"Gentlemen, you please me greatly by showing that I may rely upon you in case of need. But I have a Council and an appetite. The former advises me what to do, the other what I have done, to do."
And he chuckled while he handed the "Officer of the King's Mouth" the picked bones and chewed rejecta of his repast on the gold-fringed napkin.
A murmur of choler and stupor ran through the ranks of the nobles who were eager to shed their blood for the monarch. The Queen turned aside and stamped her foot. Prince Lambesq came up to her, saying:
"Your Majesty sees that the King thinks like me that to wait is the best course. It is prudence, and though not my strong card the best to keep in hand for the final rubber in the game we play."
"Yes, my lord, it is a highly necessary virtue," replied she, biting her lip till the blood came.
She was roused from her torpor by the sweet voice of Countess Jules Polignar who came up with her sister-in-law Diana, to propose that, as she and her party were hated by the people as the favorites of the Queen, they should be allowed to go out of the kingdom. At first the Queen would not hear of the sacrifice, but she saw that fear was at the bottom of it, and that the King's aunt Adelaide, had suggested it.
"You are right," she answered; "you run dangers from the rage of a people who are uncurbed. I cannot accept the devotion which prompts you to stay. I wish, I order you to depart."
She was choking with emotions mastering her in spite of her heroism, when the King's voice suddenly sounded in her ear. He was at the dessert.
"Madam," he said, "some one is in your rooms to see you, I am told."
"Sire," she answered, abjuring all thoughts but of royal dignity, "you have orders to give. Here are Lords Lambesq, Bezenval and the Marshal Duke Broglie. What orders for your generals?"
"What do you think of this matter, duke?" he inquired hesitatingly of old Broglie.
"Sire, if you retire your troops, the Parisians will say they daunted them: if you let them stand they will have to defeat them."
Lambesq shook his head, but Bezenval and the Queen applauded.
"Command the forward march," went on the duke.
"Very well, since you all wish it, let it be march!" said the King.
"But at this moment a note was passed to the Queen who read:
"Do not be in a hurry! I await an audience." It was Count Charny's writing.
"Is my lord Charny waiting?" she asked of the messenger.
"Yes; dusty and, I believe, bloody with hard riding."
"Please to await me a moment," said the Queen to Broglie and the others, as she hurried into her private apartments.
THE QUEEN'S FAVORITE.
On entering her boudoir, the Queen beheld the writer of the missive.
Count George Oliver Charny was a tall man of thirty-five, with a strong countenance warning one of his determination.His bluish grey eyes, quick and piercing as the eagle's, his straight nose, and his marked chin, all gave his physiognomy a martial expression, enhanced by the dashing elegance with which he wore his uniform of Lieutenant in the Royal Lifeguards.
His hands were still quivering under the torn lace ruffles: his sword had been so bent as to fit the sheath badly.
He was pacing the room, a prey to a thousand disquieting thoughts.
"My Lord Charny," cried Marie Antoinette, going straight up to him. "You, here?"
Seeing that he bowed respectfully, according to the regulations, however, she dismissed her servant, who shut the door.
Hardly giving it the time to close, the lady grasped the nobleman's hand with force, and said:
"Why have you come here, count?"
"Because I believe it my duty."
"No; your duty was to flee from Versailles; to do as agreed. To obey me; to act like all my friends—who are afraid of my ill fortune. Your duty is to sacrifice nothing for me; to keep away from me."
"Who keeps away from you?"
"The wise. Whence come you?"
"From Paris, boiling with excitement, intoxicated and bathed in blood."
The Queen covered her face with her hands.
"Alas, not one, not even you, brings me good news from that quarter."
"In such a time ask but one thing of the messengers: truth."
"You have an upright soul, my friend, a brave heart. Do not tell me the truth, at present, for mercy's sake. You arrive when my heart is breaking; for the first time my friends overwhelm me with this truthfulness always used by you. It is impossible for me to trifle with it any longer: it flashes out in everything. In the red sky, the air filled with ominous sounds, the courtiers' faces, now pale and serious. No, count, for the first time in your life, do not tell me the truth."
"Your Majesty is ailing?"
"No, but come and sit beside me. George, your brow is burning."
"A volcano is raging there."
"Your hand is cold," for she was pressing it between hers.
"My heart has been touched by the chill of death," he replied.
"Poor George! I told you we had best forget. Let me no longer be the Queen, hated and threatened; but just the woman. What is the realm, the universe to me, whom one loving heart suffices?"
The count went down on one knee and kissed the hem of her dress with the reverence of the ancients for a goddess.
"Oh, count, my only friend, do you know what Countess Diana is doing?"
"Leaving the country," returned Charny.
"He guesses rightly," muttered the Queen, "how could he tell that?"
"Oh, goodness—anything can be surmised at this hour."
"But if flight is so natural, why do not you and your family take it?"
"I do not do so, in the first place, because I have pledged myself not only to your Majesty, but to myself, not to leave you during the storm. My brothers stay, as they regulate their movements by mine: and my wife remains because she loves your Majesty most sincerely, I believe."
"Yes, Andrea has a most noble heart," said the lady with visible coldness.
"That is why she will not quit Versailles," replied Charny.
"It follows that I shall always have you near me," went on the Queen, in the same glacial tone, awarded to prevent the hearer telling whether she felt disdain or jealousy.
A witness could have divined this secret, however, from their manner in this privacy.
Meeting romantically, without either knowing the other's quality, Marie Antoinette and George Charny had fallen in love with each other. The royal dame had left the passion swell to the highest point, when the King had surprised the pair in dangerous intimacy. There was only one way to save her reputation: she blurted out the first name of a lady thatoccurred to her, and protested that the count was at her knees sueing for this lady to be his wife, with the royal approval.
