FOR the first time the queen appeared deeply moved. Was it from the reasoning, or from the humility, of the doctor?
Moreover, the king had risen from his seat with a determined air; he was thinking of the execution of Gilbert's project.
However, from the habit which he had acquired of doing nothing without consulting the queen:—
“Madame,” said he to her, “do you approve it?”
“It appears it must be so,” replied the queen.
“I do not ask you for any abnegation,” said the king.
“I ask you for the expression of a conviction which will strengthen mine.”
“Oh, if it be only that, I am convinced, sir.”
“That the moment has arrived which will render monarchy the most deplorable and the most degrading position which exists in the whole world.”
“Oh,” said the king, “you exaggerate; deplorable, I will admit, but degrading, that is impossible.”
“Sir, the kings, your forefathers, have bequeathed to you a very mournful inheritance,” said the queen, sorrowfully.
“Yes,” said Louis XVI., “an inheritance which I have the grief to make you share, Madame.”
“Be pleased to allow me, Sire,” said Gilbert, who truly compassionate the great misfortunes of his fallen sovereigns; “I do not believe that there is any reason for your Majesty to view the future in such terrific colors as you have depicted it. A despotic monarchy has ceased to exist; a constitutional empire commences.”
“Ah, sir,” said the king, “and am I a man capable of founding such an empire in France?”
“And why not, Sire?” cried the queen, somewhat comforted by the last words of Gilbert.
“Madame,” replied the king, “I am a man of good sense and a learned man. I see clearly, instead of endeavoring to see confusedly, into things, and I know precisely all that is not necessary for me to know, to administer the government of this country. From the day on which I shall be precipitated from the height of the inviolability of an absolute prince—from the day on which it shall be allowed to be discovered that I am a mere plain man—I lose all the factitious strength which alone was necessary to govern France, since, to speak truly, Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV. sustained themselves completely, thanks to this factitious strength. What do the French now require? A master. I feel that I am only capable of being a father. What do the revolutionists require? A sword. I do not feel that I have strength enough to strike.”
“You do not feel that you have strength to strike!” exclaimed the queen,—“to strike people who are destroying the property of your children, and who would carry off, even from your own brow, one after the other, every gem that adorns the crown of France!”
“What answer can I make to this?” calmly said Louis XVI.; “would you have me reply NO? By doing so I should raise up in your mind one of those storms which are the discomfort of my life. You know how to hate. Oh, so much the better for you! You know how to be unjust, and I do not reproach you with it. It is a great quality in those who have to govern.”
“Do you, perchance, consider me unjust towards the Revolution? Now tell me that.”
“You say yes, Sire,—you say yes?”
“If you were the wife of a plain citizen, my dear Antoinette, you would not speak as you do.”
“And that is the reason for my excusing you; but that does not mean that I approve your course. No, Madame, no, you must be resigned; we succeeded to the throne of France at a period of storm and tempest. We ought to have strength enough to push on before us that car armed with scythes, and which is called Revolution; but our strength is insufficient.”
“So much the worse,” said Marie Antoinette, “for it is over our children that it will be driven.”
“Alas! that I know; but at all events we shall not urge it forward.”
“We will make it retrograde, Sire!”
“Oh,” cried Gilbert, with a prophetic accent, “beware, Madame; in retrograding, it will crush you.”
“Sir,” said the queen, impatiently, “I observe that you can carry the frankness of your counsels very far.”
“Oh, good Heaven! let him speak on,” said the king; “what he has now announced to you, if he has not read it in twenty newspapers during the last eight days, it is because he has not chosen to read them. You should, at least, be thankful to him that he does not convey the truths he utters in a bitter spirit.”
Marie Antoinette remained silent for a moment; then, with a deep-drawn sigh:—
“I will sum up,” she said, “or rather, I will repeat my arguments. By going to Paris voluntarily, it will be sanctioning all that has been done there.”
“Yes,” replied the king, “I know that full well.”
“Yes, it would be humiliating,—disowning your army which is preparing to defend you.”
“It is to spare the effusion of French blood,” said the doctor.
“It is to declare that henceforward tumultuous risings and violence may give such a direction to the will of the king as may best suit the views of insurgents and traitors.”
“Madame, I believe,” said Gilbert, “that you had just now the goodness to acknowledge that I had had the good fortune to convince you.”
“Yes, I just now did acknowledge it; one corner of the veil had been raised up before me. But now, sir,—oh, now that I am again becoming blind, as you have termed it, and I prefer looking into my own mind, to see reflected there those splendors to which education, tradition, and history have accustomed me, I prefer considering myself still a queen, than to feel myself a bad mother to this people, who insult and hate me.”
“Antoinette! Antoinette!” cried Louis XVI., terrified at the sudden paleness which pervaded the queen's face, and which was nothing more than the precursor of a terrible storm of anger.
