BEHIND A DOOR of a dark room opening on a dark corridor, on the ground-floor of the Tuileries, a woman stood with a key in her hand, apparently fearful lest her step should awaken an echo.
Did we not know this woman, it would be difficult for us to recognise her, for besides the obscurity which even in broad daylight pervades a corridor, it is now night, and, either intentionally or not, the wick of the only lamp has almost disappeared, and seems ready to become extinct.
The second room of the suite only is lighted, and the woman leans against the door nearest the corridor.
Who is that woman? Marie Antoinette.
Whom does she wait for? Barnave.
Proud child of Maria Theresa, who would have told you, on the day of your arrival in France, when you were crowned queen of France, that a time would come when, hidden behind the door of your chambermaid, you would await with anxiety the coming of a little Grenoble lawyer, after having caused Mirabeau to wait so long, and deigned to receive him only once.
Let us not, however, be mistaken, for merely from motives of policy did you receive Barnave; your suspended respiration, your nervous motions, your trembling hand cannot be referred to the heart. Pride alone is concerned.
We say pride, for in spite of the countless persecutions to which the king and queen have been subjected during their return, it is clear that life is sweet, and that the question is summed up hi these two words: “Will the fugitives lose the remnant of their power, or will what they retain be swept away?”
Barnave was coming to tell the queen all that had taken place on the 5th.
All seemed to anticipate some great event.
The king also had awaited Barnave in the second of Madame Cam pan's rooms—and had been informed of Gilbert's coming: and to hear more at ease, had retired to his room, leaving Barnave with the queen.
About nine, a step was heard in the passage, a voice exchanged a few words with the sentinel, and a young man appeared at the end of the corridor, in the uniform of a subaltern of the National Guard. It was Barnave.
The queen opened the door, and Barnave, after having very carefully looked behind it, glided into the room.
The door closed, and without a word having been exchanged, the sound of the turning of a key in the wards of the lock was heard.
The heart of each beat with equal violence, though from very different sentiments. The heart of the queen from the hope of vengeance, that of Barnave from the desire of love.
The queen hurried into the second room, in search, so to say, of light. When there, she sank on a chair.
Barnave paused at the door and looked round the room. He expected to find the king, who had been present at all the other interviews of the queen and himself.
The room was unoccupied except by the pair, and for the first time since his walk in the garden of the palace of the Bishop of Means, Barnave was tete-a-tete with Marie Antoinette.
“Monsieur Barnave,” said the queen, “I have been waiting two hours for you.”
“I wished, madame, to come at seven; then, however, it was too early, and I met M. Marat: how can such a man dare to approach your palace?”
“M. Marat,” said the queen, as if she looked into her memory. “Is he not a man who writes against us?”
“Who writes against everybody. His vipers' eyes followed me until I disappeared behind the grating of the Feuillants.”
“I heard that to-day we won a victory in the Assembly?”
“Yes, madame, we won a victory in the Assembly, but were defeated in the Jacobins.”
“My God,'' said the queen, “I do not understand this. I thought the Jacobins belonged to you, to Lameth and Dupont, and did what you wished '?'
Barnave shook his head sadly. “Once,” said he, “that was the case; a new spirit, however, now influences the Assembly.”
“Yes, madame, the present danger is from that source.”
“Danger? Have we not avoided it by to-day's vote?”
“Understand me, madame—for to understand our danger it is necessary to avoid it. The vote of to-day declares 'if a king retracts his oath, if he attacks or neglects to defend his people, he abdicates and becomes a simple citizen, liable to be accused for all that occurs after his abdication.'”
“Well,” said the queen, “the king will not retract his oath, he will not attack his people, and if it be attacked he will defend it.”
“Yes, madame, but this vote gives an opening to the Orleanists and revolutionists. The Assembly did not act against the king, but merely took preventive measures against a second desertion, leaving the first. Do you not know what Laclos, the agent of the duke, proposed this evening, at the Jacobins?”
“Something terrible! What else could be expected from the author of 'Liaisons Dangereuses'?”
