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 which become 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.
While all was festivity at Paris, gloom settled down on Versailles at
eventide. With darkness came its retinue of fears and sinister visions,
when suddenly uproar was heard at the end of the town.
The Queen shuddered and ran to a window which she opened with her own
hand.
A hussar came up to the palace; it was a lieutenant sent by Charny who
had gone on towards Paris to get the news. He reported that the King
was safe and sound, and that he would arrive shortly.
Taking her two children by the hand, Marie Antoinette went down and
out upon the grand staircase, where were grouped the servants and the
courtiers.
Her piercing eye perceived a woman in white leaning on the stone
balustrade and eagerly looking into the shadows: it was Countess
Andrea, enrapt in expectation of her husband so that she did not see
her royal mistress, or disdained to notice her.
Whether she bore the Queen rancor or merely yearned to see her husband,
it was a double stab for the beloved of Charny.
But she had determined on the righteous course: she trod her jealousy
underfoot; she immolated her secret joys and wrath to the sanctity of
the conjugal oath. No doubt from heaven was sent this salutary love to
raise her husband and children above all else. Her pride, too, lifted
her above earthly desires and she could be selfish without deserving
blame.
As the coach came up, she descended the steps, and when its door was
opened, and Louis stepped out, she did not notice how the grooms and
footmen hastened to tear off the rosettes and streamers of the new
popular colors with which Billet and Pitou and others of the throng had
decorated the vehicle and horses.
With an outcry of love and delight the Queen embraced the King. She
sobbed as though she had fully expected never again to see him.
In her impulse of an overburdened heart, she did not remark the
hand-grasp the Charnys exchanged in the darkness.
As the royal children kissed their father, the elder boy spied the
cockade reddened by the torchlight on his father's hat and exclaimed
with his childish astonishment:
"Oh, papa, what is on your white cockade--blood?"
It was the national Red.
Spying it herself, the Queen plucked it off with profound disgust as
the King stooped as if to kiss his daughter but really to hide his
shame. The mad woman did not think that she was insulting the nation,
which would repay her at an early day.
"Throw the thing away," she cried, casting it down the steps so that
all the escort tramped over it.
This strange transition extinguished her phase of marital love. She
looked round for Charny without appearing to do so; he had fallen back
into the ranks like a soldier.
"I thank you, my lord," she said to him, at last: "you have kept your
promise to restore the King to me unhurt."
"Who is that?" inquired the sovereign: "Oh, Charny? But where is
Gilbert, whom I do not see?"
"Come to supper," said the Queen to change the subject; "Go to the
countess, my Lord Charny, and bring her. We shall have a family supper
party, to-night."
She was the Queen again; but still she was vexed that the count, who
had been sad, should cheer up at the prospect of his wife being in the
company.