“Oh, no, no, Sire, I will speak,” replied the queen.
And with a glance the king directed the attention of Marie Antoinette to the presence of the doctor.
“Oh, this gentleman knows all that I was about to say; he knows even everything I think,” said the queen, with a bitter smile at the recollection of the scene which had just before occurred between her and the doctor; “and therefore why should I restrain myself? This gentleman, moreover, has been taken by us for our confidant, and I know not why I should have any fear of speaking. I know that you are carried, dragged away, like the unhappy prince in my dear old German ballads. Whither are you going? Of that I know nothing; but you are going whence you will never return.”
“Why, no, Madame; I am going simply and plainly to Paris,” replied Louis XVI.
Marie Antoinette raised her shoulders.
“Do you believe me to be insane?” said she, in a voice of deep irritation. “You are going to Paris? 'Tis well. Who tells you that Paris is not an abyss which I see not, but which I can divine? Who can say whether, in the tumultuous crowd by which you will necessarily be surrounded, you will not be killed? Who knows from whence a chance shot may proceed? Who knows, amid a hundred thousand upraised and threatening hands, which it is that has directed the murderous knife?”
“Oh, on that head you need not have the slightest apprehension. They love me!” exclaimed the king.
“Oh, say not that, Sire, or you will make me pity you. They love you, and they kill, they assassinate, they massacre those who represent you on the earth; you, a king,—you, the image of God! Well, the governor of the Bastille was your representative; he was the image of the king. Be well assured of this, and I shall not be accused of exaggeration when I say it. If they have killed De Launay, that brave and faithful servant, they would have killed you, Sire, had you been in his place, and much more easily than they killed him; for they know you, and know that instead of defending yourself, you would have bared your breast to them.”
“But I thought that I had concluded, Sire.”
“And my children!” exclaimed the queen.
Gilbert thought it time that he should interfere.
“Madame,” said he, “the king will be so much respected at Paris, and his presence will cause such transports, that if I have a fear, it is not for the king, but for those fanatics who will throw themselves to be crushed beneath his horse's feet, like the Indian Fakirs beneath the car of their idol.”
“Oh, sir, sir!” cried Marie Antoinette.
“This march to Paris will be a triumph, Madame.”
“But, Sire, you do not reply.”
“It is because I agree somewhat with the doctor, Madame.”
“And you are impatient, are you not, to enjoy this great triumph?”
“And the king, in this case, would be right,” said Gilbert, “for this impatience would be a further proof of the profoundly just discrimination with which his Majesty judges men and things. The more his Majesty shall hasten to accomplish this, the greater will his triumph be.”
“I am positive it will be so. For the king, by delaying it, would lose all the advantage to be derived from its spontaneousness. But reflect, Madame, reflect, that the initiative of this measure may proceed from another quarter, and such a request would change, in the eyes of the Parisians, the position of his Majesty, and would give him, in some measure, the appearance of acceding to an order.”
“There, hear you that?” exclaimed the queen. “The doctor acknowledges it—they would order you. Oh, Sire, think of that.”
“The doctor does not say that they have ordered, Madame.”
“Patience—patience! only delay a little, Sire, and the request, or rather the order, will arrive.”
Gilbert slightly compressed his lips with a feeling of vexation, which the queen instantly caught, although it was almost as evanescent as the lightning.
“What have I said?” murmured she. “Poor simpleton! I have been arguing against myself.”
“And in what, Madame?” inquired the king.
“In this,—that by a delay I should make you lose the advantage of your initiative; and, nevertheless, I have to ask for a delay.”
“Ah, Madame, ask everything, exact anything, excepting that.”
“Antoinette,” said the king, taking her hand, “you have sworn to ruin me.”
“Oh, Sire!” exclaimed the queen, in a tone of reproach, which revealed all the anguish of her heart. “And can you speak thus to me?”
“Why, then, do you attempt to delay this journey?” asked the king.
“Consider truly, Madame, that under such circumstances the fitting moment is everything; reflect on the importance of the hours which are flying past us at such a period, when an enraged and furious people are counting them anxiously as they strike.”
“Not to-day, Monsieur Gilbert; to-morrow, Sire, oh, to-morrow! Grant me till to-morrow, and I swear to you I will no longer oppose this journey.”
“A day lost,” murmured the king.
“Twenty-four long hours,” said Gilbert; “reflect on that, Madame.”
“Sire, it must be so,” rejoined the queen, in a supplicating tone.
“A reason—a reason!” cried the king.
“None, but my despair, Sire; none, but my tears; none, but my entreaties.”
“But between this and to-morrow what may happen? Who can tell this?” said the king, completely overcome by seeing the queen's despair.
