THE following morning the sun rose brilliant and pure as on the preceding day. Its bright rays gilded the marble and the gravel walks of Versailles. The birds, grouped in thousands on the first trees of the park, saluted, with their deafening songs, the new and balmy day of joy thus promised to their love.
The queen had risen at five o'clock. She had given orders that the king should be requested to go to her apartment as soon as he should wake.
Louis XVI., somewhat fatigued from having received a deputation of the Assembly, which had come to the palace the preceding evening, and to which he had been obliged to reply,—this was the commencement of speechmaking,—Louis XVI. had slept somewhat later than usual to recover from his fatigue, and that it might not be said that he was not as vigorous as ever.
Therefore, he was scarcely dressed when the queen's message was delivered to him; he was at that moment putting on his sword. He slightly knit his brow.
“What!” said he, “is the queen already up?”
“And what can the queen want at so early an hour in the morning?”
The king took his first breakfast, which consisted of a bowl of soup and a little wine, and then went to the queen's apartment.
He found the queen full dressed, as for a ceremonious reception, beautiful, pale, imposing. She welcomed her husband with that cold smile which shone like a winter's sun upon the cheeks of the queen, as when in the grand receptions at court it was necessary she should cast some rays upon the crowd.
The king could not comprehend the sorrow which pervaded that smile and look. He was already preparing himself for one thing; that is to say, the resistance of Marie Antoinette to the project which had been proposed the day before.
“Again some new caprice,” thought he.
And this was the reason for his frowning. The queen did not fail, by the first words she uttered, to strengthen this opinion.
“Sire,” said she, “since yesterday I have been reflecting much—”
“There now! now it is coming!” cried the king.
“Dismiss, if you please, all who are not our intimate friends,” said the queen.
The king, though much annoyed, ordered his officers to leave the room. One only of the queen's women remained; it was Madame Campan.
Then the queen, laying both her beautiful hands on the king's arm, said to him:—
“Why, are you dressed already? That is wrong.”
“Did I not send word to you not to dress yourself until you had been here? I see you have already your coat on and your sword. I had hoped you would have come in your dressing-gown.”
The king looked at her, much surprised. This fantasy of the queen awakened in his mind a crowd of strange ideas, the novelty of which only rendered the improbability still stronger. His first gesture was one of mistrust and uneasiness.
“What is it that you wish?” said he. “Do you pretend to retard or prevent that which we had yesterday agreed upon?”
“Let me entreat you not to jest on a matter of so serious a nature. I ought and I will go to Paris. I can no longer avoid it. My household troops are prepared. The persons who are to accompany me were summoned last night to be ready.”
“Sire, I have no pretensions of that nature, but—”
“Reflect,” said the king, working himself up by degrees to gain courage,—“reflect that the intelligence of my intended journey must have already reached the Parisians; that they have prepared themselves; that they are expecting me; that the very favorable feelings, as was predicted to us, that this journey has excited in the public mind, may be changed into dangerous hostility. Reflect, in fine—”
“But, Sire, I do not at all contest what you have done me the honor to say to me. I resigned myself to it yesterday; this morning I am still resigned.”
“Then, Madame; why all this preamble?”
“Pardon me, pardon me! then why all these questions regarding my dress, my projects?”
“As to your dress, that I admit,” answered the queen, endeavoring again to smile; but that smile, from so frequently fading away, became more and more funereal.
“What observation have you to make upon my dress?”
“I wish, Sire, that you would take off your coat.”
“Do you not think it becoming? It is a silk coat, of a violet color. The Parisians are accustomed to see me dressed thus; they like to see me in this, with which moreover, the blue ribbon harmonizes well. You have often told me so yourself.”
“I have, Sire, no objection to offer to the color of your coat.”
“In truth, you puzzle me with that eternal smile. The lining—what jest—”
“There! now you are feeling my waistcoat; does that displease you too? White taffeta and silver, the embroidery worked by your own hand,—it is one of my favorite waistcoats.”
“I have nothing to say against the waistcoat, either.”
“How singular you are! Is it, then, the frill or the embroidered cambric shirt that offends you? Why must I not appear in full dress when I am going to visit my good city of Paris?”
A bitter smile contracted the queen's lips,—the nether lip particularly, that which the “Austrian” was so much reproached for; it became thicker, and advanced as if it were swelled by all the venom of hatred and of anger.
“No,” said she, “I do not reproach you for being so well dressed, Sire; but it is the lining,—the lining, I say again and again.”
