THE king entered the room quickly and heavily, as was his custom. He had a busy, inquisitive air, that contrasted strangely with the icy rigidity of the queen's demeanor.
The fresh complexion of the king had not abandoned him. Having risen early, and feeling quite proud of the sound health he enjoyed by inhaling the morning air, he was breathing noisily, and stepped out vigorously on the floor.
“The doctor,” said he,—“what has become of the doctor?”
“Good-morning, Sire. How do you do this morning? Do you feel much fatigued?”
“I have slept six hours: that is my allowance. I am very well. My mind is clear. You look rather pale, Madame. I was told that you had sent for the doctor.”
“Here is Doctor Gilbert,” said the queen, stepping from before the recess of a window, in which the doctor had concealed himself till that moment.
The king's brow at once cleared up. Then:—
“Ah! I forgot,” said he. “You sent for the doctor. Have you been unwell?”
“You blush!” exclaimed Louis XVI.
“Another secret,” said the king.
What secret, Sire?” exclaimed the queen haughtily.
“You do not understand me. I tell you that you, who have your own favorite physicians,—you would not have sent for Doctor Gilbert, unless you felt the desire, which I know—”
“You always have to conceal your sufferings from me.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the queen, regaining courage.
“Yes,” continued Louis XVI., “but take good care. Monsieur Gilbert is one of my confidential friends; and if you tell him anything he will be sure to tell it me.”
“As for that, no, Sire,” said he.
“Well, then, the queen is corrupting my people!”
Marie Antoinette gave one of those little stifled laughs which imply merely a wish to interrupt a conversation, or that the conversation is very tedious.
Gilbert understood her; but the king did not.
“Let us see, doctor,” said he; “as it seems to amuse the queen, tell me what she has been saying to you.”
“I was asking the doctor,” said Marie Antoinette, in her turn, “why you had sent for him so early. I must, indeed, confess that his presence at Versailles, at so unusual an hour perplexes me and makes me uneasy.”
“I was waiting for the doctor,” replied the king, looking gloomy, “to speak on politics with him.”
“Ah! very well,” said the queen.
And she seated herself as if to listen.
“Come, Doctor,” rejoined the king, taking a step towards the door.
Gilbert made a profound bow to the queen, and was about to follow Louis XVI.
“Where are you going?” exclaimed the queen. “What! are you going to leave me?”
“We are not going to talk on gay subjects, Madame. It would be as well for us to spare you so much care.”
“Do you call my sorrow care?” exclaimed the queen, majestically.
“A still better reason for doing so, my dear.”
“Remain here; I wish it,” said she. “Monsieur Gilbert, I imagine you will not disobey me.”
“Monsieur Gilbert I Monsieur Gilbert!” exclaimed the king, much vexed.
“Well, then, what is the matter?”
“Why, Monsieur Gilbert, who was to give me some advice, who was to talk freely to me according to his conscience,—Monsieur Gilbert will now no longer do so.”
“And why not?” exclaimed the queen.
“Because you will be present, Madame.”
Gilbert made a sort of gesture, to which the queen immediately attributed some important meaning.
“In what manner,” said she, to second it, “will Monsieur Gilbert risk displeasing me, if he speaks according to his conscience?”
“It is easily understood, Madame,” said the king. “You have a political system of your own. It is not always ours; so that—”
“So that Monsieur Gilbert, you clearly say, differs essentially from me in my line of politics.”
“That must be the case, Madame,” replied Gilbert, “judging from the ideas which your Majesty knows me to entertain. Only your Majesty may rest assured that I shall tell the truth as freely in your presence as to the king alone.”
“Ah! that is already something,” exclaimed Marie Antoinette.
“The truth is not always agreeable,” hastily murmured Louis XVI.
“But if it is useful?” observed Gilbert.
“Or even uttered with good intention,” added the queen.
“In that view of the case, I agree with you,” interposed Louis XVI. “But if you were wise, Madame, you would leave the doctor entire freedom of speech, and which I need—”
“Sire,” replied' Gilbert, “since the queen herself calls for the truth, and as I know her Majesty's mind is sufficiently noble and powerful not to fear it, I prefer to speak in presence of both my sovereigns.”
“Sire,” said the queen, “I request it.”
