ON THE SECOND of October—that is to say, two days after the dissolution of the Assembly, at the hour of his usual rendezvous with the queen—Barnave was introduced, not on the ground-floor of Madame de Campan, but in the room called the great cabinet.
On the evening of the day when the king swore to the constitution, the sentinel and aide-de-camp of Lafayette disappeared from the interior of the castle, and if the king had not regained his power, he had at least regained his liberty.
This was small compensation for the humiliation of which he had complained so bitterly to the queen.
Without being received publicly, and with all the preparation of a public audience, Barnave was not on this occasion subjected to the precautions which hitherto his presence at the Tuileries had made necessary.
He was pale, and seemed very sad, and his sadness and pallor struck the queen.
She received him standing, though she knew the respect the young lawyer held her in, and that if she sat down, he would not do what the President Thouret had done when he saw that the king did not rise.
“Well, M. Barnave, arc you satisfied?” said she; “the king has followed your advice, and sworn to the constitution.”
“The queen is very kind,” said Barnave, bowing, “to say my advice. Had it not been both the advice of the Emperor Leopold and of Prince Kaunitz, perhaps your majesty had hesitated to accomplish this great act—the only one which, perhaps, can save the king, if the king—”
“Can be saved. Is not that, monsieur, what you wished to say?” said the queen, meeting the doubt courageously, and we may add with the daring which was peculiar to her.
“God grant, madame, that I may never be the prophet of such misfortune. Yet, on the point of leaving Paris, of being separated for ever from the queen, I would neither have her majesty despair nor yield too much to illusion.”
“You leave Paris, M. Barnave? You leave us?”
“The Assembly, madame, to which I belonged is over, and as it has been determined that no member of the Assembly which established the constitution can belong to the Legislative Assembly, I have no longer a motive to remain in Paris.”
“Not even if you could be useful to us, M. Barnave?”
“Not even for that purpose, for from yesterday I shall be able to do you no good.”
“Sir,” said the queen, “you have too lowly an estimate of yourself.”
“Alas, madame, I have tried, and found myself weak. I have weighed, and found myself light. What was my power, which I wished the monarchy to use as a lever? My influence was my power over the Jacobins—it was a popularity laboriously, painfully acquired. The Assembly, though, is dissolved; the Jacobins are Feuillants; and I am afraid the latter made a great mistake when they left the old club; in fine, madame, popularity—”
Barnave smiled more sadly than he had at first.
“In fine, my popularity is gone.”
The queen looked at Barnave, and a strange glance, like one of triumph, passed over her eyes.
“Well, sir,” said she, “you see that popularity may be lost.”
The queen saw that she had committed one of those little cruelties which were habitual to her.
The fact was, Barnave had so completely lost his popularity, that he had been forced to bend his head to Robespierre; and to whom was the fault of this to be attributed? Was it not to that fatal monarchy, which dragged all that it touched into an abyss, into which it was itself hurrying, to that terrible destiny which made of Marie Antoinette, as it had done of Mary Stuart, an angel of death, devoting all those to whom she appeared to the tomb;'
Then, to a degree, she retraced her steps, and regretting that Barnave had replied by a simple sigh when he might have said, “For whom have I lost my popularity, unless for you?” she resumed:
“But, Monsieur Barnave, you will not go.”
“Certainly,” said Barnave, “if the queen bid me stay, I will, as the soldier remains under the flag, though he have permission to go and guard it in battle. But if I remain, madame, do you know what will happen?—instead of being weak, I shall be a traitor.”
“How so, sir?” said the queen, slightly wounded. “Explain; I do not understand.”
“Will the queen permit me to show her not only the situation in which she is, but in which she will be:”
“Do so, sir; I am accustomed to measure abysses, and had I been liable to vertigo, would long ago have cast myself headlong.”
“The queen, perhaps, looks on the Assembly which has just expired as an enemy.”
“Let us make a distinction, M. Barnave; in that Assembly I had friends. You will not, however, deny that the majority of the Assembly was hostile to royalty.”
“'Madame,” said Barnave, “the Assembly never attacked either you or the king but once. That was when it declared that none of its members could belong to the Corps Legislative.”
“I do not understand this, sir. Explain it to me,” said the queen, with a doubt.
“Easily enough; it wrested a buckler from the arm of your friends.”
“And it seems to me almost a sword from the hand of my enemies.”
“Alas, madame, you are mistaken! The shaft was winged by Robespierre, and all that comes from him is terrible. He throw—you unknown into the first Assembly. You knew in the old one whom to contend with; in the Corps Legislative you have a new body to make. Observe, too, madame, in excluding all of us, Robespierre forced France into the alternative of receiving our superiors or our inferiors. There is nothing above us; the emigration has disorganised everything, and if there were a noblesse in France, the people would not select its representatives from it. The new assembly, then, will be democratic; there will be shades in that democracy, that is all.”
The queen's countenance showed that she followed with attention what Barnave had said, and, beginning to understand, she began to be afraid.
“Listen,” said Barnave; “I have seen these deputies, for during the last three or four days, they have begun to collect at Paris: I saw those from Bordeaux. They are almost men of unknown names, but who are anxious to be conspicuous—apart from Condorcet, Brissot, and some others, the oldest is scarcely thirty years old. Age is driven away by youth, which dethrones tradition. Away with white hairs: new France will be ruled by black.”
“Think you, sir, we have more to fear from those who are about to come, than from those who have gone?”
“Yes, madame; the new-comers have instructions to make war on nobles and on priests. They say nothing as yet about the king, but time will show. If he be content with the executive, however, perhaps all will be pardoned that has passed.”
