IN THE INTERIM the king, queen, and royal family continued the journey to Paris.
On the way, the dauphin became very hungry, and asked for bread. The queen looked around her, and nothing was more easy, for every bayonet had a loaf on its point. She looked for Gilbert. He, as we know, was with Cagliostro. Had he been there, the queen would not have hesitated to have asked for a piece of bread. She would not, however, ask one of the men of the people she hated so.
“My child,” said she, “wait until evening; we have none now, but to-night may perhaps.” She wept.
The dauphin reached his little hand towards one of the loaves the people had on the points of their bayonets, and said: “But those men have.”
“Yes, my child, it is theirs, and not ours. They got it at Versailles, for they say they have had none for three days at Paris.”
“For three days!” said the child. “Have they eaten nothing for three days, mamma?”
“No, my child,” said the queen.
“Then,” said the dauphin, “they must be very hungry.”
Ceasing his complaints, he sought to sleep. Poor prince! more than once before his death he begged in vain for bread. At the barrier there was another halt, to celebrate the arrival. After about half an hour of cries, clamour, and dances in the mud, an immense hurrah was given; every gun, whether borne by man, woman or child, was tired in the air, without any attention being paid to the fact that they were charged with ball, and after a second or two, the missiles were heard falling in every direction like hail.
The dauphin and his sister wept. They were so frightened that they forgot their hunger. The march was resumed, and the Place de 1'Hotel de Ville was reached. There a square was formed to keep back all the carriages except the king's, and all but the royal household, and the National Assembly, and the Hotel de Ville was entered.
The queen then saw Weber, her confidential valet, making every effort to enter the palace. Weber was an Austrian, and had come with her from Vienna. She called to him. He came.
Seeing at Versailles that the National Guard on that day had the post of honour, Weber, to give himself an importance which might unable him to be useful to the queen, had put on the uniform of the guard, and to the dress of the private had added the decorations of the staff. The equerry had left him a horse. Not to arouse suspicion, he kept out of the way, with the intention, however, of approaching if the queen needed him. Being called, he came.
“Why do you seek to force the lines, Weber?” said the queen, preserving her usual familiarity with him.
“To be of use to your majesty.”
“You can do nothing in the Hotel du Ville, but elsewhere you may be very useful. On the Tuileries, where we are not expected, and whither you must go, or we shall find neither lights, supper, nor a bed.”
Bailly, one of the three popular men of the day, whom we have seen appear during the first excursion of the king, now, when bayonets and cannon displaced the bouquets of flowers and garlands, awaited the king and queen at the foot of a throne prepared for them. It was badly made, and trembled beneath the velvet that covered it. It was appropriate.
The Mayor of Paris now almost echoed his previous address.
The king replied: “I always come with pleasure and confidence among the people of my good city of Paris.”
The king spoke in a low tone, for he was faint with fatigue and hunger. Bailly repeated his words aloud, so that all might hear.
He, however, either voluntary or not, forgot the words “and confidence.”
Her bitterness was delighted at an opportunity to give vent to itself.
She said, “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, you either did not hear, or your memory is had.”
“Madame?” said Bailly, with that stargazing eye which read heaven so well and earth so badly.
The queen said: “The king's remark was that he always came with pleasure and confidence among the people of his city of Paris. Now, as people may doubt if he came with pleasure, it is important that it be known that he came with confidence.”
She ascended the steps of the throne, and sat down to hear the addresses of the electors.
In the meantime, “Weber reached the Tuileries.
About ten, the wheels of the royal carriages were heard, and Weber cried out: “Attend the king!”
The king, queen, dauphin, Madame Royale, the Princess Elizabeth, and Andree entered.
M. de Provence had gone to the Luxembourg.
The king looked gladly around, and as he entered the room, observed through a half open door that supper was ready.
At the same time an usher entered, and uttered the usual ceremonial phrase: “The king is served.”
“Ah, Weber is a man of great resources; madame, tell him for me, I am much pleased with him.”
“I will not fail to do so, sir.”
When the children had supped, the queen asked leave to retire to her room.
“Certainly, madame, for you must be fatigued. As, however, you will need food before to-morrow, have some prepared in time.”
The queen left with the children.
The king sat at table and finished his supper. Madame Elizabeth, the devotion of whom not even the vulgarity of Louis XVI. could change, remained with the king, to render him those little attentions which even the best domestics neglect.
The queen, when in her room, breathed freely. She had ordered all her ladies not to leave Versailles unordered, and she was alone.
She set about finding then a chair or sofa, purposing to put the children in her own bed; but entering an adjoining room, and seeing that it was comfortably warmed and lighted, was enchanted to observe two clean beds in it. The children being asleep, she sat down at a table, on which there was a candelabra with four lights.
She looked through the fingers of the hand on which she rested her head, but saw nothing but the red cover.