“I have full faith in your Majesty's good sense,” said Gilbert, bowing to the queen. “The subject is the happiness and glory of his Majesty the king.”
“You are right to put faith in me,” said the queen. “Begin, sir.”
“All this is very well,” continued the king, who was growing obstinate, according to his custom; “but, in short, the question is a delicate one; and I know well that, as to myself, you will greatly embarrass me by being present.”
The queen could not withhold a gesture of impatience. She rose, then seated herself again, and darted a penetrating and cold look at the doctor, as if to divine his thoughts.
Louis XVI., seeing that there was no longer any means of escaping the ordinary and extraordinary inquisitorial question, seated himself in his arm-chair, opposite Gilbert, and heaved a deep sigh.
“What is the point in question?” asked the queen, as soon as this singular species of council had been thus constituted and installed.
Gilbert looked at the king once more, as if to ask him for his authority to speak openly.
“Speak! Good Heavens, go on, sir, since the queen desires it.”
“Well, then, Madame,” said the doctor, “I will inform your Majesty in a few words of the object of my early visit to Versailles. I came to advise his Majesty to proceed to Paris.”
Had a spark fallen among the eight thousand pounds of gunpowder at the Hôtel de Ville, it could not have produced the explosion which those words caused in the queen's heart.
“The king proceed to Paris! The king!—ah!” and she uttered a cry of horror that made Louis XVI. tremble.
“There!” exclaimed the king, looking at Gilbert; “what did I tell you, Doctor?”
“The king!” continued the queen; “the king in the midst of a revolted city!—the king amidst pitchforks and scythes!—the king among the men who massacred the Swiss, and who assassinated Monsieur de Launay and Monsieur de Flesselles!—the king crossing the square of the Hôtel de Ville, and treading in the blood of his defenders! You must be deprived of your senses, sir, to speak thus. Oh, I repeat it; you are mad!”
Gilbert lowered his eyes like a man who is restrained by feelings of respect; but he did not answer a single word.
The king, who felt agitated to the bottom of his soul, turned about in his seat like a man undergoing torture on the gridiron of the Inquisition.
“Is it possible,” continued the queen, “that such an idea should have found a place in an intelligent mind,-in a French heart? What, sir? Do you not, then, know that you are speaking to the successor of St. Louis,—to the great-grandson of Louis XIV.?”
The king was beating the carpet with his feet.
“I do not suppose, however,” continued the queen, “that you desire to deprive the king of the assistance of his guards and his army, or that you are seeking to draw him out of his palace, which is a fortress, to expose him alone and defenceless to the blows of his infuriated enemies; you do not wish to see the king assassinated, I suppose, Mionsieur Gilbert?”
“If I thought that your Majesty for a single moment entertained an idea that I am capable of such treachery, I should not be merely a madman, but should look upon myself as a wretch. But Heaven be thanked, Madame! you do not believe it any more than I do. No; I came to give my king this counsel, because I think the counsel good, and even superior to any other.”
The queen clinched her hand upon her breast with so much violence as to make the cambric crack beneath its pressure.
The king shrugged up his shoulders with a slight movement of impatience.
“But for Heaven's sake!” cried he, “listen to him, Madame; there will be time enough to say, no when you have heard him.”
“The king is right, Madame,” said Gilbert, “for you do not know what I have to tell your Majesties. You think yourself surrounded by an army which is, firm, devoted to your cause, and ready to die for you; it is an error. Of the French regiments, one half are conspiring with the regenerators to carry out their revolutionary ideas.”
“Sir,” exclaimed the queen, “beware! You are insulting the army!”
“On the contrary, Madame,” said Gilbert, “I am its greatest eulogist. We may respect our queen and be devoted to the king, and still love our country and devote ourselves to liberty.”
The queen cast a flaming look, like a flash of lightning, at Gilbert. “Sir,” said she to him, “this language—”
“Yes, this language offends you, Madame. I can readily understand that; for, according to all probability, your Majesty hears it now for the first time.”
“We must, nevertheless, accustom ourselves to it,” muttered Louis XVI., with the submissive good sense that, constituted his chief strength.
“Never!” exclaimed Marie Antoinette, “never!”
“Let us see; listen! listen! I think what the doctor says is full of reason.”
The queen sat down, trembling with rage.
“I was going to say, Madame, that I have seen Paris, ay, and that you have not even seen Versailles. Do you know what Paris wishes to do at this moment?”