The Queen had named Andrea Taverney, her companion, and the King, his suspicions dismissed, consented that she should be withdrawn from the convent where she had taken refuge, to fulfill the pretendedly wish of Charny. Was it religion that impelled her, or love on her own side for Charny? It was love, for she eagerly accepted the proffered hand, and the wedding took place, all the more as she had had the misfortune to learn that she was used as the cover for the royal amour.
But at the churchdoor they separated and had dwelt apart ever since.
Had she been truly a wife, the experiment of Dr. Gilbert might have failed, for mesmerism succeeds best with the single.
"Your Majesty," resumed the count, "made me Lifeguards lieutenant at Versailles, and I should not have quitted my post only you ordered me to guard the Tuileries Palace, You called it a necessary exile. Your Majesty knows that the countess neither approved nor disapproved, as she was not consulted."
"True," observed the other, still cold.
"I now believe my place is here," proceeded the officer with intrepidity: "I have broken my orders and come, hoping it will not displease you. Whether Lady Charny fears the course of events and goes away or not, I remain by the Queen, unless you break my sword: then, being unable to die in your presence, I can be killed at your door or on the pavement without."
He spoke so royally and plainly these simple words straight from the heart that the sovereign fell from her high pride, behind which she had hidden a feeling more human than royal.
"Count, never utter that word, never say you will die for me, as I feel that you will do so."
"I must say so, for the time comes when those who love monarchs must die for them—I fear so."
"What gives you this fatal presentiment, my lord?"
"Alas", returned the nobleman, "at the time of the American War, I was fired like others with the fever of independence thrilling society. I also wish to take a hand in the liberation of the slaves of Great Britain, as was said in those days, and I became a Free Mason, an Invisible like the Lafayettes and Lameths, under the redoubtable Balsamo, the King-Destroyer. Do you know the aim of that secret society? the wrecking of thrones. Its motto: 'Trample down the Lilies,' expressed in Latin as 'Lilia Pedibus Destrue!' in three letters for the initiated: 'L. P. D.' I retired with honor when I learnt this, but for one who shrank, twenty took the oath. What happens to-day is merely the first act of a grand tragedy which has been rehearsed during twenty years in the darkness. I have recognized the Bounden brothers at the head of the men who govern at the City Hall, occupy the Palais Royal, and took the Bastile. Do not cheat yourself; these accomplished deeds are no accidents, but Revolution planned long beforehand."
"Do you believe this, dear friend?" sobbed Marie Antoinette.
"Do not weep, but understand," said the count.
"Understand that I, the Queen, born mistress of thousands of men, subjects created to obey, must look on at them revolting and killing my friends—No, never will I understand this."
"You must, madam: for you have become the enemy of these subjects as soon as obedience weighed upon them, and while they are lacking the strength to devour you, they are testing their teeth on your friends, whom they detest as much as you, more than you."
"Perhaps you think they are right, Master Philosopher?" sneered the Austrian.
"Alas, yes, they are right," replied the Lifeguards Lieutenant, in his bland, affectionate voice, "for when I idly rode along the street, with handsome English horses, in a gold-laced suit, and my servants wearing more gold braid than would have kept three families, your people, twenty-five thousand wretches without daily bread, asked me to my teeth what use was I, who set up as a man above his fellow-men?"
"You serve them, my lord," said the Queen, grasping the count's swordhilt, "with this blade, which your fathers used as heroes on many a celebrated battlefield. The French nobility shielded the masses in war times; they won their gold by losing their blood. Do not you ask what use you are, George, while you, a brave man, swing the sword of your fathers."
"Do not speak of the nobles' blood," returned the count, "the commoners have blood to shed also; go and see the streams of it on Bastile Square. Go and count their dead in the gutters and know that those hearts, now ceased to beat, throbbed as nobly as a knight's when your cannon thundered against them. They sang in the showers of grapeshot while handling unfamiliar weapons, and the oldest grenadiers would not make a charge with that lightness. Lady and Queen, do not look at me with that angry eye, I beseech you. What matters to the heart whether it is clad in steel or rags? The time is come to think of this: you have no longer millions of slaves, or subjects, or mere men in France—but soldiers."
"Who will fight against me?"
"Yes, for they fight for Liberty and you stand between them and that goddess."
A long silence succeeded the words, and the woman was first to break it.
"You have spoken the truth which I begged you to keep back," she said.
"Because it is before you, veiled, seen distorted, but there. You may sleep to forget it, but it sits on your bedside and it will be the phantom in your dreams as it is the reality of your waking moments."
"I know one sleep it will not trouble," said she, proudly.
"I do not fear that kind more than your Majesty—I may desire it as much," said the count.
"Oh, you think it our only refuge?"
"Yes: but we must not hurry towards it. We shall earn it by our exertions during the day of storm."
They were sitting beside each other, but a gulf divided them; their thoughts so diverged.
"A last word, count," said Marie Antoinette, "swear to me that you came back solely on my account? that Lady Charny did not write to you? I know that she was going out—tomeet you? swear that you have not come back for her sake!"
At this was heard a slight tapping at the door.
It was the servant to announce that the King had finished supper. Charny frowned with wonder.
"Tell his Majesty," said the Queen without sitting apart from her favorite, "that I have news from the capital, and will impart to him. Continue," she added to Charny: "the King having supped must be given time to digest."
This interruption had not weakened the woman's jealousy as a loving one, or as a queen.
"Your Majesty asks if I came back on account of my wife?" he asked as soon as the door was closed. "Do you forget that I am a man of my word and the engagement I made?"
"It is the oath that goads me, for in immolating yourself to my happiness, you give grief to a fair and noble woman—a crime the more."
"You exaggerate. Be it enough that I keep my word. Call it not a crime what was born of chance and necessity. We have both deplored this union which shielded the Queen's good fame. I have been obliged to submit to it these four years."
"Yes, but do you believe that I do not see your sorrow and chagrin translated under the form of the deepest respect?" reproached the Queen.
"For mercy's sake, do me justice for what you see me do; for if I have not yet suffered and made others suffer enough, I might double the burden without rising to the level of the gratitude I owe you eternally."
