ON entering her dressing-room, the queen found the person there who had written the note brought by her waiting-woman.
He was a man thirty-five years of age, of lofty stature, with a countenance which indicated strength and resolution; his grayish-blue eye, sharp and piercing as that of the eagle, his straight nose, his prominent chin, gave a martial character to his physiognomy, which was enhanced by the elegance with which he wore the uniform of a lieutenant in the body-guards.
His hands were still trembling under his torn and ruffled cambric cuffs.
His sword had been bent, and could hardly be replaced in the scabbard.
On the arrival of the queen, he was pacing hurriedly up and down the dressing-room, absorbed by a thousand feverish and agitated thoughts.
Marie Antoinette advanced straight towards him.
“Monsieur de Charny!” she exclaimed, “Monsieur de Charny, you here?”
And seeing that the person whom she thus addressed bowed respectfully according to etiquette, she made a sign to her waiting-woman, who withdrew and closed the doors.
The queen scarcely waited for the door to be closed, when, seizing the hand of Monsieur de Charny with vehemence,—
“Count,” cried she, “why are you here?”
“Because I considered it my duty to come, Madame,” said the count.
“No; your duty was to fly Versailles; it was to do what we had agreed,—to obey me; it is, in fact, to do as all my friends are doing who fear to share my fate. Your duty is to sacrifice nothing to my destiny; your duty is to flee far from me!”
“And who, then, flies from you, Madame?”
“I think myself very prudent, Madame, and that is why I now come to Versailles.”
“From boiling, intoxicated, and ensanguined Paris.” The queen covered her face with her hands.
“Oh,” said she, “no one, not even you, will then come to bring me good news.”
“Madame, in the present circumstances, ask your messengers to tell you but one thing,—the truth.”
“And is it the truth you have just told me?”
“I always tell you the truth, Madame.”
“You have an honest soul, sir, and a stout heart.”
“I am a faithful subject, Madame, that is all.”
“Well, then, spare me for the moment, my friend; do not tell me a single word. You have arrived at a moment when my heart is breaking. My friends, to-day, for the first time overwhelm me with that truth which you have always told me. Oh, it is this truth, Count, which it was impossible for them to withhold from me any longer. It bursts forth everywhere: in the heavens which are red; in the air, which is filled with sinister noises; in the faces of the courtiers, who are pale and serious. No, no, Count; for the first time in your life, tell me not the truth.”
The count looked at the queen with amazement.
“Yes, yes,” said she; “you who know me to be courageous, you are astonished, are you not? Oh, you are not yet at the end of your astonishment!”
Monsieur de Charny allowed an inquiring gesture to escape him.
“You will see by-and-by,” said the queen, with a nervous laugh.
“Does your Majesty suffer?” asked the count.
“No, no, sir. Come and sit down near me, and not a word more about those dreadful politics. Try to make me forget them.”
The count obeyed with a sad smile. Marie Antoinette placed her hand upon his forehead.
“Your forehead burns,” said she.
“Yes, I have a volcano in my head.”
And she pressed the count's hand between both hers.
“My heart is affected with a deathlike coldness,” said he. “Poor Olivier! I had told you so. Let us forget it. I am no longer queen; I am no longer threatened; I am no longer hated. No, I am no longer a queen. I am a woman, that is all. What is the whole universe to me? One heart that loves me would suffice me.”
The count fell on his knees before the queen, and kissed her feet with the respect the Egyptians had for the goddess Isis.
“Oh, Count, my only friend!” said the queen, trying to raise him up, “do you know what the Duchess Diana is about to do?”
“She is going to emigrate,” answered Charny, without hesitating.
“He has guessed the truth!” exclaimed Marie Antoinette. “He has guessed it. Alas! was it then possible to guess it?”
“Oh, certainly, Madame,” answered the count; “one can imagine anything at such a moment as this.”
“But you and your friends,” exclaimed the queen, “why do you not emigrate, if you consider it so natural a step?”
“In the first place, Madame, I do not emigrate because I am profoundly devoted to your Majesty, and because I have promised, not to you, but to myself, that I will not quit you for a single instant during the impending storm. My brothers will not emigrate, because my conduct will be the model on which they will regulate theirs. In fine, Madame de Charny will not emigrate, because she loves your Majesty sincerely; at least, so I believe.”