“No,” said the king, anxiously.
“Perhaps it does not wish to take the Bastille a second time,” said the queen, contemptuously.
“Assuredly not, Madame,” continued Gilbert; “but Paris knows that there is another: fortress between the people and their sovereign. Paris proposes to assemble the deputies of' the forty-eight districts of which it is composed, and send them to Versailles.”
“Let them come! let them come!” exclaimed the queen, in a tone of ferocious joy. “Oh, they will be well received here!”
“Wait, Madame,” replied Gilbert, “and beware; these deputies will not come alone.”
“And with whom will they come?”
“They will come supported by twenty thousand National Guards.”
“National Guards!” said the queen,” what are they?”
“Ah! Madame, do not speak lightly of that body; it will some day become a power; it will bind and loosen.”
“Twenty thousand men!” exclaimed the king.
“Well, sir,” replied the queen, in her turn, “you have here ten thousand men that are worth a hundred thousand rebels; call them, call them, I tell you; the twenty thousand wretches will here find their punishment, and the example needed by all this revolutionary slime which I would sweep away, ay, in a week, were I but listened to for an hour.”
Gilbert shook his head sorrowfully.
“Oh, Madame,” said he, “how you deceive yourself, or rather how you have been deceived! Alas! alas! Have you reflected on it?—a civil war, provoked by a queen. One only has done this, and she carried with her to the tomb a terrible epithet: she was called the foreigner.'“
“Provoked by me, sir How do you understand that? Was it I who fired upon the Bastille without provocation?”
“Ah! Madame,” cried the king, “instead of advocating violent measures, listen to reason.”
“Come, now, Antoinette, listen to the doctor,” said the king, austerely. “The arrival of twenty thousand men is not a trifling matter, particularly if we should have to fire grape-shot upon them.”
Then, turning towards Gilbert:—
“Go on, sir,” said he; “go on.”
“All these hatreds, which become more inveterate from estrangement—all these boastings, which become courage when opportunity is afforded for their realization—all the confusion of a battle, of which the issue is uncertain—oh! spare the king, spare yourself, Madame, the grief of witnessing them,” said the doctor; “you can perhaps by gentleness disperse the crowd which is advancing. The crowd wishes to come to the king,—let us forestall it; let the king go to the crowd; let him, though now surrounded by his army, give proof to-morrow of audacity and political genius. Those twenty thousand men of whom we are speaking might, perhaps, conquer the king and his army. Let the king go alone and conquer these twenty thousand men, Madame; they are the people.”
The king could not refrain from giving a gesture of assent, which Marie Antoinette at once observed.
“Wretched man!” cried she to Gilbert; “but you do not then perceive what the king's presence in Paris would betoken under the conditions you require?”
“It would be saying, 'I approve;' it would be saying, 'You did right to kill my Swiss;' it would be saying, 'You have acted rightly in murdering my officers, in setting fire to and making my capital stream with blood; you have done rightly in dethroning me. I thank you, gentlemen, I thank you!”
And a disdainful smile rose to the lips of Marie Antoinette.
“No, Madame, your Majesty is mistaken.”
“It would be saying, 'There has been some justice in the grief of the people. I am come to pardon. It is I who am the chief of the nation, and the king. It is I who am at the head of the French Revolution, as in former days Henry III. placed himself at the head of the League. Your generals are my officers, your National Guards my soldiers, your magistrates are my men of business. Instead of urging me onward, follow me if you are able to do so. The greatness of my stride will prove to you once more that I am the king of France, the successor of Charlemagne.'“
“He is right,” said the king, in a sorrowful tone.
“Oh!” exclaimed the queen, “for mercy's sake listen not to this man!—this man is your enemy.”
“Madame,” said Gilbert, “his Majesty himself is about to tell you what he thinks of the words I have spoken.”
“I think, sir, that you are the first who up to this moment has dared to speak the truth to me.”
“The truth!” cried the queen. “Gracious Heaven! what is it you are saying.”
“Yes, Madame,” rejoined Gilbert, “and impress yourself fully with this fact, that truth is the only torch which can point out and save royalty from the dark abyss into which it is now being hurried.”
And while uttering, these words, Gilbert bowed humbly, as low as even to the knees of Marie Antoinette.