His speech had irresistible power like all emanating from a sincere and impassioned heart.
"Yes, yes, I know all, and I am wrong. Forgive me. But if you worship some secret idol to whom you offer a mystic incense, if you cherish one adored woman—I dare not utter the words, they frighten me lest the syllables should scatter through the air and vibrate on my ear—oh, if one exists, keep her hidden from all; and do not forget that you have a fair and youthful wife, who should be publicly encompassed with cares and assiduity; she should lean on your arm and on your heart."
Charny frowned so that the pure lines of his visage were altered for a space.
"What are you seeking? that I should depart from the Countess of Charny? you are silent—that is your meaning. I am ready to obey you, but reflect that she is alone in the world. Andrea is an orphan, her father the baron having died last year, like a good old nobleman of the former time who did not wish to see the present. Her brother, the Knight of Redcastle, only appears once a-year at court to bow to your Majesty, kiss his sister, and go away without anybody knowing whither. Reflect, madam, that this lady of Charny, might be called unto God as a maiden, without the purest of the angels surprising in her mind any womanly memory."
"Yes, I know your Andrea is an angel on earth, and deserves to be loved. That is why I think the future will be hers when it flees from me. No, no; but I am not speaking like a queen. I forget myself, but there is a voice in my heart singing of love and happiness, while without roars war, misery and death. It is the voice of my youth which I have outlived. Forgive one, Charny, who is no longer young, and will smile, and love no more."
The unhappy woman pressed her long, thin fingers to her burning eyes and tears, regal diamonds more becoming than the finest in the Diamond Necklace, trickled between them.
"Oh, order me to quit you, but do not let me see you weep," pleaded the count, again falling on one knee.
"The dream is over," said Marie Antoinette, rising.
With a witching movement she tossed back her thick, powdered tresses, unrolling down her white and swanline neck.
"I shall afflict you no more. Let us drop such folly. Is it odd that a woman should be so weak when a queen stands in such need of comfort? Let us talk of serious matters—such as you bear from Paris."
"From Paris, madam, where I witnessed the ruin of royalty."
"This is serious with a vengeance. You call a successful revolt the ruin of royalty? Because the Bastile is taken, Lord Charny, do you say royalty is abolished? You do not reflectthat the Bastile has been built but in the Fourteenth Century while royalty struck in its roots six thousand years ago all over the globe."
"I would I could deceive," said the lieutenant sadly, "and proclaim consoling news instead of saddening your Majesty. Unfortunately the instrument gives forth no other sounds than it was shaped to send."
"Stay, I will set you to a cheerier tune! though I am but a woman. You say the Parisians have revolted. In what proportion?"
"Twelve out of fifteen: the calculation is easy. The populace stand in that proportion to the classes, the other two fifteenths being the nobility and the clergy."
"But six of the rate are women, and——"
"Women and children are not the least of your foes. You are proud and courageous yourself, do not omit the women and the children. One day you may reckon them as demons."
"What do you mean, count?"
"Do you not know the part the women and children play in civil commotions? I will tell you and you will own that a woman is equal two soldiers."
"Are you mad, my lord?"
"Had you seen your sex at the taking of the Bastile," he said with a mournful smile: "hounding the men on to arm themselves, while under the fire, threatening with their naked fist your Swiss soldiers caparisoned for war, yelling maledictions over the slain in a voice which made the living bound unto death. Had you seen them boiling pitch, rolling cannon, giving the fighting men cartridges and the more timid a kiss with the cartridges! Do you know that as many women as men dashed across the Bastile draw-bridges, and that if its stones are coming down now, the picks are wielded by female hands? Oh, my lady, you must include the women, and the children who cast the bullets, sharpen the swords and hurl paving-stones from the roofs. The bullet cast by a boy will kill your best general from afar; the sword he sharpened will hamstring your finest war-horse; the blind pebble from this David's sling will put out the eye of your Dragoon Samson and your Lifeguards Goliath.
"Count the old men, too, for they who have no strength to swing the sabre, serve as buckler for the active fighters. At the taking of the Bastile old men were on hand: they stood so that the younger ones could rest their guns on their shoulder so that the balls of your Switzers might be buried in the useless old body, the rampart of the able man. Include them among your foes, for they have been relating in the chimney corner for ever so many years, what affronts their mothers endured, the poverty of the estates over which the nobles hunted, the shame of their caste humbled under feudal privileges. When the sons took up the gun, they found it loaded with the curses of the aged as well as with powder and shot. In Paris now, women and children as well as the men are cheering for liberty and independence. Count them all as eight hundred thousand warriors."
"Three hundred Spartans vanquished Xerxes' army," retorted the Queen.
"Yes, but the Spartans are nearly a million and it is your army that is Xerxes."
"Oh, I would rather be hurled from the throne," she cried, as she rose with clenched fists and face flaming with shame and ire, "I would rather your Parisians hewed me to pieces, than hear from a Charny, one of my supporters, such speech as this!"
"Charny would not so address your Majesty unless every drop of blood in his veins were worthy of his sires and given to you."
"Then let us march upon Paris and let us die together!"
"Shamefully, without any battle," said the noble. "We shall not fight but disappear entirely like Philistines. March on Paris? when, as soon as we enter within her walls, all the houses will tumble down upon us, like the Red Sea waves overwhelming Pharaoh, and you will leave a cursed name, and your children will be hunted down like wolf-cubs."
"How must I fall, pray tell me, count?" demanded the sovereign haughtily; "teach me."
"As a victim," was the answer, "like a Christian queen, smiling and forgiving those who strike you. If I had five hundred thousand like myself, I might say, Let us have atthem this night, and to-morrow you would sleep in the Tuileries, the throne conquered!"
"Woe is me! you despair on whom was set my final hope."
"I despair because all France thinks like Paris, and your army if victorious in the capital, will be engulfed by the other towns. Have courage enough, my lady, to sheathe the sword."