“Yes, Andrée has a very noble heart,” said the queen, with perceptible coldness.
“That is the reason why she will not leave Versailles,” answered De Charny.
“Then I shall always have you near me,” said the queen, in the same icy tone, which she varied so as to express either her jealousy or her disdain.
“Your Majesty has done me the honor to make me lieutenant of the guards,” said the Count de Charny; “my post is at Versailles. I should not have left my post if your Majesty had not intrusted me with the care of the Tuileries. 'It is a necessary exile,' said the queen to me, and I accepted that exile. Now, in all this, your Majesty well knows the Countess de Charny has neither reproved the step, nor was she consulted with regard to it.”
“It is true,” replied the queen, in the same freezing tone.
“To-day,” continued the count, with intrepidity, “I think my post is no longer at the Tuileries, but at Versailles. Well, may it not displease the queen, I have violated my orders, thus selecting the service I prefer; and here I am. Whether Madame de Charny be alarmed or not at the complexion of events, whether it be her desire to emigrate or not, I will remain near the queen, unless, indeed, the queen breaks my sword; in which case, having no longer the right to fight and to die for her on the floor of Versailles, I shall still have that of sacrificing it on its threshold, on the pavement.”
The young man pronounced these simple words so valiantly and so loyally, which emanated so evidently from the depths of his heart, that the queen appeared suddenly to lose her haughtiness, a retreat behind which she had just concealed feelings more human than royal.
“Count,” said she, “never utter that word again. Do not say that you would die for me, for in truth I know that you would do as you say.”
“Oh, on the contrary, I shall always say it!” exclaimed Monsieur de Charny. “I shall say it to every one, and in every place. I shall say it, and I shall do it, because the time has come, I fear, when all who have been attached to the kings of this earth must die.”
“Count! Count!—what is it gives you this fatal forewarning?”
“Alas! Madame,” replied De Charny, shaking his head, “and I too, during that fatal American war, I too was affected like the rest with that fever of independence which pervaded all society. I too wished to take an active part in the emancipation of the slaves, as it was customary to say in those days; and I was initiated into the secrets of masonry. I became affiliated with a secret society, with the Lafayettes and the Lameths. Do you know what the object of this society was, Madame? The destruction of thrones. Do you know what it had for its motto? Three letters,—L. P. D.”
“And what did these letters signify?”
“Lilia pedibus destrue!—Trample the lilies underfoot!”
“I withdrew with honor. But for one who withdrew from the society, there were twenty who applied to be admitted into it. Well, then, what is happening to-day, Madame, is the prologue to the grand drama which has been preparing in silence and in darkness for twenty years. At the head of the men who are stimulating Paris to resistance, who govern the Hôtel de Ville, who occupy the Palais-Royal, and who took the Bastille, I recognized the countenances of my former affiliated brethren. Do not deceive yourself, Madame; all the events which have just taken place are not the results of chance; they are outbreaks which had been planned for years.”
“Oh, you think so!—you think so, my friend!” exclaimed the queen, bursting into tears.
“Do not weep, Madame, but endeavor to comprehend the present crisis,” said the count.
“You wish me to comprehend it!” continued Marie Antoinette. “I, the queen,—I, who was born the sovereign of twenty-five millions of men,—you wish me to understand how these twenty-five millions of subjects, born to obey me, should revolt and murder my friends! No,—that I shall never comprehend.”
“And yet it is absolutely necessary for you to understand it, Madame; for the moment this obedience becomes a burden to these subjects, to these men born to obey you, you become their enemy; and until they have the strength to devour you, to do which they are sharpening their famished teeth, they will devour your friends, still more detested than you are.”
“And perhaps you will next tell me that they are right, most sage philosopher,” exclaimed the queen, imperiously, her eyes dilated, and her nostrils quivering with anger.
“Alas! yes, Madame, they are right,” said the count, in his gentle and affectionate voice; “for when I drive along the Boulevards, with my beautiful English horses, my coat glittering with gold, and my attendants bedecked with more silver than would be necessary to feed three families, your people, that is to say, those twenty-five millions of starving men, ask themselves of what use I am to them,—I, who am only a man like themselves.”
