How long the interview between Andrée and the queen lasted, it would be impossible for us to say; but it was certainly of considerable duration, for at about eleven o'clock that night the door of the queen's boudoir was seen to open, and on the threshold Andrée, almost on her knees, kissing the hand of Marie Antoinette. After which, having raised herself up, the young woman dried her eyes, red with weeping, while the queen, on her side, re-entered her room.
Andrée, on the contrary, walked away rapidly, as if she desired to escape from her own thoughts.
After this, the queen was alone. When the lady of the bedchamber entered the room, to assist her in undressing, she found her pacing the room with rapid strides, and her eyes flashing with excitement. She made a quick movement with her hand, which meant to say, “Leave me.”
The lady of the bedchamber left the room, without offering an observation.
The queen again found herself alone. She had given orders that no one should disturb her, unless it was to announce the arrival of important news from Paris.
As for the king, after he had conversed with Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, who endeavored to make him comprehend the difference there was between a riot and a revolution,—he declared himself fatigued, went to bed, and slept as quietly as if he had returned from a hunt, and the stag (a well-trained courtier) had suffered himself to be taken in the grand basin of the fountain called the Swiss.
The queen, however, wrote several letters, went into an adjoining room, where her two children slept under the care of Madame de Tourzel, and then went to bed, not for the sake of sleeping, like the king, but merely to meditate more at ease.
But soon after, when silence reigned around Versailles, when the immense palace became plunged in darkness, when there could no longer be heard in the gardens aught but the tramp of the patrols upon the gravel-walks, and in the long passages nothing but the ringing of muskets on the marble pavement, Marie Antoinette, tired of repose, felt the want of air, got out of bed, and putting on her, velvet slippers and a long white dressing-gown, went to the window to inhale the ascending freshness of the cascades, and to seize in their flight those counsels which the night winds murmur to heated minds and oppressed hearts.
Then she reviewed in her mind all the astounding events which this strange day had produced.
The fall of the Bastille, that visible emblem of royal power, the uncertainties of Charny, her devoted friend, that impassioned captive who for so many years had been subjected to her yoke, and who during all those years had never breathed anything but love, now seemed for the first time to sigh from regret and feelings of remorse.
With that synthetic habit with which the knowledge of men and events endows great minds, Marie Antoinette immediately divided the agitation which oppressed her into two portions, the one being her political misfortunes, the other the sorrows of her heart.
The political misfortune was that great event, the news of which had left Paris at three o'clock in the afternoon, and was then spreading itself over the whole world, and weakening in every mind that sacred reverence which until then had always been accorded to kings, God's mandatories upon earth.
The sorrow of her heart was the gloomy resistance of Charny to the omnipotence of his well-beloved sovereign. It appeared to her like a presentiment that, without ceasing to be faithful and devoted, his love would cease to be blind, and might begin to argue with itself on its fidelity and its devotedness.
This thought grieved the queen's heart poignantly, and filled it with that bitter gall which is called jealousy, an acrid poison which ulcerates at the same instant a thousand little wounds in a wounded soul.
Nevertheless, grief in the presence of misfortune was logically of secondary importance.
Thus, rather from reasoning than from conscientious motives, rather from necessity than from instinct, Marie Antoinette first allowed her mind to enter into the grave reflections connected with the dangerous state of political affairs.
In which direction could she turn Before her lay hatred and ambition,—weakness and indifference at her side.
For enemies she had people who, having commenced with calumny, were now organizing a rebellion,—people whom, consequently, no consideration would induce to retreat.
For defenders—we speak of the greater portion at least of those men who, little by little, had accustomed themselves to endure everything, and who, in consequence, no longer felt the depth of their wounds, their degradation—people who would hesitate to defend themselves, for fear of attracting attention.
It was therefore necessary to bury everything in oblivion,—to appear to forget, and yet to remember; to feign to forgive, and yet not pardon.
This would be conduct unworthy of a queen of France; it was especially unworthy of the daughter of Maria Theresa—that high-minded woman.