"Is this why I have gathered brave men around me? why I breathed courage into them?" wailed the Queen.
"If you are not of my opinion, madam, order, and we march at once to Paris! Speak."
So much devotion was in this offer that the hearer was appalled. She threw herself disconsolate on a sofa, where she struggled for a long time with her pride.
"Count," she said at length, "I shall remain inactive as you desire. I am not cross, though I have one thing to scold you for. I only learn by chance that you have a brother in the military service."
"Valence is in Bercheny's Hussars, yes, madam."
"Why have you never spoken of the young man? he deserves a higher grade in the regiment."
"He is young and inexperienced; he is not fit to command. If your Majesty deigned to lower your view upon me, a Charny, that is no reason for me to elevate my family at the expense of brave gentlemen worthier than brothers of mine."
"You have other brothers?"
"Isidore is another; two ready to die for your Majesty."
"Does he need nothing?"
"Nothing; we are lucky enough to place not merely life but wealth at your Majesty's feet."
As he spoke, the Queen thrilled with this delicate probity; a moan from the next room aroused them.
Rising, the Queen ran to the door, opened it and screamed loudly. She saw a woman writhing on the carpet in dreadful spasms.
"It is the countess, your wife," she faltered. "Can she have overheard us?"
"No," said he, "otherwise, she would have let us know that she could hear us."
He sprang towards Andrea and caught her up in his arms. Two paces off, the Queen stood, pale and cold, but trembling with anxiety.
THE TRIO OF LOVE.
Without knowing who was helping her, Andrea began to recover consciousness but instinctively she knew help had come. At length, with open but ghostly eyes, she stared at Charny without yet recognizing him. She pushed him away, with a scream, then.
The Queen averted her eyes although she ought to have played the woman's part of comforter. She cast off her sister instead of supporting her.
"Pardon her, my lady," said Charny, again taking his wife in his strong arms, "but something out of the way causes this. My lady is not subject to fainting fits and this is, I believe, the first time she has had one in your presence."
"She must have felt much pain," returned the Queen, going back to her first impression that Andrea had overheard them.
"No doubt," said the count, "and you might let me have her carried to her own rooms."
The Queen rang a bell; but at the first tinkle Andrea stiffened in a culvulsion and screamed in delirium:
"Oh, our Gilbert!"
The Queen shuddered to hear the name and the astonished count placed his wife on a sofa.
The servant who ran at the call was dismissed.
Queen and nobleman looked at each other as the sufferer seemed with closed eyes to have another fit. Charny, kneeling by her, had hard work to keep her on the lounge.
"I think I know this name," said Marie Antoinette, "from its not being the first time the countess has used it."
But as though the recollection was a menace, Andrea opened her eyes and made an effort by which she stood up. Her first intelligent glance was fondly upon Charny, who was now upright. As if this involuntary manifestation of her mind was unworthy her Spartan soul, she turned her gaze only to meet the Queen's. She bowed at once.
"Good heavens, what is the matter?" inquired the count: "you alarm me, for you are usually so brave and strong—to be prey to such a swoon."
"Such dreadful things have happened at Paris where you were, that if men are trembling at them, women may be excused for fainting. I am so glad you came away from the city."
"Is it on my account that you felt so ill?" queried the noble.
"Why, certainly, count," said Marie Antoinette as the lady made no sound. "Why do you doubt it? The countess is not a Queen; she has a right to be afraid for those she loves."
"Oh, madam," rejoined Charny, perceiving jealousy in the slur, "I am sure that the countess feels more fear for her sovereign than for herself."
"Still, why do we find you in the swoon in the next room?" inquired the royal lady.
"I cannot tell, for I am ignorant, but in this life of fatigue and terror, led these three days, a woman's fainting is natural enough, meseems."
"True," said the Queen, knowing that Andrea could not be driven out of her defenses.
"For that matter, your Majesty has weeping eyes," retorted the countess, with that recovered calmness which was the more embarrassing as it was pure effort of her will and was felt to be a screen over her real feelings.
Charny thought he perceived the same ironical tone that had marked the Queen's speaking a while ago.
"It is not astonishing," reproved he, with slight sternness to which his voice was unaccustomed, "that a queen should weep who loves her people and knows that their blood had flowed."
"Happily God hath spared yours," said Andrea, as coldly and impenetrably as ever.
"But her Majesty is not in question. We are talking about you. You have been frightened?"
"I, frightened?"
"You cannot deny you were in pain; has some mishap befallen you? Is there anybody you want to complain of—this Gilbert, whom you mentioned, for example?"
"Did I utter that name?" said Andrea with such a tone of dread that the count was more startled by the outcry than by the swoon. "Strange, for I did not know it, till the King mentioned it as that of a learned physician, freshly arrived from America, I believe, and who was friendly there with General Lafayette. They say he is a very honorable man," concluded Andrea with perfect simplicity.
"Then why this emotion, my dear?" said the Queen; "you spoke this Gilbert's name as though it were wrung from you by torture."
"Very likely. When I went into the royal study, I beheld a stern man clad in the grim black, who was narrating the most sombre and horrid things—with frightful realism, the murders of Flesselles and Launay. I was frightened and dropped insensible. I may have spoken in my spell and the name of Gilbert would be uttered."
"It is likely," said Charny, evidently disposed to let the discussion drop. "At least you are recovered now?"
"Completely."
"I have only one thing to entreat," said the Queen to her Lifeguardsman. "Go and tell the generals to camp where their troops are stationed and the King will issue orders to-morrow."
The count bowed but darted an affectionately anxious look on Andrea which the Queen remarked.
"Will you not return to the King with me?" inquired she of the countess.
"Oh, no," replied the latter eagerly; "I beg leave to retire."
"Oh, the King has been pleasant but you would rather not see him again? I understand. You may go, and let the count carry out his instructions."