“The lining of my embroidered shirt! Ah, will you at least explain yourself?”
“Well, then, I will explain. The king, hated, considered an encumbrance, who is about to throw himself into the midst of seven hundred thousand Parisians, inebriated with their triumph and their revolutionary ideas,—the king is not a prince of the Middle Ages, and yet he ought to make his entry this day into Paris in a good iron cuirass, in a hemlet of good Milan steel; he should protect himself in such a way that no ball, no arrow, no stone, no knife, could reach his person.”
“That is in fact true,” said Louis XVI., pensively. “But, my good friend, as I do not call myself either Charles VIII., or Francis I., or even Henry IV.; as the monarchy of my day is one of velvet and of silk,—I shall go naked under my silken coat, or to speak more correctly, I shall go with a good mark at which they may aim their balls, for I wear the jewel of my orders just over my heart.”
The queen uttered a stifled groan.
“Sire,” said she, “we begin to understand each other. You shall see,—you shall see that your wife jests no longer.”
She made a sign to Madame Campan, who had remained at the farther end of the room, and the latter took from a drawer of the queen's chiffonnier a wide oblong flat parcel, wrapped up in a silken cover.
“Sire,” said the queen, “the heart of the king belongs, in the first place, to France,—that is true; but I fully believe that it belongs to his wife and children. For my part, I will not consent that this heart should be exposed to the balls of the enemy; I have adopted measures to save from every danger my husband, my king, the father of my children.”
While saying this, she unfolded the silk which covered it, and displayed a waistcoat of fine steel mail, crossed with such marvellous art that it might have been thought an Arabian watered stuff, so supple and elastic was its tissue, so admirable the play of its whole surface.
“What is that?” said the king.
“A waistcoat, it appears to me.”
“A waistcoat that closes up to the neck.”
“With a small collar, intended, as you see, to line the collar of the waistcoat or the cravat.”
The king took the waistcoat in his hands and examined it very minutely.
The queen, on observing this eagerness, was perfectly transported.
The king, on his part, appeared delighted, counting the rings of this fairy net which undulated beneath his fingers with all the flexibility of knitted wool.
“Why,” exclaimed he, “this is admirable steel!”
“It is a perfect miracle of art.”
“I really cannot imagine where you can have procured this.”
I bought it last night, Sire, of a man who long since wished me to purchase it of him, in the event of your going out on a campaign.”
“It is admirable! admirable!” repeated the king, examining it as an artist.
“And it will fit you as well as a waistcoat made by your tailor, Sire.”
The king said not a word, but took off his violet-colored coat. The queen trembled with joy; she assisted Louis XVI. in taking off his orders, and Madame Campan the rest. The king, however, unbuckled his sword and laid it on the table.
If any one at that moment had contemplated the face of the queen, they would have seen it lit up by one of those triumphant smiles which supreme felicity alone bestows.
The king allowed her to divest him of his cravat, and the delicate fingers of the queen placed the steel collar round his neck. Then Marie Antoinette herself fastened the hooks of his corselet, which adapted itself beautifully to the shape of the body, being lined throughout with a fine doe-skin, for the purpose of presenting any uncomfortable pressure from the steel.
This waistcoat was longer than an ordinary cuirass; it covered the whole body. With the waistcoat and shirt over it, it did not increase the volume of the body even half a line. It did not in the slightest degree inconvenience any movement of the wearer.
“Is it very heavy?” asked the queen.
“Only see, my king, it is a perfect wonder, is it not?” said the queen, clapping her hands, and turning to Madame Campan, who was just buttoning the king's ruffles.
Madame Campan manifested her joy in as artless a manner as did the queen.
“I have saved my king!” cried Marie Antoinette. “Test this invisible cuirass; prove it; place it upon a table; try if you can make any impression upon it with a knife; try if you can make a hole through it with a ball; try it! try it!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the king, with a doubting air.
“Only try it!” repeated she, with enthusiasm.
“I would willingly do so from curiosity,” replied the king.
“You need not do so; it would be superfluous, Sire.”
“How! it would be superfluous that I should prove to you the excellence of this marvel of yours?”
“Ah! thus it is with all the men. Do you believe that I would have given faith to the judgment of another,—of an indifferent person, when the life of my husband, the welfare of France, was in question?”
“And yet, Antoinette, it seems to me that this is precisely what you have done,—you have put faith in another.”
The queen shook her head with a delightfully playful obstinacy.