“You serve them with this, Marquis,” exclaimed the queen, seizing the hilt of the count's sword; “you serve them with the sword that your father wielded so heroically at Foutenoy, your grandfather at Steinkirk, your great-grandfather at Lens and at Rocroi, your ancestors at Ivry, at Marignan, and at Agincourt. The nobility serves the French nation by waging war. By war, the nobility has earned, at the price of its blood, the gold which decks its garments, the silver which covers its liveries. Do not, therefore, ask yourself, Olivier, how you serve the people, you who wield in your turn, and bravely too, the sword which has descended to you from your forefathers.”
“Madame!—Madame!” said the count, shaking his head, “do not speak so much of the blood of the nobility: the people, too, have blood in their veins; go and see it running in streams on the Place de la Bastille; go and count their dead, stretched out on the crimsoned pavement, and consider that their hearts, which now no longer beat, throbbed with a feeling as noble as that of a knight, on the day when your cannon were thundering against them; on the day when, seizing a new weapon in their unskilful hands, they sang in the midst of grapeshot,—a thing which even our bravest grenadiers do not always. Ah! Madame, my sovereign, look not on me, I entreat you, with that frowning eye. What is a grenadier? It is a gilt blue coat, covering the heart of which I was speaking to you a moment since. Of what importance is it to the bullet which pierces and kills, that the heart be covered with blue cloth or with a linen rag? Of what importance is it to the heart which is pierced through, whether the cuirass which protected it was cloth or canvas? The time is come to think of all that, Madame. You have no longer twenty-five millions of slaves in France; you have no longer twenty-five millions of subjects; you have no longer even twenty-five millions of men. You have twenty-five millions of soldiers.”
“Who will fight against me, Count?”
“Yes, against you; for they are fighting for liberty, and you stand between them and liberty.”
A long silence followed the words of the count. The queen was the first to break it.
“In fine,” said she, “you have told me this truth, which I had begged you not to tell me.”
“Alas! Madame,” replied De Charny, “under whatever form my devotion may conceal it, under whatever veil my respect disguises it, in spite of me, in spite of yourself, examine it, listen to it, think of it. The truth is there, Madame, is there forever, and you can no longer banish it from your mind, whatever may be your efforts to the contrary. Sleep!—sleep, to forget it, and it will haunt your pillow, will become the phantom of your dreams, a reality at your awakening.”
“Oh, Count,” said the queen, proudly, “ I know asleep which it cannot disturb!”
“As for that sleep, Madame, I fear it no more than does your Majesty, and perhaps I desire it quite as much.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the queen, in despair, “according to you, it is, then, our sole refuge?”
“Yes; but let us do nothing rashly, Madame. Let us go no faster than our enemies, and we shall go straight to that sleep by the fatigue which we shall have to endure during so many stormy days.”
And a new silence, still more gloomy than the first, weighed down the spirits of the two speakers.
They were seated, he near her, and she near him. They touched each other, and yet between them there was an immense abyss, for their minds viewed the future in a different light.
The queen was the first to return to the subject of their conversation, but indirectly. She looked fixedly at the count. Then:— “Let us see, sir,” said she. “One word as to ourselves, and you will tell me al—all—all. You understand me?”
“I am ready to answer you, Madame.”
“Can you swear to me that you came here only for my sake?”
“Will you swear to me that Madame de Charny had not written to you?”
“Listen to me. I know that she was going out. I know that she had some plan in her mind. Swear to me, Count, that it was not on her account that you returned!”
At this moment a knock, or rather a scratch, at the door was heard.
The waiting-woman again appeared.
“Madame,” said she, “the king has just finished his supper.”
The count looked at Marie Antoinette with astonishment.
“Well,” said she, shrugging her shoulders, “what is there astonishing in that? Must not the king take his supper?”
“Tell the king,” replied the queen, without at all disturbing herself, “that I am just receiving news from Paris, and that I shall communicate it to him when I have received it.
Then, turning towards Charny:—“Go on,” said she; “now that the king has supped, it is but natural that he should digest his food.”