She glanced at the lord as much as to say: "Return soon!"
And his look replied: "As soon as possible."
Andrea, with a heaving and oppressed bosom, watched her husband's movements, but as soon as he had disappeared, her forces failed her and the Queen had to run to her with the smelling salts as she sank on a stool, apologizing for the breach of etiquette in sitting in the royal presence.
The feeling between the pair was strange. The Queen seemed to have affection for her attendant and the latter respect for her mistress, but they were like enemies at times.
"You know, dear countess, that etiquette is not made for you. But you have nothing to say to me about this Dr. Gilbert, whose sight made so profound an impression on you?"
The woman had reflected in an instant. Whatever the relation between the Queen, who was suspected of having paramours, and the King, perhaps not so gullible as he looked, Marie Antoinette might draw from her royal consort the particulars of the mesmeric trance in which Gilbert had thrown the Lady of Charny. Better her relation than the King's.
With the energy of lunacy, she ran from one door to another, fastened them all, and when assured that nobody could hear or see, she flung herself on her knees before her mistress.
"Save me, in heaven's name, save me!" she wailed: "and I will tell you everything!"
THE QUEEN AND HER MASTER.
Andrea's confession was a long one for it was not until eleven at night that the royal boudoir door opened, and on the sill was seen the Countess of Charny, kissing her mistress's hand.
She went away with weeping eyes but the Queen's were scorching, as she paced her room.
She gave order that she was to be disturbed on no account unless for news from Paris.
At the supposition that Charny had at last perceived that his wife was still young and fair, the Queen found that misfortune is nothing to a heart-chagrin.
But in the midst of her feverish torment came the cruel consolation. According to Andrea's confession she had been wronged in a mesmeric trance and Gilbert had humbled her pride forever. Somewhere was the visible token of her defeat—like a trophy of his shameful triumph, the young man had borne away in the wintry night the offspring of the occult love of the gardener's boy for his suzerain's daughter!
She could not but be wonderstricken at the magical combination of wayward fortune, by which a peasant lad had been made to love the fine lady who was to be the favorite of the Queen of France.
"So the grain of dust has been lifted up to glitter like the diamond in the lustre of the skies," she mused.
Was not this lowborn lover the living symbol of what was happening at the time, a man of the people swaying the politics of a great empire, one who personified, by privilege of the evil spirit who soared over France, the insult to its nobility and the attack on royalty by the plebeians?
While shuddering, she wanted to look upon this monster who by a crime had infused his base blood into the aristocratic blue: who had caused a Revolution that he should be delivered from the castle; it was his principles which had armed Billet, Gonchon, Marat, and the others.
He was a venomous creature and terrible; for he had ruined Andrea as her lover and wrecked the Bastile as the hater of kings.
She ought to know him to avoid him or the better to fight him. Better still to make use of him. At any price she must see him and judge him.
Two thirds of the night were passed in reverie before she sank into troubled slumber.
But even here the Revolution was her nightmare. She had a dream that she was walking in one of her German forests when a gnome seized her from behind a tree and she knew that it was Gilbert.
She shrieked and, waking, found Lady Tourzel, an attendant, by her pillow.
"The Queen is sick," she called out. "Fetch the doctor."
"What doctor is in waiting?" asked the Queen.
"Dr. Gilbert, the new honorary physician whom the King has appointed."
"You speak as if you knew him, and yet he has only been a week in this country from America, and only a day out of the Bastile?"
"Your Majesty, I read his writings, and I was so curious to see the author," said the lady, "that I had him pointed out to me as he was in his rooms."
"Ah! well, let him begin his duties. Tell him I am ailing and request his presence."
Surprised and profoundly affected, though he seemed but a little uneasy, Gilbert appeared before the Queen. With her aristocratic intelligence she read that he felt timid respect for the woman, tranquil audacity for the patient and no emotion whatever for the sovereign. She was vexed, too, that he could look so well in the black suit worn by the third class of society and one the Revolutionists chose.
The less provoking he was in bearing, the more her anger grew. She had fancied the man an odious character, one of the heroes of impudence whom she had often seen around her. She had represented as a Mirabeau, the man she hated next to Cardinal Rohan and General Lafayette, this author of Andrea's woes. He was guilty in her eyes for looking the gentleman. The proud Austrian conceived a wild hatred against one whom she thought had stolen the semblance of the rank he had no business to aspire to.
As he had not ceased to look at her while she was dismissing all her ladies, his persistency exasperated her like importunity.
"Well, sir," she snapped at him like a pistol-shot, "what are you doing in staring at me instead of telling what ails me?"
This furious apostrophe, accompanied with visual lightning, would have blasted any courtier into dropping at her feet and sueing for mercy though he was a hero, a marshal, or a demigod.
But Gilbert made answer quietly:
"The physician judges by the eyes in the first place, my lady. As your Majesty summoned me, I come not from idle curiosity but to obey your orders and fulfill my duty. As far as in my power lays, I study your Majesty."
"Am I sick?"
"Not in the usual meaning of the word, but your Majesty is superexcited."
"Why not say I am out of temper?" she queried with irony.
"Allow me to use the medical term, since I am a medical man called in."
"Be it so. Whence this superexcitement?"
"Your Majesty is too intelligent not to know that a man of medicine only judges the material state: he is not a wizard to sound at the first glance the mind of man."
"Do you mean to imply that at the second, or third time, you could not merely tell me my bodily ail but a mental one?"
"Possibly," returned Gilbert coldly.
She darted at him a withering look while he was simply staring at her with desperate fixedness. Vanquished, she tried to wrench herself away from what was alarming while fascinating, and she upset a stand so that a chocolate cup was smashed on the floor. He saw it fall and the cup shiver, but did not budge. The color flew to her brow, to which she carried her chilly hand; but she dared not direct her eyes again on the magnetizer.
"Under what master did you study?" she inquired, using a scornful tone more painful than insolence.
"I cannot answer without wounding your Majesty."