Twice or thrice something in the red glare made her shake her head mechanically. She seemed to feel her eyes become filled with blood, and her ears to tingle.
Then like a tempest her past life swept before her.
She remembered that she was born November 8th, 1755, on the day of the Lisbon earthquake, when fifty thousand lives and two hundred churches were overthrown. '
She remembered that the first room she slept in at Strasbourg was hung with a tapestry representing the murder of the innocents, and amid the dense light of the fire she saw the blood streaming from their wounds, while the faces of the ruffians assumed so dread and terrible an expression, that she called for aid, and at dawn left a city which had given her so painful a reception in France. She remembered that on her way to Paris she paused at the house of the Baron de Taverney, where for the first time she met the wretch Cagliostro. He had shown her a terrible object, an unknown and terrible machine of death, and afterwards a head, her own, rolling from it.
She remembered that when Madame Lebrun painted her portrait, she was then a young and beautiful woman; by some accident she had given her the air of the Henrietta of England, wife of Charles I. She remembered that when she first came to Versailles and placed her foot on that marble pavement, which on the evening before she had seen running with blood, a terrible clap of thunder had been heard, preceded by a flash which divided the whole sky from right to left in so terrible a manner, that the Duc de Richelieu, not easily frightened, shook his head, and said, “The omen is bad.”
As she saw all this, she fancied that a reddish vapour rose before her, and became every moment more dense.
The darkening of the air became so apparent, that the queen looked up and saw that without any apparent cause one of the lights was out. She trembled; the light yet smoked, and she could not comprehend why it was out.
As she looked at the light with amazement, it seemed to her that the next one grew more and more pale, that the white blaze became red, and then burned blue. Then the light grew thinner and larger, and appeared about to leave the wick; at last it quivered for a moment as if under some invisible influence, and disappeared.
The queen gasped, as she saw the quivering light, and insensibly her hands approached more and more near the table. She saw it go out, and threw herself, back in a chair, and placed her hands on her brow, which was damped with perspiration.
She remained thus for about ten minutes, and when she looked around, saw that the blaze of the third light was being bedimmed as the others had been.
At first, Marie Antoinette thought she was dreaming, or under the influence of some fearful hallucination. She sought to rise, but felt herself chained to her seat. She sought to call her daughter, whom ten minutes before she would not have awakened for the world. Her voice, however, stuck in her throat. She sought to look away, but the third expiring light seemed to fascinate her. At last, as the second had changed colour, the third took different hues, floated to and fro from right to left, and went out.
The queen was so terrified that she regained her utterance, and sought, by talking to herself, to regain the courage she had lost.
All at once, without undergoing the changes of the others, as the queen was saying, “I do not make myself uneasy about the three, but if the fourth go out, woe! woe to me!” it went out.
She uttered a cry of agony, and rising from her seat in the dark, tossed her arms around, and fell on the floor.
As her body struck the floor, the door opened, and Andree appeared at the entrance.
She paused for a moment, as if, in this obscurity, she saw a kind of vapour, and as if she heard the rustling of a shroud in the air.
Looking about her, she saw the queen prostrate on the floor, and unconscious.
She stepped back, as if her first intention had been to retire. Soon, however, she controlled herself, and saying nothing, and asking no question (it would have been in vain to do so), with a strength of which she might have been supposed incapable, lifted her up, and without any other light than that of the two candles which shone from her room through the door, placed her on the bed.
Taking a flacon of salts from her pocket, she placed it to the nose of Marie Antoinette.
Notwithstanding this, the queen had fainted so completely, that not for ten minutes did she breathe.
A deep sigh announced that consciousness had returned. Andree felt inclined to go, but, as before, a sense of consciousness retained her.
She merely withdrew her arm from the head of Marie Antoinette, whom she had lifted up, that no portion of the corrosive liquid might get on the queen's face or chest. She removed the salts also.
As soon as it was done, her head fell back on the pillow, and the queen seemed again plunged in a faint almost as profound as the one she had just recovered from.
A shudder pawed over the whole of the queen's frame. She sighed, and opened her eyes, while Andree, cold, passionless as a statue, again attended her.
Gradually she recalled her ideas, and, seeing a woman near her, threw her arms around her neck. She cried out: “Ah! defend—save me.”
“Your majesty, surrounded by your friends, needs no defence, and you have now recovered from a fainting fit.”
“The Countess of Charny!” said the queen, when she saw whom she had em braced. She withdrew her arms and almost repelled Andree.
Andree did not fail to observe both the feeling and the action.
For a moment she remained in an almost impassible state.
Stepping back, she says: “Does the queen order me to assist in undressing her?”
“No, thank you, countess,” said the queen, in a tone of emotion, “I will do so alone. Return to your room; you must have need of sleep.”
“I will return to my room, not to sleep, however, but to watch your majesty.”
Having bowed respectfully, she retired with a step riot unlike that a statue would have.