“And what is there that could happen?” said the queen, at the same time looking at Gilbert with an air of entreaty.
“Oh,” said Gilbert, “out yonder—nothing yet. A hope, were it even as vague as a cloud, would suffice to make them wait patiently till to-morrow; but—”
“But it is here, is it not?” said the king.
“Yes, Sire, it is here that we have to apprehend.”
Gilbert gave an affirmative nod.
“The Assembly,” continued the king, “with such men as Monsieur Monnier, Monsieur Mirabeau, and Monsieur Siéyès, is capable of sending me some address which would deprive me of all the advantage of my good intentions.”
“Well, then,” exclaimed the queen, with gloomy fury, “so much the better, because you would then refuse—because then you would maintain your dignity as a king—because then you would not go to Paris, and if we must here sustain a war, well, here will we sustain it—because, if we must die, we will die here, but as illustrious and unshrinking monarchs, which we are, as kings, as masters, as Christians who put their trust in God, from whom we hold the crown.”
On perceiving this feverish excitement of the queen, Louis XVI. saw that there was nothing to be done but to yield to it.
He made a sign to Gilbert, and advancing to Marie Antoinette, whose hand he took:—
“Tranquillize yourself, Madame,” said he to her; “all shall be done as you desire. You know, my dear wife, that I would not do anything which would be displeasing to you, for I have the most unbounded affection for a woman of your merit, and above all, of your virtue.”
And Louis XVI. accentuated these last words with inexpressible nobleness; thus exalting with all his power the so-much calumniated queen, and that in the presence of a witness capable, should it be requisite, of properly reporting all he had heard and seen.
This delicacy profoundly moved Marie Antoinette, who, grasping with both hands the hand which the king held out to her, said:—
“Well, then, only till to-morrow, Sire, no later; that shall be the last delay; but I ask you that as a favor on my knees. To-morrow, at the hour which may please you, I swear to you, you shall set out for Paris.”
“Take care, Madame, the doctor is a witness,” said the king, smiling.
“Sire, you have never known me to forfeit my word,” replied the queen.
“No; but there is only one thing I acknowledge—”
“It is, that I am anxious, resigned as you appear to be, to know why you have asked me for this delay of twenty-four hours. Do you expect some news from Paris,—some intelligence from Germany? Is there anything—”
The king was as inquisitive as Figaro was lazy; anything that excited his curiosity delighted him.
“Is there any question as to the arrival of troops,—of a reinforcement,—of any political combination?”
“Sire, Sire!” murmured the queen, in a reproachful tone.
“There is no question in the matter,” replied the queen.
“Well, then, yes! the secret of an anxious woman, that is all.”
“That is true. Why does it not exist in politics as in philosophy? Why are kings not permitted to make their political caprices supreme laws?”
“It will come to that, you may rest assured. As to myself, it is already done,” said the king, in a jocose tone. “Therefore, till to-morrow.”
“Till to-morrow!” sorrowfully rejoined the queen.
“Do you keep the doctor with you?” asked the king.
“Oh, no, no!” cried the queen, with a sort of eagerness which made Gilbert smile.
“I will take him with me, then.”
Gilbert bowed a third time to the Queen Marie Antoinette, who this time returned his salutation more as a woman than a queen.
Then, as the king was going towards the door, he followed the king.
“It appears to me,” said the king, as they proceeded along the gallery, “that you are on good terms with the queen, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“Sire,” replied the doctor, “it is a favor for which I am indebted to your Majesty.”
“Long live the king!” cried the courtiers who already thronged the antechambers.
“Long live the king!” repeated a crowd of officers and foreign soldiers in the courtyard, who were eagerly hastening towards the palace doors.
These acclamations, which became louder as the crowd increased, gave greater delight to the heart of Louis XVI. than any he had before received, although he had so frequently been greeted in the same manner.
As to the queen, still seated where the king had left her, near the window, and where she had just passed such agonizing moments, when she heard the cries of devotedness and love which welcomed the king as he passed by, and which gradually died away in the distance under the porticos, or beneath the thickets of the park:—
“Long live the king!” cried she; “yes, long live the king! The king will live, and that in despite of thee, infamous Paris! Thou odious gulf, thou sanguinary abyss, thou shalt not swallow up this victim! I will drag him from thee, and that with this little, this weak arm. It threatens thee at this moment,—it devotes thee to the execration of the world and to the vengeance of God!”
And pronouncing these words with a violence of hatred which would have terrified the most furious friends of the Revolution, could they have seen and heard her, the queen stretched forth towards Paris her weak arm, which shone from beneath the lace which surrounded it, like a sword starting from its scabbard.
Then she called Madame Campan, the lady-in-waiting in whom she placed the most confidence, and shutting herself up with her in her cabinet, ordered that no one should be admitted to her presence.