To resist!—to resist!—that was what offended royal pride most strenuously counselled. But was it prudent to resist? Could hatred be calmed down by shedding blood? Was it not terrible to be surnamed “The Austrian”? Was it necessary, in order to consecrate that name, as Isabeau and Catherine de Médicis consecrated theirs, to give it the baptism of a universal massacre?
And then, if what Charny had said was true, success was doubtful.
Such were the political sorrows of the queen, who during certain phases of her meditation felt a sensation like that which we experience on seeing a serpent glide from beneath the brambles, awakened by our advancing steps. She felt, on emerging from the depths of her sufferings as a queen, the despair of the woman who thinks herself but little loved, when in reality she had been loved too much.
Charny had said, what we have already heard him say, not from conviction, but from lassitude. He had, like many others, drunk calumny from the same cup that she had. Charny, for the first time, had spoken in such affectionate terms of his wife, Andrée being until then almost forgotten by her husband. Had Charny then perceived that his young wife was still beautiful? And at this single idea, which stung her like the envenomed bite of the asp, Marie Antoinette was astounded to find that misfortune was nothing in comparison with disappointed love.
For what misfortune had failed to do, unrequited love was gradually effecting within her soul. The woman sprang furiously from the chair in which the queen had calmly contemplated danger.
The whole destiny of this privileged child of suffering revealed itself in the condition of her mind during that night.
For how was it possible to escape misfortune and disappointment at the same time, she would ask herself, with constantly renewing anguish. Was it necessary to determine on abandoning a life of royalty, and could she live happily in a state of mediocrity?—was it necessary to return to her own Trianon, and to her Swiss cottage, to the quiet shores of the lake and the humble amusements of the dairy?—was it necessary to allow the people to divide among them the shreds of monarchy, excepting some few fragments which the woman might appropriate to herself from the imaginary indebtedness of the faithful few, who would still persist in considering themselves her vassals?
Alas! it was now that the serpent of jealousy began to sting still deeper.
Happy! Could she be happy with the humiliation of despised love?
Happy! Could she be happy by the side of the king,—that vulgar husband in whom everything was deficient to form the hero?
Happy! Could she be happy with Monsieur de Charny, who might be so with some woman whom he loved,—by the side of his own wife, perhaps?
And this thought kindled in the poor queen's breast all those flaming torches which consumed Dido even more than her funeral pile.
But in the midst of this feverish torture, she saw a ray of hope; in the midst of this shuddering anguish, she felt a sensation of joy. God, in his infinite mercy, has he not created evil to make us appreciate good?
Andrée had intrusted the queen with all her secrets; she had unveiled the one shame of her life to her rival. Andrée, her eyes full of tears, her head bowed down to the ground, had confessed to the queen that she was no longer worthy of the love and the respect of an honorable man: therefore Charny could never love Andrée.
But Charny is ignorant of this. Charny will ever be ignorant of that catastrophe at Trianon, and its consequences. Therefore, to Charny it is as if the catastrophe had never taken place.
And while making these reflections the queen examined her fading beauty in the mirror of her mind, and deplored the loss of her gayety, the freshness of her youth.
Then she thought of Andrée, of the strange and almost incredible adventures which she had just related to her.
She wondered at the magical working of blind fortune, which had brought to Trianon, from the shade of a hut and the muddy furrows of a farm, a little gardener's boy, to associate his destinies with those of a highly born young lady, who was herself associated with the destinies of a queen.
“Thus,” said she to herself, “the atom which was thus lost in the lowest regions, has come, by a freak of superior attraction, to unite itself, like a fragment of a diamond, with the heavenly light of the stars.”
This gardener's boy, this Gilbert, was he not a living symbol of that which was occurring at that moment,—a man of the people, rising from the lowness of his birth to busy himself with the politics of a great kingdom; a strange comedian, in whom were personified, by a privilege granted to him by the evil spirit who was then hovering over France, not only the insult offered to the nobility, but also the attack made upon the monarchy by a plebeian mob?