“Ask her!” said she, pointing to the woman who was present,—“ask our good Campan there what we have done this morning?”
“What was it, then? Good Heaven!” ejaculated the king, completely puzzled.
“This morning—what am I saying?—this night, after dismissing all the attendants, we went, like two mad-brained women, and shut ourselves up in her room, which is at the far end of the wing occupied by the pages. Now, the pages were sent off last night to prepare the apartments at Rambouillet; and we felt well assured that no one could interrupt us before we had executed our project.”
“Good Heaven! you really alarm me! What were the designs, then, of these two Judiths?”
“Judith effected less, and certainly with less noise. But for that, the comparison would be marvellously appropriate. Campan carried the bag which contained this breast-plate; as for me, I carried a long hunting-knife which belonged to my father,—that infallible blade which killed so many wild boars.”
“Judith! still Judith!” cried the king, laughing.
“Oh, Judith had not the heavy pistol which I took from your armory, and which I made Weber load for me.”
“Undoubtedly. You ought to have seen us running in the dark, startled, agitated at the slightest noise, avoiding everybody for fear of their being indiscreet, creeping like two little mice along the deserted corridors. Campan locked three doors and placed a mattress against the last, to prevent our being overheard; we put the cuirass on one of the figures which they use to stretch my gowns on, and placed it against a wall. And I—with a firm hand, too, I can assure you—struck the breastplate with the knife; the blade bent, flew out of my hand, and bounding back, stuck into the floor, to our great terror.”
“The deuce!” exclaimed the king.
“Did it not make a hole?” asked Louis XVI.
“Wait a little, I tell you. Campan pulled the knife out of the board. 'You are not strong enough, Madame,' she said, 'and perhaps your hand trembles. I am stronger, as you shall see.' She therefore raised the knife, and gave the figure so violent a blow, so well applied, that my poor German knife snapped off short against the steel mail.”
“See, here are the two pieces, Sire. I will have a dagger made for you out of one of them.”
“Oh, this is absolutely fabulous!” cried the king; “and the mail was not injured?”
“A slight scratch on the exterior ring, and there are three, one over the other.”
And the queen began to undress the king again with wonderful celerity, in order that he might the sooner admire her idea and her high feats in arms.
“Here is a place that is somewhat damaged, it would appear to me,” said the king, pointing to a slight depression over a space of about an inch in circumference.
“That was done by the pistol-ball, Sire.”
“How! you fired off a pistol loaded with ball? you?”
“Here is the ball completely flattened, and still black. Here, take it; and now do you believe that your life is in safety?”
“You are my tutelary angel,” said the king, who began slowly to unhook the mailed waistcoat, in order to examine more minutely the traces left by the knife and the pistol-shot.
“Judge of my terror, dear king,” said Marie Antoinette, “when on the point of firing the pistol at the breast-plate. Alas! the fear of the report—that horrible noise which you know has so frightful an effect upon me—was nothing; but it appeared to me that in firing at the waistcoat destined to protect you, I was firing at you yourself. I was afraid of wounding you; I feared to see a hole in the mail, and then my efforts, my trouble, my hopes, were forever lost.”
“My dear wife,” said Louis XVI., having completely unhooked the coat of mail and placed it on the table, “what gratitude do I not owe you!”
“Well, now, what is it you are doing?” asked the queen.
And she took the waistcoat and again presented it to the king. But with a smile replete with nobleness and kindness:—
“You refuse it?” said the queen.
“Oh, but reflect a moment, Sire.”
“Sire,” cried Madame Campan, in a supplicating tone.
“But,” said the queen, “'tis your salvation; 'tis your life!”
“That is possible,” said the king.
“You refuse the succor which God himself has sent us.”
“Enough! enough!” said the king.
“My dear Antoinette, when gentlemen in this eighteenth century are going out to battle, they wear a cloth coat, waistcoat, and shirt; this is all they have to defend them against musket-balls. When they go upon the field of honor to fight a duel, they throw off all but their shirt,—that is for the sword. As to myself, I am the first gentleman of my kingdom; I will do neither more nor less than my friends; and there is more than this,—while they wear cloth, I alone have the right to wear silk. Thanks, my good wife; thanks, my good queen; thanks.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the queen, at once despairing and delighted, “why cannot his army hear him speak thus?”
As to the king, he quietly completed his toilette, without even appearing to understand the act of heroism he had just performed.
“Is the monarchy then lost,” murmured the queen, “when we can feel so proudly at such a moment?”