“He requested that a petition be circulated in Paris, and throughout France, in favour of deposing his majesty, and promised to obtain ten million signatures.”
“Ten million! Good God! are we so hated that ten million Frenchmen would reject us?”
“Madame, majorities are easily had.”
“Was the proposition successful?”
“It creates some discussion. Danton sustained it.”
“Danton? I thought he was our friend. Montmorin speaks of a place of avocat to the king, given or sold to this man.”
“Montmorin is deceived. If Danton belongs to anyone, it is to the Duke of Orleans.”
“And did Robespierre speak? He, I am told, is beginning to acquire great influence.”
“Yes; he did not approve of the petition, but of an address to the people of the provinces.”
“But Robespierre must be disposed of, as he begins to acquire such influence.”
“No one can ruin him, madame. He is for himself. He has some idea, some Utopia, a phantom, an ambition, perhaps.”
“What ambition can we not gratify? Does he wish to be rich?”
The queen looked at Barnave with terror.
“It ever seemed to me that the post of minister was the highest to which any of our subjects could pretend.”
“If Robespierre looks on the king as deposed, he no longer regards himself as a subject.”
“What does he desire, then?” asked the queen with terror.
“These are times, madame, when men aspire to new political titles in place of old ones, which have been effaced.”
“Oh, yes! I can understand that the Duke of Orleans aspires to be regent. His birth calls him to such a post: but a little country lawyer—”
The queen forgot Barnave occupied exactly that position.
Barnave did not notice the slight, either because he did not remark it, or had the courage to pretend not to do so.
“Marius and Cromwell, madame, emerged from the people.”
“Marius and Cromwell! alas!” said the queen, “when I heard those names, in my childhood, I never fancied they would be so terrible in my ears. But let us return to the subject we have left. Robespierre, you say, opposed the scheme of Laclos, which Danton sustained.”
“Yes; but at that moment there came in a band of the every-day bathers of the Palais Royal, a troop of women controlled by Laclos, and the vote was not only passed, but at eleven to-morrow the Jacobins are to hear the petition at the Palais Royal, and will proceed to sign it on the altar of the country, thence to be sent to the provincial societies, to be signed by them.”
“And who is to draw up the petition?”
“Danton, Laclos, and Brissot.”
''But what are the Constitutionalists about?”
“Well! madame, they have resolved tomorrow to risk all for all.”
“They cannot act with the Jacobins.”
“Your wonderful comprehension of men and things, madame, shows you the state of affairs. Yes, guided by Dupont and Lameth, your friends will to-morrow leave your enemies. They will oppose the Feuillants to the Jacobins.”
“What are the Feuillants? Excuse me, but so many new words are introduced into politics, that each demands a question.”
“Madame, the Feuillants is a great building near the riding-school, and therefore near the Assembly, and which gives the name to the terrace of the Tuileries.”
“Lafayette and the National Guards—Bailly and the municipality.”
“Lafayette! Do you think you can rely on him?”
“I believe him sincerely devoted to the king.”
“Devoted as the woodman is to the oak he fells. Bailly—go on! I have no cause of complaint against him. I will even say more, he gave me the name of the woman who informed of our intention to escape. But Lafayette?”
“Your majesty will have an opportunity of judging.”
“Yes, it is true,” said the queen, looking painfully back, “Versailles! Well! This club—what will it propose?—what will it do?—what is its power?”
“An enormous power, since, as I told you, it controls the National Guard, the municipality, and the majority of the Assembly which vote with us. What will remain to the Jacobins? Five or six deputies, perhaps Robespierre, Petion, Laclos, the Duke of Orleans, three heterogeneous elements, who will only be able to disturb the new members, and a herd of noisy barkers who will make a noise, but who have no influence.”
“I trust so. But what will the Assembly do?”
“Reprove Bailly for his hesitation and delay. The consequence will be that Bailly, like a good clock, being well wound up, will keep time. But I see it is time for me to retire, yet it seems that I have much more to tell your majesty.”
“I, M. Barnave, can do nothing more than tell you how grateful we and our friends are for your goodness in exposing yourself to so much danger for us.”