“How!” said the queen, “pardon the past? I presume the king has the right to pardon.”
“That is exactly what people will never understand again—especially the people who are coming, madame, and you will have evidence of it. They will not even keep up the hypocritical pretences of those who are going. They, like one of my confreres, Vergniaud, a deputy from La Gironde, will look on the king as an enemy.”
“An enemy!” said the queen in amazement.
“Yes, madame,” repeated Barnave, “an enemy: that is to say, the voluntary or involuntary centre of all our internal and external enemies. Alas! yes; it must he owned that the new-comers are not altogether wrong, who believe they have discovered a truth, and who utter aloud what your bitterest adversaries dare not whisper.”
“Enemy?” repeated the queen, “the king the enemy of his people? That is a thing, M. Barnave, you not only never can convince me of, but you cannot make me understand.”
“Yet it is true, madame; he is an enemy by nature, and by temperament: yet three days ago he accepted the constitution. Did be not?”
“Well, when he returned hither, the king had almost died of anger, and this evening he wrote to the emperor.”
“But how, think you, can we bear such humilities?”
“Ah, madame, he is an enemy, and fatally an enemy. He is a voluntary enemy, for, educated by M. de la Vauguyon, the general of the Jesuitical party, the heart of the king is in the hands of the priests, who are the enemies of the nation; an involuntary enemy, because he is the compulsory chief of the reaction. Suppose, even, that he remains in Paris: he is at Coblentz with the emigration, in La Vendee with the priests, in Prussia with his allies Leopold and Frederic. The king does nothing. I admit, madame,” said Barnave, sadly, “that he does nothing. Not being able to use him, however, they use his name. In the cottage, in the pulpit, in the castle, he is the poor, good king, the holy king; so that a terrible revolt to the reign of revolution is threatened. Madame, it is the revolt of pity!”
“Indeed, Monsieur Barnave, do you tell me these things? and were you not the first to pity us?”
“Yes, madame, yes, I did and do pity you sincerely. There is, however, a difference between me and the persons of whom I speak. They, by their pity, destroy; I would save you!”
“But, sir, among those, as you say, who come to wage war on, and to destroy us, is there aught predetermined on?”
“No, madame, and I have, as yet, only heard of vague expressions. The suppression of the title of 'majesty,' in the first session; instead of a throne, an arm chair, on the seat of the president.”
“See you in that anything worse than M. Thouret taking his seat because the king did?”
“It is, at least, one step forward, instead of in the rear. This then, madame, is alarming; Lafayette and Bailly will be dismissed.”
“Well,” said the queen, “I do not regret them.”
“You are wrong, madame; they are both your friends.”
“Your friends, madame-'; perhaps your best friends. Be careful of them. If they have preserved any popularity, be not slow to use it; for it will pass away, madame, as mine has.”
“And beyond all that, monsieur, you show me ruin. You conduct me to the very crater, make me measure its depths, but do not tell me how to avoid it.”
For a moment Barnave was silent.
“Madame,” said he, “why were you arrested at Montmedy?”
“Good,” said the queen, “M. Barnave approves of my flight to Varennes.”
“I do not, madame; for the situation in which you are now is the natural consequence of it. As its results, though, have been such, I am sorry that it did not succeed.”
“Then to-day, M. Barnave, a member of the National Assembly, delegate of that Assembly with Petion and Latour-Maubourg, to bring back the king and queen to Paris, deplores that they are not in a foreign land.”
“Let us understand each other, madame. He who deplores that, is not a member of the Assembly, not the colleague of Petion and of Latour-Maubourg, but poor Barnave, your humble servant, ready to sacrifice his life for you, and life is all that he possesses.”
“Thanks, sir!” said the queen; “the accent in which you speak proves that you would keep your word. I hope, though, such devotion never will be necessary!”
“So much the worse for me, madame,” said Barnave.
“Yes, fall, or fall. I had rather have died fighting, as I see I shall, than in the depths of Dauphiny, where I shall be useless to you, but yet will make vows and prayers for the most beautiful woman that ever lived—for the most tender and devoted mother—for the queen. The same faults which have created the past will prepare the future. You will rely on an assistance which will never come, or which will come too late. The Jacobins will seize on the power of the Legislative Assembly; your friends will leave France to avoid persecution, and those who remain will be arrested and imprisoned. I shall be one of them, for I shall not fly. I shall be judged—condemned. Perhaps my death will be useless to you, or even unknown; should you hear of it, I shall have been of little use to you, and you will have forgotten the few hours during which I hoped to serve you.”
“M. Barnave,” said the queen, with great dignity, “I am ignorant what fate is in store for the king and myself. All I know is, that the names of those who have served us are scrupulously inscribed in my memory, and that neither their good nor ill fortune will be a matter of indifference to us. What, though, M. Barnave, can we do for you?”
“You, madame, personally, can do much. You can show that I have not been entirely without value to you.”
“Give me, madame, your hand to kiss!”
A tear rushed to Marie Antoinette's dry eyelids. She gave the young man her white, cold hand, which had been kissed by the lips of the two most eloquent men of the Assembly, Mirabeau and Barnave.
Barnave merely touched it. The poor madman was afraid that if he kissed, he would never be able to tear his lips away.
“Madame, I have not pride enough to tell you, 'The monarchy is safe;' but I say, if it be lost, one who will never forget this kindness will fall with it!”
Marie Antoinette looked after him with a sigh, and when the door was closed, said:
“Poor hollow nut! it needed but a little time to reduce you to a mere shell!”
