of the bonnet rouge, of murders a la lanterne, and of numberless insults to the unfortunate Royal Family of Louis XVI., when the Queen was generally selected as the most marked victim of malicious indignity.
Such a fine dimme shine dide these christall eies and these round enranked diamonds make through their bolne swelling bowres of feathers, as if it had beene a candle in a paper lanterne, or a gloworme in a bush by night, glistering through the leaues and briers.
As they walked away along the road they heard the old man's voice roaring: "Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!" "My name's Eddy Chambers," said the American. "Mine's John Andrews." "How long've you been out?" "Two days." Eddy let the air out through his teeth in a whistle. "I got away from a labor battalion in Paris. They'd picked me up in Chartres without a pass."
Sometimes the lanterne des marts was a highly ornamented chapel, built in a circular form, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, in which the dead lay exposed to view in the days which preceded their interment: sometimes it was merely a hollow column, ascended by a winding stair inside, or by projections left for the purpose within.
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