“Madame, danger is a game by which I profit, whether beaten or successful in it, if the queen but reward me with a smile.”
“Alas, sir!” said the queen, “I have forgotten how to smile, almost. But you have been so kind, that I will try to recall the time when I could, and promise that my first smile shall be yours.”
Barnave placed his hand on his heart and bowed. He then begged to retire.
“To-morrow,” said Barnave, seeming to calculate, “is the petition, and the first vote on it. In the evening, madame, I will come to tell you what has taken place in the Champ de Mars.”
The queen returned sadly to the king, whom she found pensive as herself. Dr. Gilbert had left him, and given him the same information Barnave had imparted to the queen.
They had but to exchange a glance, to know that each saw how sombre things were.
The king had just written a letter. Without speaking, he gave it to the queen. It was one to Monsieur, authorising him to ask the intervention of Austria and Prussia.
“Monsieur,” said the queen, “has done me much harm, and would do more wrong; as he has the king's confidence, however, he has mine.”
Taking a pen, she heroically wrote her name by the side of the king's.
Let us now follow Dr. Gilbert to the Tuileries.
The queen expects him, and as he is not Barnave, she is not in Madame Campan's room on the ground-floor, but in her own apartments—seated on a chair, with her head leaning on her hand.
She awaits Weber, whom she sent to the Champ de Mars upon hearing a discharge of musketry there, which caused her great uneasiness. The journey to Versailles had taught her much; until then the revolution had seemed to her only a manoeuvre of Pitt, and an intrigue of Orleans. She thought Paris immoral and under bad conduct, but used to say, “the honest country.” She had seen the country; it was more revolutionary than Paris.
The assembly was old, decrepit, and stupid in adhering to the promises Barnave bad made in its name. Besides, was it not about to die? The embraces of a dying thing are not healthy.
The queen waited for Weber most anxiously. The door—she looked anxiously to it; but instead of the broad Austrian figure of her foster-brother, she saw the austere face of Gilbert.
The queen did not like him, for his royalism was accompanied by such well defined constitutional theories, that she thought him a republican; she had, though, a certain respect for him. She would send for him neither in a physical nor moral crisis., but on this occasion she felt his influence.
As she saw him she trembled. They had not met since the return from Varennes.
“Is it you, doctor?” murmured she.
“Yes, madame, it is I. I knew that you expected Weber, and I can give you the news he would bring more precisely than he can. He was on the bank of the Seine, where there was no murder. I was on the other.”
“Murder? What has happened, sir?” asked the queen.
“A great misfortune. The court party has triumphed.”
“The court party has triumphed? Call you that a misfortune, Doctor Gilbert?”
“Yes; because it has triumphed by one of those fearful measures which destroy the conqueror, and which result to the benefit of the conquered.”
“Lafayette and Bailly have fired on the people, and consequently can no longer be of use to you.”
“They have lost their popularity.”
“What did the people on whom they fired?”
“Signed a petition for the deposing—
“And you think to fire en them was wrong?” asked the queen, with a sparkling eye.
“I think it would have been better to convince than to shoot them.”
“Of what would you convince them?”
“Excuse me, madame. Three days ago I left the king. All the evening had been passed in an effort to make him understand that his true enemies are his brothers, M. de Conde and the emigres. On my knees I besought him to break off all connection with them, to adopt the constitution frankly, except those articles which are impossible. The king was convinced—at least I thought so—and was good enough to promise to have done with the emigration; yet behind my back, madame, the king signed, and caused you to sign, a letter to Monsieur, in which he was authorised to say to the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia—”
The queen blushed like a child taken flagrante delicto, and looked down. She, however, recovered herself soon.
“Have our enemies then spies in the king's cabinet?”
“Yes, madame, and it is this which makes every error on the king's part as dangerous as it is.”
“But the letter was written by the king's own hand, and as soon as it was signed by me was sealed and given to the courier who was to bear it.”
“We are then surrounded by traitors?”
“All men are not like the Charnys.”