The Queen felt that he gave her an advantage and she leaped in at the opening like a lioness on a prey.
"Wound me?" she almost screamed. "I vow that you mistake. Dr. Gilbert, you have not studied the French language in as good sources as medicine, I fear. Members of my class are not wounded by inferiors, only tired."
"Excuse me, madam," he returned, "I forgot I was called in to a patient. You are about to stifle with excitement and I shall call your women to put you to bed."
She walked up and down the room, infuriated at being treated like a great child, and, turning, said:
"You are Dr. Gilbert? Strange—I have a girlish memory of one of your name. A boy who looked unkempt, tattered and torn like a little Jean Jacques Rousseau when a vagabond, who was delving the ground with the spade held in his dirty, crooked hands."
"It was I," replied the other calmly. "It was in 1772, that the little gardener's boy to whom you kindly allude, was earning his bread by working in the royal gardens of Trianon. That is seventeen years ago, and much has happened in that time. It needed no longer to make the wild boy a learned man: revolutionary eras are the forcing-beds of mind. Clear as your glance is, your Majesty does not see that the youth is a man of thirty; it is wrong to be astonished that little Gilbert, simple and uncouth, should have become a learned philosopher in the breath of two revolutions."
"Simple? perhaps we will recur to that on another occasion," said the Queen vindictively: "but let us have to do with the learned philosopher, the improved and perfect man whom I have under my eyes."
Gilbert did not notice the sneer though he knew it was a fresh insult.
"You are appointed medical attendant to the King," she continued: "it is clear that I have the welfare of my husband too near my heart to entrust his health to a stranger."
"I offered myself, madam," responded Gilbert, "and his Majesty accepted me without any doubts on my capacity and zeal. I am mainly a political physician, vouched for by Minister Necker. But if the King has need of my knowledge of the scalpel and drugs, I can be as good a healer as human science allows one of our race to be. But the King most wants, besides the good adviser and physician, a good friend."
"You, a friend of the King?" exclaimed the lady, with a new outbreak of scorn. "By virtue of your quackery and charms? have we gone back to the Dark Ages and are you going to rule France with elixirs and jugglery like a Faust?"
"I have no pretentions that way."
"Oh, why have you given that branch? you might, in the same way as you sent Andrea to sleep, put the monsters under a spell who howl and spit fire on our threshold."
This time Gilbert could not help blushing at the allusion to mesmerizing Andrea, which was of inexpressible delight to her who baited him as she believed she had left a wound.
"For you can send people to sleep," she pursued: "you no doubt have studied magnetism with those villains who make slumber a treacherous weapon and read our secrets in our sleep."
"Indeed, madam, I have studied magnetism under the wise Cagliostro."
"That teacher of moral theft, who taught his disciples how to rifle bodies and souls by his infamous practice!"
Gilbert understood all by this, and she shuddered with joy to the core at seeing him lose color.
"Wretch," she rejoiced, "I have stung him to the quick and the blood flows."
But the deepest emotions did not long hold the mesmerizer in their spell. Approaching the Queen who was rash enough to look up in her triumph and let her eyes be caught, he said:
"You are wrong to judge fellow-creatures so harshly. You denounce Cagliostro as a quack when you had a proof of his real science; when you were the Archduchess of Austria and first came to France. When I saw you at Taverney, did not that wonder-worker whom you decry show to your Majesty in a clear cup of water such a picture of your fate that you swooned away?"
Gilbert had not seen the forecast, but he knew from his master, no doubt, what Marie Antoinette had been shown. He struck so hard that she turned dreadfully pale.
"Yes," she said in a hoarse voice, "he showed me a hideous machine of bloodshed. But I do not yet know that such a thing exists."
"I know not that, but he cannot be denied the rank of sage who held such might over his fellow-beings."
"His fellows?" sneered the Queen.
"Nay, his power was so great that crowned heads sank beneath his level," went on Gilbert.
"Shame! I tell you that Cagliostro was a cowardly charlatan, and his mesmeric sleep a crime. In one case it resultedin a deed for which human justice, represented by me, shall seize the author and punish him."
"Madam, be indulgent for those who have sinned."
"Ho, ho! you confess then?"
She thought by the gentleness of his tone that he was imploring her mercy. Some forgot herself and looked at him to scorch him with her indignation.
But her glance crossed his only to melt like a steel blade on which the electric fluid falls and she felt her hatred change to fright, while she recoiled a step to elude coming wrath.
"Ah, madam, do you understand what the power is I had from the master whom you defamed? believe that if I were not the most respectful of your subjects, I could convince you by a terrible experiment. I might constrain you to write down with your own hands lines that would convince you when you read them at your release from the charm. But mark how solid is the patience and the generosity of the man whom you have been insulting, and whom you placed in the Bastile. You regret it was broken open because he was released by the people. And you will hate me, and continue to doubt when I relax the bond with which I hold you."
Ceasing to govern her with glances and magnetic passes, he allowed her to regain some self-control, like the bird in the vacuum, to whom a little air is restored.
"Send me to sleep—force me to speak or write while sleep-bound," cried the Queen, white with terror. "Have you dared? Do you know that your threat is high-treason? a crime punishable with death!"
"Do not cry out too soon. If I thus charmed you and forced you to betray your inmost secrets it would be with a witness by. He would repeat your revelations so as to leave you no doubt."
"A witness? but, think, sir, that a witness to such a deed would be an accomplice."
"A husband is not the accomplice to an experiment he favors on his wife."
"The King?" screamed Marie Antoinette with dread, revealing rather the wife than the medium reluctant to make a scene for the spiritualist: "fie, Dr. Gilbert!"
"The King, your natural defender, your sustainer," replied Gilbert quietly. "He would relate, when you were awakened, how respectful I was, while proud in proving my science on the most venerated of sovereigns."
He left her to meditate on the depth of his words.