This Gilbert, now become a learned man,—this Gilbert, dressed in the black coat of the Tiers État, the counsellor of Monsieur de Necker, the confidant of the king of France, would now find himself, thanks to the Revolution, on an equal footing with the woman whose honor, like a thief, he had stolen in the night.
The queen had again become a woman, and shuddering in spite of herself at the sad story related by Andrée, she was endeavoring to study the character of this Gilbert, and to learn by herself to read in human features what God had placed there to indicate so strange a character; and notwithstanding the pleasure she had experienced on seeing the humiliation of her rival, she still felt a lingering desire to attack the man who had caused a woman such intensity of suffering.
Moreover, notwithstanding the terror generally inspired by the sight of monsters, she felt a desire to look at, and perhaps even to admire, this extraordinary man, who by a crime had infused his vile blood into the most aristocratic veins in France,—this man who appeared to have organized the Revolution, in order that it should open the gates of the Bastille for him, in which, but for that Revolution, he would have remained immured forever, to teach him that a plebeian must remember nothing.
In consequence of this connecting link in her ideas, the queen reverted to her political vexations, and saw the responsibility of all she had suffered accumulate upon one single head.
Thus the author of the popular rebellion that had just shaken the royal power by levelling the Bastille was Gilbert,—he whose principles had placed weapons in the hands of the Billots, the Maillards, the Elies, and the Hullins.
Gilbert was therefore both a venomous and a terrible being,—venomous, because he had caused the loss of Andrée as a lover; terrible, because he had just assisted in overthrowing the Bastille as an enemy.
It was therefore necessary to know, in order to avoid him; or rather, to know him, in order to make use of him.
It was necessary, at any cost, to converse with this man, to examine him closely, and to judge him personally.
Two thirds of the night had already flown away, three o'clock was striking, and the first rays of the rising sun gilded the high tops of the trees in the park, and the summits of the statues of Versailles.
The queen had passed the whole night without sleeping; her eyes wandered vaguely up and down the avenues, where streaks of soft light began to appear.
A heavy and burning slumber gradually seized the unfortunate woman.
She fell back, with her neck overhanging the back of the arm-chair, near the open window.
She dreamed that she was walking in Trianon, and that there appeared to her eyes, at the extremity of a flowerbed, a grinning gnome, similar to those we read of in German ballads; that this sardonic monster was Gilbert, who extended his hooked fingers towards her.
That cry roused her from her slumber.
It was Madame de Tourzel who had uttered it. She had just entered the queen's apartment, and seeing her exhausted and gasping in an arm-chair, she could not avoid giving utterance to her grief and surprise.
“The queen is indisposed!” she exclaimed.”The queen is suffering. Shall I send for a physician?”
The queen opened her eyes. This question of Madame de Tourzel coincided with the demands of her own curiosity.
“Yes, a physician!” she replied; “Doctor Gilbert!—send for Doctor Gilbert!”
“Who is Doctor Gilbert?” asked Madame de Tourzel.
“A new physician, appointed by the king only yesterday, I believe, and just arrived from America.”
“I know whom her Majesty means,” said one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
“Well?” said the queen, inquiringly.
“Well, Madame, the doctor is in the king's antechamber.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” stammered the woman.
“But how can you know him? He arrived here from America some eight or ten days ago, and only came out of the Bastille yesterday.”
“Answer me distinctly. Where did you know him?” asked the queen, in an imperious tone.
“Come, will you make up your mind to tell me how it happens that you know this man?”
“Madame, I have read his works; and his works having given me a desire to see the author, I had him pointed out to me.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the queen, with an indescribable look of haughtiness and reserve,—“ah! it is well. Since you know him, go and tell him that I am suffering, and that I wish to see him.”
While waiting for the doctor's arrival, the queen made her ladies in attendance enter the room; after which she put on a dressing-gown and adjusted her hair.