“Alas! madame, I wish to tell you one of the fatal auguries of the fall of kings is when they drive from them men they should attach to their fortunes by chains of adamant.”
“M. de Charny was not driven away; he left us. When kings become unfortunate, no tie suffices to retain men as friends.”
Gilbert looked at the queen, shook his head, and said:
“Do not let us thus calumniate Charny, madame, or the blood of his brothers will shout from the tomb that the Queen of France is ungrateful.”
“Madame, you know I speak the truth; that in the time of real danger, M. de Charny will be where duty calls him—where the peril is greatest.”
The queen looked down. At last she said:
“You did not, I suppose, come to talk to me about M. de Charny?”
“No, madame, but ideas, like events, are sometimes so linked together by invisible threads, that those are exposed which should remain in the secret places of the heart. No, I came to speak to the queen; excuse me if I spoke to the woman—I am ready to repair my fault.”
“What have you, monsieur, to say to the queen?”
“I wished to show her the situation she, France and Europe occupy. Madame, in your hands is the future of the world. You play with it as with cards. You lost the first trick, October 6th; your courtiers think you have won the second. The next trick will be la belle, and the stakes, which are throne, liberty, perhaps life, all are lost.”
“And,” said the queen, haughtily, “think you, sir, such a fear would induce us to pause?”
“I know the king is brave: he is the descendant of Henry IV. I know the queen is heroic; she is the grand-daughter of Maria Theresa. I will, therefore, seek only to convince them; unfortunately, I fear I shall never be able to impart my ideas to either.”
“Why take such trouble then, sir, if you think it will be useless?”
“To do my duty, madame. Believe me, it is pleasant in stormy days like ours, at every effort, to say, 'I did my duty.'”
The queen looked Gilbert in the face.
“Monsieur, first of all, do you think it yet possible to save the king?”
“Well, sir,” said the queen, with a sigh of intense sadness, “you are more happy than I, for I fear both are lost, and I contend only to fulfil my ideas of duty.”
“Yes, madame, I see, but because you wish a despotic monarchy, and an absolute king; like a miser who does not know, even when in sight of a shore which will restore him more than he loses, how to sacrifice a portion of his treasures, you sink yours, being borne down by their weight. Do as the prudent sailor does—throw the past aside, and strive for the future.”
“To do so would be to break with the kings of Europe.”
“True, but it is to make an alliance with the French people.”
“The French people cannot contend against a coalition.”
“Suppose you have at its head a king. With a king really attached to the constitution, the French people would conquer Europe.”
“An army of a million of men would be needed for that.”
“Europe, madame, is not to be conquered by a million of men, but by an idea. Plant on the Rhine and on the Alps two tri-coloured flags with the inscription, 'War to tyrants, and liberty to peoples,' and Europe is conquered!”
“Really, there are days when I am inclined to think the wisest become mad.”
“Madame, you do not know what France now is in the eyes of nations: France, with some individual crimes—some local excesses, which do not, however, sully her white robe, or her purity—virgin France is the goddess of liberty. The whole world loves her. The Pays Has, the Rhine, Italy with her millions, invoke a blessing on her. She has but to cross the frontier, and millions will fall down before her. France, with liberty in her hands, ceases to be a nation, but is immutable justice, eternal reason. Madame, madame, take advantage of the fact that it has not yet entered upon violence; for if you hesitate too long, those hands she extends to you will be turned against herself.