"I see," she said at length, "you must be a mortal enemy——"
"Or a proven friend——"
"Impossible; friendship cannot dwell beside fear or distrust."
"Between subject and monarch, friendship cannot live but on the confidence the subject inspires. I have made the vow not to use my weapons but to repulse the wrongs done me. All for defense, nothing for offence!"
"Alas," moaned the Queen: "I see that you set a trap. After frightening the woman, you seek to rule the Queen."
"No, lady, I am not a paltry speculator. You are the first woman in whom I have found all feminine passions with all the dominant faculties of man. You can be a woman and a friend. I admire you and would serve you. I will do it without receiving aught from you—merely to study you. I will do more to show you how I serve you: if I am in the way send me forth."
"Send you hence," said she with gladness.
"But no doubt you will reflect that my power can be exercised from afar. It is true: but do not fear—I shall not employ it."
The Queen was musing, unable to reply to this strange man when steps were heard in the corridor.
"The King," she exclaimed.
"Then point out the door by which I may depart without being seen by him."
"Stay," she said.
He bowed, and remained impassible while she sought to read on his brow to what point triumph rose in him more plain than anger or disquiet.
"At least he might have shown his delight," she thought.
THE PRIVATE COUNCIL.
Louis entered briskly but heavily as was his wont. His manner was busy and curious, strongly contrasting with the Queen's cold rigidity.
His high color had not left him. An early riser and proud of the heartiness he had imbibed with the morning breeze, he breathed noisily and set his foot vigorously on the floor.
"The doctor—what has become of the doctor?" he inquired.
"Good morning, Sire! how do you feel this morning? are you tired?"
"I have slept six hours, my allowance. I feel very well, and my head is clear. But you are a little pale. I heard you had sent for the new doctor."
"Here is Dr. Gilbert," said the Queen, standing aside from a window recess where the doctor had been screened by the curtains.
"But were you unwell that you sent for him?" continued the monarch: "You blush—you must have some secret, since you consult him instead of the regular doctors of the household. But have a care! Dr. Gilbert is one of my confidential friends, and if you tell him anything he will repeat it to me."
The Queen had become purple from being merely red.
"Nay, Sire," said Gilbert, smiling.
"What, has the Queen corrupted my friends?"
Marie Antoinette laughed one of those dry, half-suppressed laughs signifying that the conversation has gone far enough or it fatigues: Gilbert understood but the King did not.
"Come, doctor, since this amuses the Queen, let me hear the joke."
"I was asking the doctor why you called him so early. I own that his presence at Versailles much puzzles me," said the Queen.
"I was wanting the doctor to talk politics with him," said Louis, his brow darkening.
"Oh, very well," said she, taking a seat as if to listen.
"But we are not going to talk pleasant stuff; so we must go away to spare you an additional pang."
"Do you call business matters pangs?" majestically said the Queen. "I would like you to stay. Dr. Gilbert, surely you will not disobey me."
"But I want the doctor's opinion and he cannot give it according to his conscience if you are by us."
"What risk does he run of displeasing me by speaking according to his conscience?" she demanded.
"That is easy to understand, madam; you have your own line of policy, which is not always ours; so——"
"You would clearly imply that the Gilbert policy runs counter to mine?"
"It should be so, from the ideas your Majesty knows me to entertain," said Gilbert. "But your Majesty should know that I will speak the truth before you as plainly as to his Majesty."
"That is a gain," said Marie Antoinette.
"Truth is not always good to speak," observed the monarch.
"When useful?" suggested Gilbert.
"And the intention good," added the Queen.
"We do not doubt that," said King Louis. "But if you are wise, madam, you will leave the doctor free use of his language, which I stand in need of."
"Sire, since the Queen provokes the truth, and I know her mind is too noble and powerful to dread it, I prefer to speak before both my sovereigns."
"I ask it."
"I have faith in your Majesty's wisdom," said Gilbert, bowing to the lady. "The question turns on the King's glory and happiness."
"Then you were right to have faith in me. Commence, sir."
"Well, I advise the King to go to Paris."
A spark dropping into the eight thousand pounds of gunpowder in the City Hall cellars would not have caused the explosion of this sentence in the Queen's bosom.
"There," said the King who had been startled by her cry, "I told you so, doctor."
"The King," proceeded the indignant woman, "in a city revolted; among scythes and pitchforks, borne by the villains who massacred the Swiss, and murdered Count Launay and Provost Flesselles; the King crossing the City Hall Square and slipping in the blood of his defenders: you are insane to speak thus, sir!"
Gilbert lowered his eyes as in respect but said not a word. The King writhed in his chair as though on a red hot grid.
"Madam," said the doctor at last, "I have seen Paris, and you have not even been out of the palace to see Versailles, Do you know what Paris is about?"
"Storming some other Bastile," jeered the Queen.
"Assuredly not; but Paris knows there is another fortress between it and the King. The city is collecting the deputies of its forty-eight wards and sending them here."
"Let them come," said the Queen, with fierce joy. "They will be hotly received."
"Take care, madam, for they come not alone but escorted by twenty thousand National Guards."
"What is that?"
"Do not speak lightly of an institution which will be a power one day. It will bind and unbind."
"My lord," you have ten thousand men who are equal to these twenty thousand," said the Queen: "call them up to give these blackguards their chastisement, and the example which all this revolutionary spawn has need of. I would sweep them all away in a week, if I were listened to."
"How deceived you are—by others," said Gilbert, shaking his head, sadly. "Alas! think of civil war excited by a queen. Only one did so, and she went down to the grave with the epithet of the Foreigner."
"Excited by me? what do you mean? did I fire on the Bastile without provocation?"
"Pray, instead of urging violence, hearken to reason," interposed the King. "Continue," he said to Gilbert.
"Spare the King a battle with doubtful issue; these hates which grow hotter at a distance, these boastings whichbecome courage on occasion. You may by gentleness soften the contact of this army with the palace. Let the King meet them. These twenty thousand are coming perhaps to conquer the King: let him conquer them, and turn them into his own body-guard; for they are the people."
