NIGHT had returned, bringing with it its train of fears and gloomy visions, when suddenly shouts were heard from the front of the palace.
The queen started and rose. She was not far from a window, which she opened.
Almost at the same instant, servants, transported with joy, ran into the queen's room, crying:—
“A courier, Madame, a courier!”
Three minutes afterwards, a hussar rushed into the antechamber.
He was a lieutenant despatched by Monsieur de Charny. He had ridden at full speed from Sèvres.
“And the king?” said Marie Antoinette.
“His Majesty will be here in a quarter of an hour,” replied the officer, who was so much out of breath that he could scarcely articulate.
“Safe and well?” asked the queen.
“Safe, well, and smiling, Madame,” replied the officer.
“No, Madame, but Monsieur de Charny told me so, when he sent me off.”
The queen started once more at hearing this name, which chance had thus associated with that of the king.
“I thank you, sir; you had better rest yourself,” said the queen to the young gentleman.
The young officer made his obedience and withdrew.
Marie Antoinette, taking her children by the hand, went towards the grand entrance of the palace, where were already assembled all the courtiers and the servants.
The penetrating eye of the queen perceived, on the first step, a female form attired in white, her elbow leaning upon the stone balustrade, and looking eagerly into the darkness, that she might first discern the approach of the king's carriage.
It was Andrée, whom even the presence of the queen did not arouse from her fixed gaze.
She, who generally was so eager to fly to the side of her mistress, evidently had not seen her, or disdained to appear to have seen her.
Andrée, then, bore the queen ill-will for the levity which she had shown that afternoon, and from which cruel levity Andrée had so much suffered.
Or else, carried away by the deepest concern, she was with eager anxiety looking for the return of Charny, for whom she had manifested so much affectionate apprehension.
A twofold poniard-stab to the queen, which deepened a wound that was still bleeding.
She lent but an absent ear to the compliments and joyful congratulations of her other friends, and the courtiers generally.
She even felt for a moment her mind abstracted from the violent grief which had overwhelmed her all the evening. There was even a respite to the anxiety excited in her heart by the king's journey, threatened by so many enemies.
But with her strong mind she soon chased all that was not legitimate affection from her heart. At the feet of God she cast her jealousy. She immolated her anger and her secret feelings to the holiness of her conjugal vow.
It was doubtless God who thus endowed her, for her quiet and support, with this faculty of loving the king, her husband, beyond every being in the world.
At that moment, at least, she so felt, or thought she felt it; the pride of royalty raised the queen above all terrestrial passions,—love of the king was her egotism.
She had therefore driven from her breast all the petty vengeance of a woman, and the coquettish frivolity of the lover, when the flambeaux of the escort appeared at the end of the avenue.
These lights increased in volume every moment, from the rapidity with which the escort advanced.
They could hear the neighing and the hard breathing of the horses. The ground trembled, amid the silence of the night, beneath the weight of the squadrons which surrounded and followed the king's carriage.
The gates were thrown open; the guards rushed forth to receive the king with shouts of enthusiasm. The carriage rolled sonorously over the pavement of the great courtyard.
Dazzled, delighted, fascinated, strongly excited by the varied emotions she had experienced during the whole day, by those which she then felt, the queen flew down the stairs to receive the king.
Louis XVI., as soon as he had alighted from his carriage, ascended the staircase with all the rapidity which was possible, surrounded as he was by his officers, all agitated by the events of the day and their triumph; while in the courtyard, the guards, mixing unceremoniously with the grooms and equerries, tore from the carriages and the harness all the cockades which the enthusiasm of the Parisians had attached to them.
The king and the queen met upon a marble landing. The queen, with a cry of joy and love, several times pressed the king to her heart.
She sobbed as if, on thus meeting him, she had believed she was never again to see him.
Yielding thus to the emotions of an overflowing heart, she did not observe the silent pressure of their hands which Charny and Andrée had just exchanged.
This pressure of the hand was nothing; but Andrée was at the foot of the steps; she was the first Charny had seen and touched.
The queen, after having presented her children to the king, made him kiss them; and then the dauphin, seeing in his father's hat the new cockade, on which the torches cast an ensanguined light, exclaimed with childish astonishment:—
“Why, Papa, what have you on your cockade? Is it blood?”
The queen uttered a cry, and examined it in her turn.
The king bent down his head, under the pretence of again kissing his little daughter, but in reality to conceal his shame.
Marie Antoinette, with profound disgust, tore the cockade from the hat, without seeing—the noble, furious woman—that she was wounding to the heart a nation that would one day know how to avenge itself.
“Throw it away, Sire,” said she; “throw it away!”
And she threw the cockade down the stairs, upon which trampled the feet of the whole escort which accompanied the king to his apartments.
This strange transition had extinguished all conjugal enthusiasm in the queen's breast. She looked around, but without apparent intention, for Monsieur de Charny, who was standing at his ordinary post near the king, with the stiff formality of a soldier.
“I thank you, sir,” she said to him, when their eyes met, after several moments of hesitation on the part of the count,—“I thank you, sir. You have well fulfilled your promise.”
“To whom are you speaking?” inquired the king.
“To Monsieur de Charny,” said she, boldly.
“Yes, poor Charny! he had trouble enough to get near me. And Gilbert—what has become of him? I do not see him,” added Louis.
The queen, who had become more cautious since the lesson of the afternoon, called out:—
“Come in to supper, Sire,” in order to change the conversation. “Monsieur de Charny,” pursued she, “find the Countess de Charny, and bring her with you. We will have a family supper.”
In this she acted as a queen. But she sighed on observing that Charny, who till then had appeared gloomy, at once became smiling and joyful.