“Belgium, Germany, Italy, watch each of her movements with joy. Belgium says, 'Come!' Germany says, 'I follow!' Italy exclaims, 'Save me!' Far in the north, an unknown hand wrote in the cabinet of the great Gustavus, 'No war with France.' None of those whom you call to your aid are prepared for war. Two empires hate us deeply. When I say empires, I mean an empress—Catherine—and a minister—Pitt. They are powerless, though. At this moment Russia holds Turkey under one of her claws and Poland under the other. Two or three years will be required to digest one and devour the other. She urges the Germans on, and offers them France. She shames the inactivity of your brother Leopold, and points to the occupation of Holland by the king of Prussia, on account of a simple insult to his sister. 'Forward!' says Russia; but Leopold does not obey. Mr. Pitt is now swallowing India, and, like a boa-constrictor, suffers from laborious indigestion. If we wait, he will attack us, not by foreign, but by civil war. I am aware that you fear this Mr. Pitt dreadfully—that when you think of him, you grow pale. Would you strike him to the heart? Make France a republic with a king. What are you doing, though, madame? What does your friend, the Princess de Lamballe? She tells England, where she represents you, that the only ambition of France is to obtain the magna charta and that the revolution, guided by the king, is reacting. What says Pitt to these advances? That he will not suffer France to be a republic; that he will save the monarchy. All the caresses and persuasions of Madame de Lamballe have not induced him to promise that he will save the monarch, for he hates him—he hates the constitutional and philosophic Louis XVI., who contended with him for India, and wrested America from his grasp. Pitt desires only that history may make a pendant to Charles I.”
“Monsieur,” said the queen in terror, “who unfolds all this to you?”
“The men who tell me what the letters of your majesty contain!”
“Have we then no thought not theirs?”
“I have told you, madame, that the kings of Europe are wrapped in a net in which those who would resist strive in vain. Do you, madame, but advance the ideas you seek to repress, and that net will become your armour. Those who hate, will become your defenders, and the invisible poniards that menace you, will become sabres to strike your enemies.”
“But those whom you call our enemies are kings, and our brothers!”
“Madame, call the French your children, and see what the value of your diplomatic brethren is. Does not some fatal stain, too, seem to rest on all these kings? Let us begin with your brother Leopold. Is he not worn out at forty by the Tuscan harem he transported to Vienna? and does he not reanimate his expiring faculties by the murderous excitements he prepares for himself? Look at Frederic! look at Gustavus!—the one died, the other will die, without posterity; for in the eyes of all, the prince royal of Sweden is the son of Monk, and not of Gustavus. Look at the King of Portugal, with three hundred nuns! at the King of Saxony, with his three hundred and fifty bastards! Look at Catharine, the northern Pasiphae, whom a bull would not satisfy, and who has three armies of lovers! Madame! madame! do you not see that all these kings rush to suicidal ruin? You, instead of going with them, should advance to universal empire!”
“Why, then, M. Gilbert, do you not say this to the king?”
“I do! I do! He, though, like you, has his evil genii, which come to undo all that I accomplish.”
Then, with profound melancholy, he continued: “You had Mirabeau—you have Barnave; you will use me after them, and like them, and all will be said.”
“M. Gilbert,” said the queen, “I will seek the king, and return.”
Gilbert bowed. The queen passed through the door which led into the king's room.
The doctor waited ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, half-an-hour, and at last a door on the other side opened.
An usher, having looked carefully around, advanced towards Gilbert, made a masonic sign, and handed him a letter. He left at once.
Gilbert opened the letter and read:
“You lose time, Gilbert, for at this moment the queen and king listen to M. de Breteuil, who brings them this advice from Vienna:
“To treat Barnave as they did Mirabeau, to gain time, to swear to the constitution, and execute it literally, so as to show that it cannot be executed. France will grow cold, and become tired. The French are volatile; some new whim will seize them, and the Revolution be forgotten.
“If liberty does not pass away, we will have gained a year or two, and will be ready for war.
“Leave, then, those two beings called in derision King and Queen of France, and hurry to the hospital of Gros Caillon. You will find there a dying man less fatally affected than they, for you may save him, while without doing them any good you may be borne down by their fall.”
The note had no signature, but Gilbert recognised Cagliostro's hand.
At that moment, Madame de Campan entered from the door of the queen's room and handed Gilbert this note:
“The king asks Dr. Gilbert to write down his political plan as he explained it to the queen.
“The queen, being detained by a matter of importance, regrets that she will not be able to return to M. Gilbert. It is useless then for him to wait longer.”
Gilbert thought for a moment and shook his head. “Mad, mad!” said he.
“Have you nothing to say to their majesties, monsieur?” said Madame de Campan.
Gilbert gave her the unsigned letter that he had just received, and said “Only this,” and left.