The King nodded approval.
"But do you not know what will be said?" she cried, "that the King applauds what was done, the slaying of his faithful Switzers, the massacre of his officers, the putting his handsome city to fire and blood. You will make him dethrone himself and thank these gentlemen!"
A disdainful smile passed over her lips.
"No, madam, there is your mistake. This conduct would mean, there was some justice in the people's grievances. 'I come to pardon where they overstepped the dealing of wild justice. I am the King and the chief; the head of the French Revolution as Henry Fourth was head of the League and the nation. Your generals are my officers, your National Guards my soldiers; your magistrates my own. Instead of urging me on, follow me if you can. The length of my stride will prove that I lead in the footsteps of Charlemagne.'"
"He is right," the King said ruefully.
"Oh, Sire, for mercy's sake, do not listen to this man, your enemy."
"Her Majesty tells you what she thinks of my suggestion," said Gilbert.
"I think, sir, that you are the only person who has ever ventured to tell me the truth," commented Louis XVI.
"The truth? is that what you have told?" exclaimed the Queen. "Heaven have mercy!"
"Yes, madam," said Gilbert, "and believe me that it is the lamp by which the throne and royalty will be prevented rolling into the abyss."
He bowed very humbly as he spoke, to the Queen, who appeared profoundly touched this time—by his humility or the reasoning?
The King rose with a decisive air as though determined on realization. But from his habit of doing nothing without consulting with his consort, he asked:
"Do you approve?"
"It must be," was her rejoinder.
"I am not asking for your abnegation but support to my belief."
"In that case I am convinced that the realm will become the meanest and most deplorable of all in Christendom."
"You exaggerate. Deplorable, I grant, but mean?"
"Your ancestors left you a dreary inheritance," said Marie Antoinette sorrowfully.
"Which I grieve you should share," added Louis.
"Allow me to say, Sire, that the future may not be so lamentable," interposed Gilbert, who pitied the dethroned rulers; "a despotic monarchy has ceased, but a constitutional one commences."
"Am I the man to found that in France?" asked the King.
"Why not?" exclaimed the Queen, catching some hope from Gilbert's suggestion.
"Madam, I see clearly. From the day when I walk among men like themselves, I lose all the factitious strength necessary to govern France as the Louis before me did. The French want a master and one who will wield the sword. I feel no power to strike."
"Not to strike those who would rob your children of their estate," cried the Queen, "and who wish to break the lilies on your crown?"
"What am I to answer? if I answer No, I raise in you one of those storms which embitter my life. You know how to hate—so much the better for you. You can be unjust; I do not reproach you, for it is an excellent trait in the lordly. Madam, we must resign ourselves: it takes strength to push ahead this car with scythe-bladed wheels, and we lack strength."
"That is bad, for it will run over our children," sighed Marie Antoinette.
"I know it, but we shall not be pushing it."
"We can draw it back, Sire."
"Oh, beware," said Gilbert, deeply, "it will crush you then."
"Let him speak what the newspapers have been saying for a week past. At any rate he wraps up the bitterness of his free speech," said the King. "In short, I shall go to Paris."
"Who knows but you will find it the gulf I fear?" said the Queen in a hollow, irritated voice. "The assassin may be there with his bullet, who will know among a thousand threatening fists, which holds the dagger?"
"Fear nothing of that sort, they love me," said Louis.
"You make me pity you for saying that. They love you who slay and mangle and cut the throats of your representatives? The Governor of the Bastile was your image. They killed that brave and faithful servitor, as they would kill you in his stead. The more easy as they know you and that you would turn the other cheek to the smiter. If you are killed, what about my children?" concluded the Queen.
"Madam," struck in Gilbert, deeming it time he intervened, "the King is so respected that I fear that his entry will be like that of Juggernaut, under whose wheels the fanatics will throw themselves to be crushed. This march into Paris will be a triumphal progress."
"I am rather of the doctor's opinion," said the monarch.
"Say you are eager to enjoy this triumph," said the Queen.
"The King is right, and his eagerness proves the accuracy of his judgment on men and events. The sooner his Majesty is, the greater will be his triumph: by delay the gain may be lost. This promptness will change the King's position and make the act in some way his order. Lose time, Sire, and their demand will be an order."
"Not to-day, Master Gilbert," said the Queen, "to-morrow. Grant me till then, and I swear not to oppose the movement."
"But who knows what will happen meanwhile?" expostulated the King in despair. "Marie, you seem doomed to ruin me. The Assembly will send me some addresses which will rob me of all the merit in taking the first step."
Gilbert nodded.
"Better so," said the Queen with sullen fury, "refuse and preserve your regal dignity: go not to Paris but wage war from here; and if we must die here, let us fall like rulers, like masters, like Christians, who cling to their God as to their crown."
The King saw from her excitement that he must give way.
"But what do you expect between whiles?" he inquired: "A reinforcement from Germany? or news from town?"
It was a coat of mail which the King refused to wear, but her misapprehension of the monarch who knew he was not of the times when kings wore armor, cost a precious time.
Without other safeguard than Gilbert's breast, as the latter rode in the coach beside the monarch, the visit to Paris was made.
In the Queen's drive, in the Champs Elysées, Mayor Bailly offered him the city keys, saying:
"Sire, I bring your Majesty the keys of the good city. They are the same offered to Henry Fourth. He won his people, but the people have now won their King."
On the return, all having passed smoothly, crossing Louis XV. Place, a shot was fired from across the river and Gilbert felt a stroke. The bullet had hit one of his steel vest buttons and glanced off into the crowd and killed an unfortunate woman.
The King heard her scream and heard the shot.
"Burning powder in my honor?" he said.
"Yes, Sire," was Gilbert's easy reply.
It was never known what hand fired this regicidal shot which justified the Queen's fear that her husband would be assassinated.